Alice Munro - Writing Her Lives

proud. My parents-in-law were proud. My father was
astounded
. And so it did something for them, it did something for me. And it was after that I would tell people I was writing, and that it was a thing which I did, which occupied my time, and before that I would never mention it.
    So it does do a lot for you in that way, which is not to be sneezed at, because you have to survive in this world. 30
“To Know You Have Gotten through to Somebody”
    When Ryerson published
Dance of the Happy Shades
, one of its publicity announcements referred to Munro’s book as a major “publishing event that will bring her national recognition.” It certainly did. And the Governor General’s Award it won, especially as a first book, and a collection of stories at that, crowned that attention. Her father may have been astounded, but so too were the people who knew Munro in Victoria, the people who came into the bookstore and the writers and professors at the university who knew her socially. Very few of these people were aware that she wrote. Once the award was announced and Munro went to Ottawa to receive it, though, newspaper profiles of her as a writer at work began; over the many years since, they have continued, waxing and waning according to publication, but never ceasing altogether.
    One of the first profiles not connected to either
Dance
or the Governor General’s Award appeared in the Victoria
Daily Times
in August 1969; after accounting for the book and its award, the writer turned to their effects:
    Then Alice Munro found she had become a celebrity being interviewed by established celebrities such as radio’s Betty Kennedy, television’s Elwood Glover and critic Robert Fulford. The Globe and Mail magazine discussed her; this month’s Saturday Night magazine analyzes her work.
    It’s not surprising that she says the last thing she wants is more publicity!
    Yet there is her growing readership and too many unanswered questions. People want to know in which magazines they will find her work. They ask why she writes and what she writes about, or how long she has lived in Victoria.
    With her award money, the writer reports that Munro “indulged in the luxury of renting a fisherman’s cottage on quiet Gabriola Island and has been spending some writing hours there. Currently she is taking a break from working part-time in her husband’s bookstore on Yates Street.” Even so, “Alice Munro says she leads a normal life.”
    Munro did rent an island cottage for a time, saying that she “had some things to work out” with her writing, although she recalls thinking that she did not get much done since she had her daughters with her. Less pressing, but implicit in Munro’s decision to go to Gabriola, two hours north of Victoria, was a growing sense of dissatisfaction with her marriage.
    Munro’s “normal life” was changing. She offered an anecdote that has become well known, involving her reply to the person taking the 1971 Census of Canada. She says that when asked her occupation she replied “writer” instead of “housewife” for the first time. It was an exhilarating idea to her. While this most certainly happened and provided a moment of revelation for Munro herself, the transformation it embodies – from a little-known writer whose work was valued by acoterie of literary types to public writer and celebrity – began with
Dance
and its Governor General’s Award. As she told Earle Toppings in a 1969 interview after the award, once she published her book and it garnered attention, she began receiving mail about her work for the first time. That had not happened when her stories were only in magazines. Munro found this to be “very encouraging and this is one of the best things” about publishing a book, to hear from readers and “to know that you’ve gotten through to somebody.” 31
    In this same interview, Toppings asks Munro about her connections with other writers since she lives out there on the west coast, so far away from Toronto, Canada’s cultural and publishing centre. She replies that she really is not connected to other writers and, anyway, “I never want to talk about writing much when I’m doing it.” While that was certainly so to this point in Munro’s career – Robert Weaver remained her primary literary connection, although now she had the people at Ryerson – all that also changed with
Dance
and the award. Through it, Munro had “gotten through” to readers, to be sure, but she