Alice Munro

by Robert Thacker

  The inclination today is to take Munro’s connection to the New Yorker as an inevitable component of her career. Perhaps it was. But her inclusion in the magazine’s august stable was the result of several factors: the quality of her work, Virginia Barber’s abilities, good timing, and a bit of luck. She had been submitting stories herself to the New Yorker since at least the late 1950s – Jim Munro recalls that they were convinced the magazine must have had a special mailing point near the west coast, so quickly did stories come back. Alice herself recalls New Yorker rejection slips, sometimes with handwritten comments. And in August 1973 when Kiil was trying to place Munro’s stories from Dance and those forthcoming in Something, the New Yorker was the first magazine he mentioned. Yet Munro had no success there until she placed her work in Virginia “Ginger” Barber’s hands.

  By early October 1976, their agreement confirmed, Barber wrote then that “of course I want to see some stories. Send them as soon as you can. I’ll read them, send them out, and share my thoughts briefly with you. Then you can say whether or not you’d like to hear more than the brief comments. Never mind about the typing.” Moving past business, she continued, “Share or spare the domestic life, as you will. But if you have any whimsically ironic comments, send them – they’re the get-through-the-day boost that I like.” Two weeks later, Barber wrote again. Not yet having any new stories to consider, she worked in a different direction. She was trying to understand the nature and scope of Munro’s past book contracts and wanted to contact Marilyn Gray, the person who handled rights at McGraw-Hill Ryerson. Her hope was to get access to the rights to Munro’s past work so she could resell them; she wanted “to absorb the facts and figures from your past contracts so that I’ll have done my homework when the future project comes into my present.”

  On November 1, a Monday, Barber reported that “the stories arrived, finally” the previous Thursday and that she “carried them home like a treasure, which they are” to read over the weekend. She had already submitted four of the seven stories to the New Yorker – “Honeyman’s Granddaughter” (later titled “Privilege”), “Providence,” “Royal Beatings,” and “Spelling.” Barber was planning to send “some of the others” to Lisel Eisenheimer at McCall’s the next day. Beyond the stories, she also told Munro that she had just met, in New York, with John Savage and Robin Brass from McGraw-Hill Ryerson. They brought “the contracts and other relevant information. We had a good talk.” Barber concluded this letter by offering an indicative hope that proved prescient: “I’m delighted to have the stories, Alice, and I hope this is the real beginning of a fine working relationship. I’m already waving banners for you down here, and that means you can roll your eyes heavenward in mild protest but no more. You also don’t have to look. I feel you’ve turned me loose at last, and I’m ever so ready to go! Write well, enjoy, and I’ll be sending these stories to all decent magazines.”

  Barber’s timing with the New Yorker, the first among these magazines, proved excellent. She approached Charles McGrath, a new fiction editor there, and submitted Munro’s stories to him over lunch. At the time, the two did not know each other. McGrath was one of two young editors – the other was Daniel Menaker – who had joined the fiction department earlier that same year as a result of the forced retirements of Robert Henderson and William Maxwell. Both McGrath and Menaker had graduated from university in the 1960s and, after some graduate work, had each joined the magazine in entry-level editorial positions, Menaker as a fact-checker in 1969 and McGrath as a copy editor in 1973. When the retirements were looming, each spent a period of time apprenticing with Maxwell, sitting at a desk opposite his in order to learn just what a fiction editor did.16

  At the New Yorker it is customary to speak of “the fiction department,” an entity made up of a head editor and several other editors. When Munro’s stories came in, the New Yorker was still being edited by its second and longest-serving editor, William Shawn. He had been with the magazine since 1933 and had been editor since 1952, when he took over after the death of its founding editor, Harold W. Ross. A native of Colorado, a reporter, and a veteran who had edited Stars and Stripes as a private in France during the war, Ross founded the New Yorker in 1925 with the financial backing of Raoul Fleischmann, whose family made its money in baking. It sought an audience that was both urban and urbane. Almost weekly for over eighty years now, the New Yorker has published as broad a range of comment, humour, essays, politics, analysis, cartoons, fiction, poetry, oddities, and silly pieces as might be imagined. While fiction was not of particular moment during the magazine’s early years, it rose to prominence under Katherine White and expanded further under Shawn’s editorship. By the time Munro was submitting stories to the New Yorker the size of its “slush pile” was famous, and there was no doubt that the magazine was regarded as the leading venue for short fiction in the United States.17

