“Sad with the sadness of life,” happy in its humour, aware of life’s ironies, knowing always that this life is “touchable and mysterious,” Alice Munro has written her lives and continues to write them in just the ways she always has done – as Anne Enright wrote in her review of Too Much Happiness. “There is always a starting point in reality,” Munro told Harry Boyle in August 1974. For her, reality is the life she has lived, the people she has known and, perhaps above all, the place she has felt:
Whichever road you take, on your way out of Jubilee, you will have to cross a bridge, narrow and high above the Wawanash River, and painted with silver paint that glimmers in the dark. If you are going west, towards Lake Huron, you will see that on the other side of the bridge there are several houses, a school, a grocery store and gas pump and a couple of buildings which look as if they may have been places of business at one time, but now are closed up and rented as living-quarters. The town itself does not extend this far; the last street light shines on the approach to the bridge, and on the place where the sidewalk changes to plain dirt path, bordered in the summertime by waist-high grass. The community across the bridge, which straggles out along some short, intersecting dirt roads, is not part of the town, nor of the country either; it is a place by itself, known as The Flats; this name it takes from the old fairgrounds, which is certainly the most interesting thing to be seen there, with its tumbled ruin of a grandstand and the handsome stone pillars at the gate, supporting a sign that says: TO THE F LLEN H ROES O JUBI EE. A sign like that, hanging boldly against the northern sky, with nothing on the other side of it but that grandstand, and a great field blooming with milkweed and showing some traces of a harness track – a sign like that has such superb irrelevance and finality about it that you do not bother supplying, in your mind, the letters that have fallen away.
What this is, apart from a fragment dating probably from the 1960s, is a description of one of the scenes Munro saw walking home from school from Grade 4 on – walking from Wingham to Lower Wingham, walking from town to home, out through Lower Town to the Laidlaw farm by the river. “Home.” Passing by the old fairgrounds now, there are in fact stone pillars that do support a sign, though it says “To the Fallen Heroes of Turnberry Twp.” and no letters are missing – there is no grandstand. “There is always a starting point in reality.”
A draft of “Everything Here Is Touchable and Mysterious” begins nearby, describing the river, and offers a confession:
I always call this river the Wawanash, when I write about [it] in stories. That is just because I like the name. There is no real Wawanash river, no Wawanash county. There are two townships, East and West Wawanash, in northern Huron County. The river’s name is really the Maitland. It rises at Flesherton and flows into Lake Huron at Goderich. West of Wingham it flows through what used to be, and maybe still is, called Lower Town (pronounced Loretown) and passed my father’s land and Cruikshank’s farm and loops up, in what is known as the Big Bend, before flowing south under Zetland bridge.
Some of this was in the published essay, but after the final phrase here Munro added “and that is the mile or so I know of it.” This mile or so along the river, like Munro’s recurring walk down “the Flats Road,” became the scene of remembering, in early stories like “Images” or more recently in “The Love of a Good Woman” or “Nettles.” Or as a point of comparison as Munro recalls first looking at Ettrick Water in “No Advantages” as she begins The View from Castle Rock, the family book in which she writes herself, her inheritances, her own lives. “This ordinary place” has been so much more than sufficient for Alice Munro: that mile or so along the Maitland has been a place where, truly, everything is touchable and mysterious. “Until she came along,” James Reaney once wrote of Munro, southwestern Ontario “had no voice – she gave it a voice and that has made such a difference. I don’t know what we’d have done without her.”1 Sad with the sadness of life, Alice Munro, writing her lives in Huron County, the home place that is hers alone. Our Alice Munro, writing on …
Acknowledgements
Though such things are hard to place exactly, this book probably had its beginning sometime in the 1970s. After graduating university in 1973, I took a year off to work, read, get married, and figure out what I was going to do next. One of the possibilities was to go to Canada for graduate school to study Canadian literature, so I began a subscription to the Tamarack Review. As it happened, the first piece in the first issue I received was Alice Munro’s “Material.” After reading it, I decided that if this is Canadian literature, sign me up. I signed, moving to the University of Waterloo where it was my excellent fortune to study with Stanley E. McMullin – I kept reading Munro and he encouraged me to write an M.A. thesis on her early stories and Dance of the Happy Shades. Though some in the English department thought it premature – Munro had just three books at the time – the project was approved and completed. By then I was hooked. Like Mr. Stanley on Cather in “Dulse,” “I read and reread” Munro “and my admiration grows. It simply grows.”1
I then went off to the University of Manitoba for a Ph.D. There I had more excellent fortune to become the late Evelyn J. Hinz’s first doctoral student and to work closely with John J. Teunissen – together, they modelled a scholarly teaching life for which I remain profoundly grateful. Though my work there was focused on other matters, I went from Manitoba during those years to give my first conference papers, one of which drew from my thesis on Munro. It eventually appeared in Probable Fictions. By then I had returned to the States to teach Canadian literature, and Munro’s fiction remained a primary, and continuing, critical focus.
