TVO - Thursday, May 23, 2024 - 08:00 p.m. (ET) - Segment #2

>> Menaka: very similar story I encountered alice munro in university it seems to be a common thing. Second year of canadian literature class at u of t and it was a who do you think you are? Wheat ride and I was so struck by the writing just on the surface, it seemed kind of simple and all these things were happening, we were very drawn to it after that book of what we found more in her stories and I was writing short stories of my own at the time and a few years later, I and up winning an award from the --alice munro which takes place every year and it was an award for around missouri given out but the toronto's letters club and it was hitched to have that recognition to see your name alice munro's name it was such a thrill and it gave me a lot of encouragement to keep going and keep writing. >> Steve: here's marshall lederman from the globe and mail writing in her column last week, sheldon would you bring this graphic up. It's amazing how a story can stick with you, guide you, keep you company and your loneliness and lowest moments. That was missed monroe's talent nearly universally acknowledged. Professor reddekopp I want to become on that because this is not exciting adventures in new york city or the great capitals of europe. This is a woman who wrote about life in southwestern ontario. Why do you think that resonated so much with readers? >> Magdalene: because it was not just about southern ontario, alice munro's subject is really the human condition. She writes about what she knows so she writes about the people there and she writes about her own experience with her mother. But it's not really... It's not limited to that. She resonates for various reasons because of the emotional risks she takes. She takes... Its emotionally risky to read her stories and she takes these incredible risks but I think ultimately she resonates because there is a meme going around or people say how does she know that about me and some people are not saying that from southern ontario, they can recognize myself but how does she know that about me there's people like jim shedden or people like my email friends in europe who say how could you know that about me, it's kind of an intimacy and that is because her method is basically... It's a sort of cinematic style I saw a quotation by walter merch who is a famous editor and he described that mass cement --intimacy you aim for in film is quite close to what alice munro's stories do, it's like fragments of stories floating around, densely, elusive and there are all these gaps. It's like the story is unfinished. So as we would in a film we would project ourselves into that space and we think, oh, that's me and it reflects back to us. So the participatory process resonates not just in some ways I will go as far to say not to the fact that she writes about ontario, I'm from manitoba. The last letter I wrote her was a story called soon and I said I felt as if you wrote it for me and she said, yeah, I did. She that that kind of intimacy, it's not because I know her, I'm very glad I did but I think that is part of what she resonates so widely. I have friends, who's going to be watching this in portugal she said there's a whole areas of my life that I only understand because I read alice munro. >> Steve: that's why I took her class of 45 years ago. All that stuff are there. Janelle let's go to you, I'm sure what you have is a long literary career what do you think you take or learn of alice munro that you want to apply to yourself? >> Chanel: I think monroe is widely recognized as a master of short stories. Me personally, I just love the complex at the characters are and she inspired me too try complex characters in the same way she does I want my stories to be about the human experience as well so I tend to write about very ordinary moments in people's lives and in any point of my or stage of my craft, whatever I'm working on a fun myself in a book beside me