  When McGrath and Menaker were brought in, the fiction department was headed by Roger Angell; the other editors were Frances Kiernan, Rachel MacKenzie, and Derrick Morgan. There were also young people whose job it was to sift through the slush pile and forward stories with potential to one of the editors. The department operated by consensus. Each editor would read those stories that came directly to them and then write an opinion of the piece – strengths, weaknesses, needed revisions, and a conclusion whether to buy it or not. Through this process a decision gradually emerged, although most of the time one or another editor was on the other side of the decision. Stories recommended for purchase were sent on to Shawn, who had the final say. According to McGrath, Shawn was a very good reader of fiction, though by no means expert. He had suggestions of his own, but he usually went along with the department’s recommendation. The head of the fiction department – which McGrath was for many years after Angell – managed the paper flow and had a larger vote in the group discussions.

  When Barber invited “Chip” McGrath to lunch at the University Club on Fifth Avenue, he knew she wanted something. At the time, it was unusual for short story writers to have agents and, as McGrath knew, Shawn was leery of agents, preferring to deal with authors directly. Still, as new fiction editors at the New Yorker, McGrath and Menaker were eager to find new writers for its pages. As McGrath recalled, “I felt that was my mission in life at that point.” Barber came to lunch with Phyllis Seidel, a friend, and at the end of it she told McGrath that she had “this Canadian writer that I think is great, and gave [him] a bunch of stories in an envelope.” “To be honest,” he recalled, “I had no expectations. I went back and read them and the rest is history.”

  Yet it was not quite that simple. McGrath and Menaker were completely enthusiastic about the four Munro stories they had read. Their older colleagues in the department were also impressed. Weighing one story against another, it became clear that of the four the group was most interested in “Royal Beatings.” That story incorporates three vignettes from “Places at Home” including this schoolyard rhyme:

  Two Vancouvers fried in snot!

  Two pickled arseholes in a knot!

  McGrath recalls that the very things he and Menaker liked about Munro’s writing – such as this rhyme – “made it a slight bit of a hurdle to get it into the magazine.” Part of the problem was the magazine’s “Naughty Words Policy.” It was real enough: William Shawn did insist that coarse language had no place in the New Yorker. Reconsidering this in 2003, McGrath felt that it was “roughness” that most bothered Shawn, “the violence, the intensity of emotion, the rawness of the setting and of what people do.” “Shawn had probably never seen [this] before in fiction of this quality and I think he was a little nonplussed.” These same issues, again, were “the very things that recommended the story to those of us who were younger. We thought this was great.”

  By November 17 McGrath had informed Barber that the magazine would buy “Royal Beatings” but he returned the other stories to her. He also told her about the excitement that Munro’s stories had occasioned among its readers a
t the New Yorker, for Barber added a postscript to a letter to Munro: “Chip says, judging by the excitement, that he’s sure you’re going to be one of the New Yorker’s authors – they want to see all your new stories. So far, it’s a rainbow. We shall see if there’s a treasure at its end.” The next day McGrath wrote Munro directly for the first time:

  Your story “Royal Beatings” has occasioned as much excitement around here as any story I can remember. It’s an extraordinary, original piece of writing, and we very much want to publish it. Everyone who has read it has been moved by the story’s intelligence and sensitivity, and has marveled at its emotional range.

