The New Yorker's James Wood pays splendid tribute to much-loved new literature Nobelist Alice Munro

With "The Bear Who Came Over the Mountain" update below



"At the level of the sentence, [Alice Munro's] stories proceed within the grammar of conventional realism; but at the formal level, her work invents its own grammar, which is why her stories strike many readers as closer to novellas than to any idea of 'the conventional well-made short story.' "

-- James Wood, in a newyorker.com blogpost,
"Alice Munro, Our Chekhov"

by Ken

I didn't think much about the news of the great Canadian short-story writer Alice Munro's being award the Nobel Prize in Literature, beyond thinking how spectacularly well-deserved it is -- and maybe thinking that honoring her brings more distinction to the Nobel people than vice versa. If ever there was a writer who successfully carved out a well-deserved niche in the literary pantheon, it's Alice Munro.

I also can't claim to be an encyclopedically knowledgeable fan. Over the years I've read a bunch of Munro's stories as they appeared in The New Yorker, and I don't remember one that wasn't a singular and transporting pleasure to read, and that didn't seem to me a major event.

Here, however, is the more comprehending and comprehensive reaction of James Wood, a New Yorker book critic, in a splendid newyorker.com blogpost, "Alice Munro, Our Chekhov":

The announcement that this year's Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Alice Munro probably strikes many readers and writers as deliriously incredible. Few contemporary writers are more admired, and with good reason. Everyone gets called "our Chekhov." All you have to do nowadays is write a few half-decent stories and you are "our Chekhov." But Alice Munro really is our Chekhov -- which is to say, the English language's Chekhov. (In Munro's great story, "The Beggar Maid," an ambitious man sees that a friend of the woman he is courting "mispronounced Metternich," and says indignantly to her: "How can you be friends with people like that?" I'm put in mind of Chekhov's story "The Russian Master," which has a character who repeatedly torments a young teacher by asking him why he has "never read Lessing.")

Yet many of Munro's readers had sadly concluded that she was not, somehow, the kind of writer that the Nobel committee seemed to like; I had decided that she would join the list of noble non-Nobelists, a distinguished category that includes Tolstoy, Nabokov, Borges, Hrabal, Sebald, Bernhard, Ingmar Bergman -- and Chekhov, as it happens.

We were wrong, and for once it was wonderful to be wrong.

I've become more and more comfortable with Wood as a critic, to the point where I guess I would have to style myself a fan. By now I've read enough of his work to know that his personal interests and enthusiasms aren't much like mine, but his sensibilities seem to work just fine for me.
Picking up where we left off above, Wood goes on: "Greatly enjoying being wrong, I spent an hour yesterday rereading one of Munro's finest stories, 'The Bear Came Over the Mountain,' which appeared in this magazine." For nonsubscribers, unfortunately, the link leads only to an abstract, but Wood provides a detailed enough synopsis to explain the points he proceeds to make about the story, though my suggestion, along the lines of a spoiler alert, would be that, by one means or another, you read the story first, to have the advantage of full, unspoiled surprisability -- and Munro is nothing if not a surpriser -- in the reading. One of her delights seems to be setting us readers up for utterly wrong expectations of where the story and the characters are headed.

That said, I don't think you'll want to miss Wood's discussion of the story, with regard to both beautiful details and large themes and technical accomplishments. "The Bear Came Over the Mountain," he notes, "is beautiful in the irony of its symmetries." But, he says, "two additional elements, both characteristic of Munro's careful art, make it a great story." Those elements are "Munro's astounding lack of sentimentality," which he particularizes extremely well, and ("the second very Munro-ish element") "the formal freedom of the story, which compacts a lot of life into a short space, and moves backwards and forwards over a great deal of terrain," which again is detailed in a strikingly illuminating way.

"Throughout her work," Wood concludes, "Munro is daring in this way --"

daring with the truth, and daring in her formal choices. At the level of the sentence, her stories proceed within the grammar of conventional realism; but at the formal level, her work invents its own grammar, which is why her stories strike many readers as closer to novellas than to any idea of "the conventional well-made short story." And notice, too, in that opening passage, how gently funny and slyly indirect Munro is: the impressive cardiologist who is subservient at home, happy to listen to "strange tirades with an absent-minded smile"; a household that is mysteriously full of different people, coming and going, all of them delivering "tirades" of one kind or another; and a household that is perhaps more fun to belong to than a sorority. Such life!

Over the years Munro has had her stories gathered in a now-long series of books. (Amazon has an Alice Munro page.) I assume the Nobel will produce a flurry of book sales, and perhaps also some recollecting of this large body of work. The attention is all deserved, and should richly reward those who are exploring more of her work as well as those who are coming new to it. As I suggeseted, I think her Nobel award reflects more honor on the award-givers than the prize bestows on the writer who produced all that work.

Still, it sure is nice to see her get the recognition.


UPDATE: NOW EVERYBODY CAN READ
"THE BEAR CAME OVER THE MOUNTAIN"

The story has been reprinted as the fiction piece in the October 21 issue of The New Yorker, with a conventional link. Now everyone can read the story and then read the Wood piece with its inevitable spoilers. Well done, New Yorker people!

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