Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives

Trudeau, attended for the first time. The English-language jury, which had to select 1968’s three best books, irrespective of genre (a comment on how few Canadian books were published annually in those days), was made up of the novelist Henry Kreisel of the University of Alberta, critic and translator Philip Stratford of the University of Montreal, and Robert Weaver as its head. Just as he was going to withdraw from any discussion of
Dance of the Happy Shades
because of his long connection to Munro and to her book, Weaver was told by the other jurors that it had won.
    “Literary Fame Catches City Mother Unprepared,” the Victoria
Daily Times
wrote on receiving the news of the award. Playing the domestic theme to the hilt, the reporter began the piece with a scene of the Munro family at breakfast, the older girls getting off to school and Andrea sitting at the table, “crying because she isn’t getting any attention.” Munro then asked, “Have you got a camera that will hide circles under the eyes?” to which the unnamed reporter comments, “Life can be turmoil when one wins one of Canada’s top literary awards.” “I didn’t think I had a chance,” Munro told the reporter; “the award usually goes for a novel, not a collection of short stories.” The article was accompanied by a picture of Munro holding the telephone to herear and, in many ways, it well illustrated the amazed tone of much of the personalized reporting on the prize. The
Globe and Mail
said that she is “described as a ‘shy housewife’ with three daughters [who] helps her husband run a bookstore in Victoria.” The
Vancouver Sun
offered “B.C. Mother of Three Wins Top Literary Award” while the other Victoria paper, the
Daily Colonist
, left the children out of it with “Victoria Woman’s Book Wins Literary Award.” In the smaller Ontario papers, local connections were noted: the
London Free Press
story was headlined “Ex-Wingham Resident Wins Literary Award” while a paper near Jim Munro’s home preferred the headline “Oakville Man’s Wife Wins Literary Award.” Closer to home, the day after the award was announced, the secretary of Victoria’s Bank Street PTA sent Munro, one of its members, a letter of congratulations. 29
    In what was probably an indication of the times – the turbulent 1960s, which, in Canada, saw the rise of separatism and “Trudeaumania” – Munro was the only Governor General’s Award winner that year not from Quebec. Leonard Cohen, Munro, and Mordecai Richler were the winners in English while, on the French side, Hubert Aquin and Marie-Claire Blais each won for a novel and Fernand Dumont for a sociological study. Evidently, the juries were prepared to reward youth – only Dumont had turned forty. As the
Globe and Mail
headlined its story on the awards, “The Establishment Beware! These Awards Are With It.” There was also controversy at the awards ceremony that year, since Aquin, former president of the RIN Québec indépendance party, refused his award on political grounds – the first Quebec writer to do so. So too Leonard Cohen for his
Collected Poems
. His reason was different, however: “The poems won’t permit it,” he said.
    But Munro’s stories certainly did permit the award, as well they ought, given all she had put into them, and into countless others over the years. Alice and Jim travelled to Ottawa to receive the prize. She is mentioned and pictured in the press coverage of the event, which was on May 13, but most of the journalistic attention is focused elsewhere: on the empty chairs reserved for Aquin and Cohen, on Richler (who won for two books and complained at receiving the same money as those who had written only one), and on Prime Minister Trudeau, who cameto the celebration to the stunned pleasure of Munro’s family. Bob Laidlaw and his new wife – he had married Mary Etta Charters Laidlaw, the widow of a cousin, earlier in 1969 – attended, as did Munro’s sister Sheila and Jim’s parents. Meeting Robert Weaver there, Alice’s father was able to thank him for all he had done for her over the years. When asked years later about the effect of this first Governor General’s Award, Munro laughed and said,
    It did a lot for my prestige in the family. I was living with my first husband when I won the first one and my being a writer had never been … well, I think to that point they were thinking of it as something I would get over. So my whole family was very