More Munro

It’s such a pleasure to read a review or critical essay that instantly clarifies one’s own feelings about an author’s work. Cathleen Schine’s piece on Alice Munro (NYRB, January 10, 2013, unfortunately behind the paywall, so I won’t link to it here), for me, at least, absolutely nails several special aspects of Munro’s stories.  I’ve always loved Munro’s work, and have never been able to figure out what makes the experience of reading her stories so unique. 

‘What Munro has done with this distancing, what she does so powerfully in all her work, is not to withdraw us from her characters or her characters from us, but to create room around them: room for sympathy.  They are not always easy to sympathize with, either.  The inhabitants of Munro’s stories are troubled, peculiar, pinched, violent, prideful, ignorant, envious, meddling, superior – as imperfect as human beings get.  She does not hold back in revealing the wormy crawling activity beneath the rocks of small-town life, the disgust with anyone different or ambitious or literary or imaginative or, worse yet, all these and female, too.  But Munro, like some brisk clear wind, reveals the errors and evils and simultaneously blows away our own initially judgmental reaction.’

The piece covers several other aspects and is well worth reading carefully.

Hmm, looks like Ms. Schine has written some fiction of her own.  And criticism published in The New Yorker and NYRB.  Was married to the film critic David Denby.  Will have to look out for her.