Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives

concluding comment made by Claire Messud in a review of
Runaway:
“That which each of us holds to be unique – our pain, our joy – is as common as dirt. To be made aware of each soul’s isolation, and of our vast human indifference (in all senses of that word), is at once glorious and appalling. It is the stuff of great art.”
“Our Chekhov, Our Flaubert”: The
New Yorker’s
Munro Triptych,
Runaway
    Munro’s vaunted ability to encapsulate whole lives in a single story – the by now clichéd view that each of her stories contains material sufficientfor a novel – may have reached its apogee with the triptych of Juliet stories the
New Yorker
published in June 2004 as most of its summer fiction issue. Its three stories – “Chance,” “Soon,” and “Silence” – treat Juliet in the three phases of human life that are Munro hallmarks: as a young woman setting out, finding her own way in “Chance,” leaving Ontario for British Columbia; as an adult, a young mother though still very much a daughter, returned home to visit her aged parents, her mother dying, in “Soon”; in “Silence,” as the middle-aged mother of the adult Penelope who has elected to have no contact with her. That story ends with Juliet’s thoughts described: “She keeps on hoping for a word from Penelope, but not in any strenuous way. She hopes as people who know better hope for undeserved blessings, spontaneous remissions, things of that sort.” In her unceasing search for perfection – just the right cadence, the rhythm that captures the story’s and the triptych’s end moment and emotion – Munro has continued to edit: the
New Yorker’s
final sentence included a comma after “hopes” and “or” before the final phrase. Alice Munro, writing on.
    That Treisman and the other editors at the
New Yorker
were willing to commit so much of the fiction issue to Munro – some were almost giddy at the prospect as they planned it – says just what might be said as to how her work is valued there today. The triptych is over thirty thousand words, leaving room for just one other story. (They had showcased Munro before: the length of “The Love of a Good Woman” alone warrants such a designation, and the seventy-fifth anniversary issue – February 21 and 28, 2000 – contains just one other story, by Woody Allen, along with “Nettles.”) Still, the
New Yorker
had only once or twice run more than one story by a single author in the same issue before.
    McClelland & Stewart and Knopf, as had long been their practice, each printed its own edition of
Runaway
from the same Knopf setting, each with its own dust jacket. Munro and Gibson opted for another painting by Mary Pratt, this one an image of a four-poster bed with the top cover thrown back, with part of the cutline from Simpson’s review of
Hateship
(“the living writer most likely to be read in a hundred years”) included below the title. Munro and Close covered the Knopf edition with a drawing of stately blades of grass. McClelland & Stewartpublished on September 25, printing 40,000 initial copies as the book went to the stores. Knopf’s edition was published on November 14 with a first printing of 100,000.
    Faced with an eleventh book from a writer whose work has been praised for well over thirty years, a writer who was reaching her mid-seventies, reviewers of
Runaway
understandably took the long view of Munro’s career. In Canada, that view was especially long. Claire Messud, in the
Globe and Mail
, especially noted “Powers” and the Juliet triptych, and commented, “Both undertakings are extraordinary, the former as a departure for Munro, in its final entwining of Gothic personal histories and imaginings; the latter as an example of the author in full and glorious literary force.” Messud concluded with a correction to Ozick’s ubiquitous assertion that Munro is “our Chekhov,” writing that “but like the character Juliet, Munro does always choose to show compassion. Like life itself, she remains neutral. So she is our Flaubert, too.” Philip Marchand in the
Toronto Star
maintained that Munro’s “powers of verbal precision are undiminished,” that her “trademark techniques” of creating utterly precise settings and “note-perfect dialogue” are unwavering, but above all she knows that “to engage the heart of the reader, it is also necessary to show these characters in desperate circumstances.”
    Jane Urquhart, in the
National Post
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