Working on the annotated bibliography of Munro for ECW Press in 1983, I had occasion to meet Alice Munro to ask some related questions. After saying hello, she looked me straight in the eye and said, with a clarity that still rings, “I’m not dead yet.” I saw her for a day five years later when we both attended Trent University’s tribute to Margaret Laurence and once, in between, we talked on the phone about “Dulse” and Cather’s presence there. As a critic, I thought Munro should simply be left alone to write, so that’s what I did. I did not see her again until August 2001, by which time she had decided to cooperate with me on this book, “doing penance,” she wrote me in March 2000, “for all those literary biographies I have devoured.”
My first and foremost acknowledgement is to Alice Munro. While it has been clear to me throughout that she takes no relish in what she called in the same letter “being ‘biographied,’ ” she has been candid, precise, and helpful throughout – answering questions, wondering over lost memories, stewing a bit, and opening doors.2 As the references here show, our contacts have not been numerous – three long sessions each over two days and some phone calls – but they have been just what was needed. In no sense an “official” biography, Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives benefited enormously from its subject’s cooperation.
Once the idea was broached and the work begun, those to acknowledge and thank became legion. During the 1990s, when I was contemplating the possibility, Douglas Gibson was both discouraging and encouraging. That was just what was needed then, since while Munro was not yet prepared to cooperate it was clear, he wrote, that such a book as this would be called for eventually. When Munro decided to cooperate, Gibson made it happen, as did Michael Levine. I am grateful to them both and proud that this is a Douglas Gibson Book.
Since 1983, my career as a scholar-teacher has been effected by St. Lawrence University and by its Canadian Studies Program. There, a succession of deans, presidents, and faculty colleagues have supported my work on Munro. I am particularly grateful to Grant Cornwell and to Daniel Sullivan, whose imaginative leadership and initiative provided me with a research leave at a critical time. That leave was funded by the Lincolnshire Foundation, so I am equally grateful to Eric and Jane Molson. Early on, they saw this book as an important project and arranged the time and resources I needed to research and write it. Throughout, they have followed its
progress with interest and enthusiasm. I am deeply grateful for this, as well as for the Molsons’ support of Canadian Studies at St. Lawrence.
The author of any book that rests on archival research has many organizations and people to thank. The support of the Government of Canada has been critical to this project. Beginning in the late 1980s, through a Senior Fellowship and a succession of smaller grants, Foreign Affairs Canada has supported this work. Its Research Grant Program administered by the Canadian Embassy in Washington has funded my travel to the Alice Munro Fonds at the University of Calgary and to other archives. Speaking as someone long involved in Canadian Studies in the United States, I know without question that these programs have had significant effect on Canada-U.S. understanding.
My visits to the University of Calgary to read the Munro papers began in January 1988. I have been back several times since, including a semester-long stay as a visiting scholar at the Calgary Institute for the Humanities during fall 2003. People at the university have been uniformly welcoming and gracious. Particularly, Apollonia Lang Steele and Marlys Chevrefils of the Archives and Special Collections section have each been singular in their myriad assistances to this project. Every request and question, whether on-site or across the continent, has been attended promptly and with interest. Each of them has handed me a “Eureka!” more than once, so I am especially grateful to them for all their help, and to the University of Calgary for its Special Collection of Canadian Authors’ Papers. It is a singular place for scholarly work. For similar assistance at other archives, I am grateful to the staff of those institutions I have listed in the Select Bibliography. Of these, McMaster University should be singled out – its collection of papers from Canadian publishers is another key resource. Also, Kip Jackson of CBC Archives, along with his colleagues, guided my work there.
The research involved in discovering Munro’s ancestors led me, for the first time, into the world of genealogy. There I discovered many people with relevant information who were much more than happy to share it. Arlyn Montgomery of Belgrave, Ontario provided much information from her own work on the Laidlaw side of the family and sent photographs too. Eleanor Henderson, of Carleton Place, Ontario, did exactly the same for the Chamney side and also spent most of a glorious spring day giving me an extended tour of Scotch Corners. And as I gathered archival confirmations from Ottawa Valley newspapers, Ann MacPhail of Algonquin College helped in many ways, even transcribing almost illegible microfilm.
Although a blanket acknowledgement, I want to thank all those who agreed to talk to me (or in some cases, e-mail me), those whose interviews I cite here. A bit perversely, too, I thank those who refused to talk to me – their refusals occasioned considerable thinking about just what is involved in the writing of the biography of a living subject, thinking which doubtless helped this book. Among those who helped me, cited and not, I would like to mention a few people in particular. Helen Hoy, who has written some of the most important articles on Munro, generously shared her research into the making of Who Do You Think You Are?; without it, I would not have known some of the details of that story. Walter Martin, author of the first real critical book on Munro, was encouraging and provided necessary information about Robert Laidlaw. Catherine Ross told me about the writing of her own Munro biography and arranged for me to see the late Thomas Tausky’s excellent 1984 interview with Munro (for that, too, I thank Nancy Tausky). Ben Sonnenberg told me a great deal about how Munro was seen in New York in the early 1980s. In particular, Earle Toppings has been gracious, interested, and very helpful beyond his own memories of working with Munro. To my considerable regret, I never managed to speak to the late Harry J. Boyle about Munro, but I appreciate his daughter Patricia’s efforts to make that happen. I believe he did know just how important that interview was to Munro’s career.
