Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives

lost an emotional edge” through the shift, but “putting Phemie in the third person places the mother’s story in greater relief.” She continued,“Ginger hasn’t read the third person version yet. What does Chip McGrath think? Or Doug Gibson? Or, most important, you?” In this letter, too, Close expressed her hope that Munro comes around to the view (held by Gibson and Close) that the book should be called
The Progress of Love
. What such a response confirms is that by the mid-1980s Munro’s editors and agent were all of a single mind, responding, encouraging, and working in the same direction. An apt illustration of their attitudes was Barber’s when she reported to Alice the reaction at the
New Yorker
to “Miles City, Montana”: “What a book these stories are going to make!” she exclaimed. “Sending out your stories gives us so much pleasure that I feel like sending thank you notes.”
    In July 1985 Barber sent the still-untitled collection to Gibson at Macmillan, noting that they would not be able to publish before August 1986 because the
New Yorker
still had to publish four stories. She sent it to Knopf at the same time. Once her boss Robert Gottlieb returned from a trip, Close wrote, “we can try to put a price on the priceless.” This manuscript included ten of the eleven stories in
Progress
(“Circle of Prayer” was not finished, but was added in late August). As the book was proceeding toward publication, revisions of “The Moon in the Orange Street Skating Rink,” “Circle of Prayer,” and “Jessie and Meribeth” were added.
    By early August Gibson had drafted a contract for
“The Progress of Love
(and other stories)” and was getting the approvals necessary to send it to Barber. They needed to negotiate various points – and Gibson had to satisfy her on various royalty-reporting questions – before it went in mid-September. After further negotiations and another draft, the contract was completed by December 2. Munro was to receive a $25,000 advance and royalties beginning at 10 per cent and increasing to 15 per cent after 10,000 copies; on the paperback, she got 8 per cent until 40,000 copies, 10 per cent thereafter. Macmillan then set to work designing the book. Both the Canadian firm and Knopf wanted an internal design they both could use without adaptation, and Gibson wanted to continue the magic realism look of the previous two dust jackets. Munro was doubtful about this latter point; her daughter Jenny, an artist, was to make an attempt at an image of an old barn witha rainbow on it as one possibility, and Gibson envisioned a similar sort of photographic image. 23
    Ironically, Macmillan never published the book. When Munro sent along a “final, final page” for “Circle of Prayer” in late November, she wrote expressing sympathy for Gibson’s situation at Macmillan, indicating she knew that there were problems. There had been changes at the top, and as a result Gibson decided to look elsewhere. In February he resigned in order to move to McClelland & Stewart, where he been promised his own imprint, Douglas Gibson Books. Learning of this, Munro indicated her desire to move
The Progress of Love
from Macmillan to McClelland & Stewart as the first book published under the new imprint.
    So
Progress
proved to be. Understandably Macmillan took a
very
dim view of this prospect since they had a contract, the book was in production (both in Toronto and New York), and especially since it involved a very valuable author. The dispute and the resultant negotiations lasted from February to April; the Macmillan executives well knew that Munro had sold over 12,000 copies of
Moons
and had brought the firm a record $45,000 from Penguin for the Canadian paperback rights. Early on, Linda McKnight, the new executive vice-president and publisher, wrote a detailed memo to the file assessing the situation at each level (production, marketing and sales, damage to Macmillan) and concluded that Gibson was not needed to produce a quality book and that the repayment of the $12,500 advance already received would in no way adequately compensate the firm for the loss of Munro and her book. If Macmillan were to accede to the request, more compensation would be needed. In any case, McKnight was not prepared to agree to it.
    On February 28, McKnight met with Barber in New York to discuss the situation. McKnight wrote a summary of the meeting, beginning with Barber’s explicit support of Gibson, whom