Alice Munro wrote about life, love, sex and secrets — revisit her 2004 conversation with Eleanor Wachtel
The acclaimed Canadian short story writer died on May 13, 2024
Alice Munro has won virtually every prize available to a Canadian short story writer: three Governor General's Literary Awards, the American National Book Critics Circle Award, two Scotiabank Giller Prizes, the PEN/Malamud Award, the Man Booker International Prize and, of course, the Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming the second Canadian, after Saul Bellows, to do so in 2013.
In 2004, Alice Munro was en route to winning her second Giller Prize for her short story collection Runaway when she sat down with Eleanor Wachtel. The two met at Bailey's Restaurant in Goderich, Ont., near Alice's home in Clinton, to discuss her life and career. This episode first aired in 2004, then again in 2016, to mark the occasion of Munro's 85th birthday.
The literary legend died on May 13, 2024 at the age of 92. To commemorate her stunning legacy, Writers & Company looks back at this memorable conversation.
On runaway characters
"They can look ahead and they can see what their whole life is going to be, and they run away from this. They wouldn't call it a prison, exactly. They run away from some kind or predictability, not just the things that will happen in their life, but the things that have happened in themselves.
That's the thing you find out about life, that on the road you take there are difficulties, there are problems and things you have to give up and things you'll miss.- Alice Munro
"I don't think most of my characters plan to do this. I think often people who run away are people who got into things most enthusiastically, and then they want more. They just demand more of life than what is happening in the moment. Sometimes this is a great mistake, as it's always a good deal different than you expect it. That's the thing you find out about life: that on the road you take there are difficulties, there are problems and things you have to give up and things you'll miss.
"Particularly women in my generation tended to do this because we had been married young, we had been married with a very settled idea of what life was supposed to be like. And we were in a hurry to get to that, that safe married spot. And then something happened to us when we were around 40 and all sorts of women decided that life had to have a new pattern.
"And I don't know if that will happen to women who are the next generation or the generation after that, because so many things happen to them before they're 40. Maybe enough has happened and they they pick a life and and go on with it. Without these rather girlish hopes of finding love, finding excitement."
Writing about sex
"I write about it with a great deal of interest, in trying to be as truthful as I can in a way, or to think about what people really go through and what they think and what they feel. I think every writer does that. It's just a main subject, and has been for a long time. Charlotte Brontë was writing about sex. I suppose Jane Austen was too. Where do you get a hero like Darcy unless you are writing about sex?"
Where do you get a hero like Darcy unless you are writing about sex?- Alice Munro
"I don't ever think about what kind of fiction I write, or what I'm writing about or what I'm trying to write about. When I talk to you now, I try to think about this. I try to come up with some some explanation, but when I'm writing, what I do is think about a story that I want to tell.
Big dreams of writing
"I still think of my life as really interesting. A great life for a writer and a great life. It gave me a lot of confidence because as a writer, because I was the only person I knew who tried to write when I was a teenager and and I didn't know anybody else who read as much. And so I thought that I was a really uniquely gifted person and I was only going to take until I was about 21 or 22 years old before the first novel would burst on the world. And so, if I'd been going to say, Jarvis Collegiate in Toronto, I might have had a very different idea of the competition.
'It never occurred to me, not to pursue my aspirations back then. Because at first, when I was about eight, I planned to be a movie star. And this, this continued for two or three years. And so then I sort of slipped into writing, a slightly downgrade because being a big movie star would be more wonderful. But no, I wanted to make up stories and I was making up stories in my head. And by the time I was about 11, I really thought that I had to write them down. That was what you did with stories. You didn't just let them fade, you wrote them.
That was what you did with stories. You didn't just let them fade, you wrote them.- Alice Munro
" And it really never occurred to me until much later when I was around 30, that I might not be able to do this. So the confidence lasted for a long time and then it just went with a big 'whoosh.'
"I was lucky. I've mentioned being beaten up at school but I always had enough to eat. I was taken to the doctor when I was sick and my mother got me into the town school so I didn't have to go to that school more than two years. a I was allowed to go to high school. Many people had to quit and get jobs.
"I think gifted people are sometimes quite selfish because it didn't occur to me that I should go and work in the glove factory or work in Stedman's store or do something like that in order to help my family.
"No, I was going to have this magical life — not magical life — I was going to do this thing that was so important."
Alice Munro's comments have been edited and condensed.
