My tribute to Alice Munro

Of course I was thrilled to hear this morning that Canadian writer Alice Munro has just won the Nobel Prize for Literature. I, like many Canadian women, have long considered her one of the best writers of women's lives.

One way for me illustrate her importance to me, personally, is by saying that I can remember literally dozens of scenes, characters, and epiphanies from her stories. They've stayed with me, although I haven't read most of these stories for decades. And I've read an awful lot of stuff since then.

For example, I'll never forget when Rose traveled on the bus to Powell River for a tryst that never happened. Or when she engages in a ménage with a very cool married couple who grow into the kind of people who boast of their electric towel warmer. Then there were the twin brothers and the lonely spinster looking for love. And the woman who fell into a volcano while living her life large. I could go on...

The subtle sexual awakening of young girls has rarely been presented so well. One of my favourite Munro stories is "White Swans," from the collection Who Do You Think You Are? Using this story in one of my literature classes years ago, I found its apparent simplicity confused the younger students.

We discussed Rose's response to the man who sits down beside her on the train when she makes her first foray from home. She's been warned about white slavers hunting for girls just like her, but the man who befriends her says he's a priest. In her trust, she allows his wandering hand to explore where it shouldn't. Clearly--to me--anyway, Rose has an orgasm, symbolized by a flock of white swans suddenly taking to the air.

My students didn't want to read the story this way. I suppose it offended them, or something. But I wanted to defend my reading, and I actually considered writing to Munro to ask if in fact my reading was accurate. If she wrote back, and confirmed my interpretation, I could hold it up to my students and...

Of course I didn't write. And slowly I came to learn that my reading of a story was just my reading of a story. I couldn't force it onto my poor students. But I did encourage them to look for patterns within a story, and try to make something out of them. And when you add up the recurring images in "White Swans," you get a lot of sexy stuff. Too much to ignore, in fact. Look at this language: "a stranger's hand, root vegetables, humble kitchen tools, slippery and obliging, pulsating, glided, wipe intimate stains, frolicking lewdly, floated marvellously, wakened, exploding."

I rest my case.

Congratulations, Alice Munro. Your work has enriched the lives of thousands of readers. And helped at least one of us become a better teacher.

Serena Janes
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