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Alice Munro's Passive Voice

 Rachel Aviv wrote a wonderful piece in "The New Yorker" about Alice Munro. Among the revelations:


*Munro was raped. She didn't report the rape. She threatened her assailant with an idea for a short story about the incident--and I think the two never spoke again.
*After Munro sabotaged her own relationship with her daughter, she still collected stories about the daughter (via another family member). She would then insert herself into the stories and present them to her editor, Dan Menaker; in Munro's retelling, Munro herself would be (magically) at the kitchen table as her estranged grandchild performed his various tricks.
*When Munro's husband was outed in court, Munro made plans to live with a family friend. When she realized that the scandal would not become international news, she stayed with her husband. The planned matrimonial rupture had been just a face-saving effort--bread and a circus for the masses.

Thinking about Munro, I've returned to the story "Comfort." In this one, Nina, a former teacher, has a husband who is struggling with ALS. The two discuss euthanasia, but then the husband just kills himself in secret. He doesn't leave a note. The silence is the wound--it's the thing Nina has to live with. The story is just about coping with disappointment. Lewis was not the person Nina needed him to be. (With the theme of disappointment, Munro is echoing herself; around this same time, she published "Floating Bridge," which tells a similar story.)

Notice how Munro immediately detonates a small bomb; there is a scandal in Lewis's past, but Munro is going to make you work to uncover the details of the scandal. Also, Munro quickly introduces the idea of purity; it would be politically wise to avoid the high-school tennis courts, but we can't always be politically wise. (And we must enjoy tennis while our bodies still permit exercise.) Finally, the story encourages us to laugh at human folly; a friend supports Lewis in a work-related battle, but the friend is generally seen as excessively magnanimous and broad-minded, and a reputation for broad-mindedness can be a liability in certain settings.

Rachel Aviv describes familial ambivalence. In her report, various members of Munro's family are aware that Alice Munro is a monster, but they want to protect her, because they understand that her voice is among the treasures of twentieth-century literary history. Her authority is such that, if you're just walking around, you might occasionally think, "I myself am living in an Alice Munro story."

I empathize with Munro's children--I believe I have a similar reaction to Munro's work.







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