because there are moments where I need it's like my dictionary or bible, I will go to it whenever I need inspiration or feeling particularly not... The writing is not flowing. I mean, she's just a master of complex characters, it's one of things she does so well I will study the rest of my life to try and figure out how she did that and the emotional parts, we all touched on that just being able to write about the human condition in such a way that is very personal to everyone who's reading her. And being able to find yourself in her stories, I want to be able to find yourself in my stories and they read it so like I said she's my bible one night right. For the rest my life I think I will be using her stories because they are so relatable, for me. >> Steve: when you are writing to channel that? >> Menaka: I wouldn't say channel but there's certainly some any things that I try to figure out how she does that because on the surface it seems like she's doing something simple but so complex. I remember even going back to look through stories and as when did she change the time or written the future and out when did we go to the future and trying to go back and seeing how she did that transition and it's so subtle that as a reader you're not even noticing or jumping around like that but that's a really hard thing to do as a writer, to be able to convey these complexities and not have a reader being aware of that, just being so into the story that all they are focused on. >> Steve: heather I wonder when you write, are you reading her or when you are reading her, are you so focused on the technique and how she did this more so than the actual story? Did that happen? >> Heather: it depends. As a writer, I do look at what she does and how she kind of looked at crossroads in a woman's life where they made a decision that undoes everything and she puts like a magnifying glass on that and then she speeds up the time and then you see all the implications of that and it's just overwhelming. So that's just a technique and an allison monroe technique and, I mean, ... That is why she is so unique like nobody any loss can do that. She influenced me in the realm writing about young women and of the idea... I mean, I find that women's bodies it so incredibly beautiful and the weight she has these characters who seem so vulnerable, they are so feminine, they can at and women have so much strength. And when she presents to me a young woman character with all her tiny fingers, there something in that that has really entered my characters particularly when I write about them having sex. And what's also interesting now is her stories are so alive that when you approach them at different times of your life when I first encountered her when I was young and that sort of how her young characters were interacting really influenced me but last time I decided just like that I was going to reread all her books because I was ill and it was like then going into them as a middle aged women I was so overwhelmed because when I first read them I thought the older characters is of a different generation that doesn't happen to you, I will escape that, I thought I had more freedom than I had and then to read and understand how people did try to be a caretaker, how hard it was to fight as a woman on a daily basis for the same thing that alice munro's characters had to fight for. I was just weeping because it's my whole life story in a different way. >> Steve: heather mi a lot to say this you are not a middle aged woman yet. I'm allowed to say that, aren't i? If I middle-aged and I'm older than you, anyway we won't do the math here anymore. Katherine, tell me this. Can men read alice munro and derive as much from it as women? >> Katherine: great question, and listening to everyone and wondering that myself. I think that if they could, they'd be better off for it. They should. I think it would be wonderful if men had been kind of brought into the empowerment of women at the same time that women have been brought into the empowerment of women. You know what I mean? There's a big leg in that we had all these women generation ahead of me out to find their own

satisfaction and sex and so on. And I think certainly alice's personal history and my own... It was hard to find the men who bought into that and quite the same way. Or they may have the words for it but maybe not that deep understanding. So, yeah, I wish men did. I think there's a lot more allison monroe then her kind of completely... You know, bone deep feminism. She loves the environment of southern ontario. I'm reading them again, the bulrush, the lottery, about floating bridges or you can see the stars reflected at night. There's beautiful stuff in there. About place. I think that lasts. You're talking about will this last, will these stories lost? They can last and they can find a whole new ball dance possibly among men. >> Steve: let me follow-up I don't if you ever discussed with her in letters or corresponded on the issue whether she cared as much about whether men like her work as women? >> Speaker: that's a separate question but I think to go back to the first one I think she has tremendous numbers of male readers who do read her. So I think my husband does and quite a lot of my mail I probably have more male colleagues than female colleagues who are passionate about alice munro and scholars. So it's still a good question because her subject matter is so much of it is sexuality you could say judas said her subject is sex or not surrender of the woman to the man, but the surrender to the body. And I think that men can relate to that or it may be men can relate to it because they see something I don't know I wouldn't want to speak for them but theirs a little film of the juliet stories and they seem to have little to do with the juliet stories. That's his allison monroe, and I could go on there's so many men. Because we are only women here men could've come spoken passionately about it but this in a historical context where once upon a time, there was such a small cluster in canada. So we are still close enough to that to be graceful that now we have so many. But I don't know, it's not a question that's easy to answer. >> Steve: that's why we ask them. That's what we do here. One of those writers you are talking to is heather o'neill who wrote last week, sheldon if you would come of the graphic please. Monroe's principal characters can never be tamed. She sometimes regarded by those who don't actually engage with her work as a writer who documents the sweetness of small-town life. For them, monroe will always be a young lady who --but once you really dive into the world of alice munro, you realize there is no such thing as a well-behaved young lady, they're heads and hearts are filled with a wickedness that should make you weary of drinking any tea they serve you. They are mercurial, unpredictable creatures that can never be known by anyone but themselves. Haha. >> Speaker: they are wicked. But they are also plotters. They are... There's no nice young girls in these stories but many of them are plotting and plotting together and in one story they plot a murder. In a lot of cap stories so you are right it's nothing nice about that. >> Steve: you want to pick up on that heather? >> Heather: yeah, exactly as she was saying, the plot they want to refuse to believe that idea of who do think you are, in the plot they do strange things that are particular because they need to have their own life stories, they need to get away. Fire for freedom comes with sexual desire. Just knowing the body and the mind and the spirit. >> Speaker: what I love about that quote is I feel people who are not deeply engaged with monroe's story might --but in fact, I find that categorization it's complex just like any young girl we are all complex, I knew I was complex on

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