  In this, his first letter to Munro as her New Yorker editor, McGrath was at pains to explain the magazine’s editorial procedures. “What I propose to do – with your permission, of course – is to undertake some preliminary editing.” This would involve points where alternative expressions might be used and others where additional information would be helpful. “One of the story’s strengths is the way it moves so easily back and forth in time – in fact, it seems to work as memory works – but, even so, I think there are a few places where events tend to run together.” The “only possible difficulty” he foresaw was that “Mr. Shawn, the editor-in-chief – who, by the way, likes ‘Royal Beatings’ a great deal – has questioned, on the ground of ‘earthiness,’ both the paragraph on toilet noises on page 3 and the rhyme about pickled arseholes.” For his part, McGrath did not think “the toilet-noise passage is absolutely essential to the story” but conceded that the “pickled arsehole” rhyme might be. He says he is prepared to argue her case with Shawn, “though I can’t guarantee that I will win. I do think we can reach some compromise, however, and troublesome as it may be, I hope you will try to understand our position in this regard.”

  In closing, McGrath details the various steps on the way to publication, including payment once the story is set in type. The New Yorker pays on a word rate, so the author cannot be paid until a story is set in type and the word count is established: “We never pay less than a thousand dollars, though, and my guess is that ‘Royal Beatings’ would bring at least two and probably three times that much.” After encouraging Munro to call him (“collect, of course”) to let him “know whether or not to go ahead,” he concluded that “Royal Beatings” is a rare and wonderful piece of work, and “we will be honored if you will let us publish it.” For her part, Munro says that she had never heard of Shawn and thought that people in New York might be making him up. Such a view is not far-fetched: despite his long association with the magazine, Shawn’s name had never been published in its pages to that point.18

  “Royal Beatings” appeared in the March 14, 1977, issue of the New Yorker. McGrath lost the battle about bathroom noises (Munro reinstated the paragraph in Who) but he “was able to win the point about ‘arsehole.’ ” By that time the magazine had bought another story, “The Beggar Maid,” and had considered eight more, ten if one counts revisions of “Pleistocene” and “Spelling.” Barber now feels that it took her too long to learn not to send the New Yorker Munro’s stories in groups. While Munro has for many years written in spurts and sent her stories in clusters, the act of submitting more than one at a time seemed reasonable at first. However, editors naturally enough pitted the stories against one another, choosing what seemed to them the strongest one. Given its status and the many submissions it received, the New Yorker’s editors could afford to be choosy. There was also the matter of the magazine’s appetite: under Shawn it published upwards of a hundred stories annually.

  Yet while they rejected far more of Munro’s stories in the first years than they took, McGrath and his colleagues knew that in Munro they had a real find. Rejections were always tempered by compliments and encouragements. Sending “Mischief” back to Barber, McGrath wrote that they hoped to see another story soon since “we value Alice Munro’s writing very highly here: one editor [Daniel Menaker] has said, ‘I am somewhat crazed with admiration for these stories.’ ” Menaker’s unabashed enthusiasm for Munro’s stories was evident from the first. Closing his December 21 letter to Barber, McGrath wrote, “I hope this is just the beginning of a long relationship between Alice Munro and The New Yorker, and I thank you for helping to make it possible.”19

  Throughout 1977 Barber and her assistant, Mary Evans, continued to stoke the flames of Munro’s growing reputation in New York. A real buzz was developing, and they worked to keep it buzzing even louder. Just as she promised Munro, she sorted through Munro’s previous book contracts and prepared for the next negotiation, familiarizing herself with Canadian publishers and scouting possibilities among U.S. houses, looking for the right in-house editor for Munro’s next book.

  Kate Medina, a senior editor at Doubleday, had heard of Munro from Clark Blaise. She called McGrath, who referred her to Barber. She wanted to borrow a copy of Lives and to see copies of Munro’s manuscript stories. Barber reported this to Munro and commented, “I’m not at all concerned about finding you a publisher here, for I think we’ll be able to pick and choose.” When Medina returned the book to Barber, she began her letter by writing, “I have fallen in love with Alice Munro,” expressing her unwillingness to give up the book – “it’s the sort of book one wants to keep handy.” Medina was keen on bringing Munro to Doubleday, promising to “lobby zealously for her work here.” The making of such connections would continue into 1978, when most of the stories to be included in the next book had been sold to magazines.