Closer to my home, there are several others to acknowledge. At St. Lawrence, Joan Larsen, Head of Reference and Instructional Services at the Owen D. Young Library, helped this project in countless ways – she is a great friend and a “friendly librarian” indeed, as so many of us here know and appreciate. I hope this book meets the advice she gave me years ago. Then there is Nancy Alessi, Canadian Studies Program Assistant – she has helped this project in more ways than I can recount, and has done so precisely and with interest. Here too Bonnie Enslow undertook the work of transcribing hours and hours of interviews with diligence and interest. Graphic designer Ken Alger led me through the details of scanned photographs with precision and knowledge, teaching me a good deal as he produced the images that appear here.
Finally, there is Michael Peterman of Trent University, one of the trio to whom this book is dedicated. Since we met in the late 1970s, we have shared the details of the academic life and of Canadian writing continually – working on projects together, travelling to conferences, keeping up with what’s going on. Michael is in many ways the spiritual godfather to this project – he has known about it as long as anyone, has always been encouraging, and he read the whole thing straight through, hammering the prose and my assumptions at every turn. Thanks are not really enough.
Reviewing Joan Acocella’s Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism in the New York Review of Books, A.S. Byatt remarked that “biographical critics undo the artist’s work, and may kill the life of the art.” Throughout Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives, I have kept Byatt’s comment in mind and, probably more urgently, I have thought too about the exception Munro took to the “Toronto critic” who saw the house in the ground in “Images” as “symbolizing death, of course, and burial.” “What you write is an offering,” she conceded in the same essay, “anybody can come and take what they like from it.” This offering has consciously avoided discussion of Munro criticism, a subject that was a particular interest of mine in the 1990s. Now it is better to get at the biographical facts and individual interpretations of Munro’s career and her writing’s progress – as revealed by archival holdings and published sources – than to belabour interpretation. That, doubtless, will continue unimpeded. I hope, though, in closing this biography, that I have not too much displayed what Janet Malcolm recently enumerated as a “crucial biographer’s trait: the arrogant desire to impose a narrative on the stray bits and pieces of a life that wash up on the shores of biographical research.” I may have – that is for others to judge – but if so it has been in ongoing fascination over the trajectory and utter artistry of Alice Munro’s life and career. When she talked to Peter Gzowski on Morningside in October 1982 about The Moons of Jupiter – “I worry the story” – Munro also remarked that she hoped she would still be writing, and wanting to write, twenty years from now. More than twenty years, now, in fact. As she wrote in “Material,” my very first Munro story, this fact is most emphatically “A fine and lucky benevolence.”3
R.T.
Canton, New York
June 6, 2005
A Note on the Revised Edition:
In preparing this updated edition, I have added a chapter, revised the epilogue, updated the select bibliography, and revised the index. There are also some silent corrections of small errors and omissions in the first edition. By way of acknowledgement, I thank Alice Munro once more: she has met with me and responded to my various entreaties, as always, graciously and thoughtfully. Her “literary triumvirate” – Virginia Barber, Ann Close, and (especially) Douglas Gibson – has helped these revisions in numerous ways. I wish also to acknowledge Deborah Treisman particularly. She has been prompt and proficient, both for the first edition and for this revision. Others, cited here, have been equally generous with their time and interests. Keeping up with Alice Munro as she continues to write on is both an adventure and a joy and, speaking as one is still doing so, I remain profoundly grateful for the chance.
R.T.
Canton, New York
December 7, 2010
A Note on the Sources
All citations from Alice Munro’s fiction are from the first Canadian book publication unless otherw
ise indicated; book titles are abbreviated. Except for some newspaper articles from the Wingham Advance-Times and other newspapers, references to print materials refer to the items in the Select Bibliography. Single-page items are listed in the Select Bibliography only. Authors and titles of book reviews are listed here only when page references for quotations are needed; otherwise, the citations are in the Select Bibliography. Interviews with Alice Munro are mine unless another interviewer is named. Interviews listed as “Interview [name]” refer to my own interviews with others. Regarding archival sources, those items followed by a number alone are in the Alice Munro Fonds, Special Collections, University of Calgary. All others, including other collections held at the University of Calgary, are cited with details specific to the archive or owner. In most cases, a box number is followed by a file number. Alice Munro is abbreviated AM throughout. So too Virginia Barber, VB; Ann Close, AC; Douglas M. Gibson, DG; Charles McGrath, CM; John Metcalf, JM; and Robert Weaver, RW. M&S is used here to identify location of papers in the files of McClelland & Stewart. NYPL indicates New Yorker files at the New York Public Library.
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