  As most of those stories were turned down by the New Yorker during 1977, Barber and Evans, whose primary responsibility was serial placement, sent them to other magazines. They began with other commercial publications in New York before trying Canadian magazines or literary quarterlies. In February, when the New Yorker rejected “Mischief” “very reluctantly,” Barber sent it to Gordon Lish at Esquire. Lish wrote a long letter to Evans detailing his response and wondering whether Munro would be willing to address his concerns. She did revise the story, but he did not take it, backing off once he saw “The Beggar Maid” in the June 27 issue of the New Yorker. It was bought by Viva for its April 1978 issue. Redbook took “Providence” for August 1977 and then had “Half a Grapefruit” under consideration. Its fiction editor, Anne Mollegen Smith, wrote Barber asking for revisions. Munro made them, and it was published in May 1978. As such instances suggest, Barber’s agency was energetic and persistent. At one point in summer 1977 she mentions that she has tried “Spelling” at ten magazines, “including Mother Jones where the fiction editor is a client of mine.” After the New Yorker, “Wild Swans” went to McCall’s and Cosmopolitan before being bought by Toronto Life, which had also taken “Accident.” Ms. bought “The Honeyman’s Granddaughter,” also known and published in the Tamarack Review as “Privilege.” Of the stories in Who, only one had not been previously published in a serial.20

  When she wrote to Munro reporting on Gordon Lish’s decision to reject the revision of “Mischief” after reading “The Beggar Maid,” which he thought a much better story, Barber wryly observed that we “think the seductiveness of the New Yorker’s printed page has temporarily deranged editors. We find Mischief a very strong story indeed and will continue to knock at every conceivable door.” Barber’s comment here – though admittedly written by an agent who was still in the process of winning her author’s confidence in her own abilities – captures the key qualities of her stewardship throughout her work with Munro: her reaction is wry, humorous; her determination is dogged; and her faith in the quality of Munro’s writing unwavering. Munro had found an agent who did indeed “wave banners” for her throughout the publishing world.

  The reason for such rising interest throughout literary New York was, as McGrath and Menaker saw, the strong qualities in Munro’s stories that set her work apart. The spirit of the reaction it caused throughout New York during 1977 was captured by Alice Quinn, who in the future became Munro’s third editor at the New Yorker. Then an editor at Knopf, Quinn wrot
e to Barber expressing her pleasure (and Knopf’s implicit interest) in “The Beggar Maid” on its publication in the magazine: “Some stories are wonderful stories and other stories are wonderful and also read like the truth. It certainly is a provocative piece of writing.” There really was a Munro buzz in New York. Despite numerous rejections of her stories, the New Yorker was feeling the buzz too. In December 1977 they sent Munro a “first-reading agreement” for 1978. Shortly thereafter, they bought “The Moons of Jupiter,” their third Munro story. Munro has had the same agreement with the magazine ever since.21

  Sending this agreement to Munro for her signature, Barber wrote that this “is very, very good news … which I decided to keep to myself until I was certain of its reality.” These agreements, which reflected what Barber called the New Yorker’s “amusing hauteur,” were offered, in McGrath’s words, “to a very few writers whose work we especially admire, and the general idea is that in return for your giving us a first look at your stories we will pay you a higher rate for those stories we do take.” Under these terms, if a writer sold four stories within a twelvemonth period, she received an additional 20 per cent for all four stories; should she sell six, an additional 15 per cent for all six, or a total 35 per cent bonus. At the time, as McGrath said when he first wrote Munro regarding “Royal Beatings,” the New Yorker’s word rate worked out to a payment of between two and three thousand dollars, so the advantage of this arrangement to Munro was clear. By contrast, during 1977 Munro received in the range of fifteen hundred dollars from other U.S. magazines buying stories the New Yorker had declined.