TVO - Thursday, May 23, 2024 - 08:00 p.m. (ET) - Segment #3

as a teenager, you can't categorize it as good or bad and so that's why I appreciate about that quote when I read it in your article, heather. >> Steve: this might explain katherine why there were other --efforts when the first book came out but there were efforts to ban these books when they first came out. Were they considered that subversive at the time? >> Katherine: I don't know, I wasn't aware that they were banned. But I was aware that they were opening a whole, a can of worms -they were new-and bring groundbreaking for so many reasons. Not just for herself, but what she was saying. And I think recently I begun to realize that as monroe had a very strong sense of herself, she was despite the problem with her mother and her limitations, she had absolutely no questions about who she was and she was courageous. And I know over my writing career as I wrote lots of short stories and began writing bigger more researched novels that you can move away from that courage and that ability to admit shame or things about one's self are going to engage the reader but am I going there? Or to enrage one's neighbour which she had the courage to do. It's easy to lose your courage over a writing career and she never did. >> Steve: let's look at a clip here shall we? Alice munro didn't just win the giller prize once, she won it twice which is just something. I guess this is the finest literary prize in our country today. First in 1998, sheldon if you would. >> Speaker: this is a wonderful moment. And I think it's a great moment for those of us who can't kick the habit of writing short stories. For all of you who are in that position as I am, I think this should be encouraging. >> Steve: minnekhada, do short story writers as opposed to novelists need encouragement? >> Menaka: you know they are of equal ways this seems to be more focus on the novel I think that's more of a commercial thing too. But something is so incredible about short stories. You get an entire world in a 30, 40, 60 pages. You really have to distill, you have to work hard to distill down what you're trying to say to that length of story. I mean, I think it's wonderful, some of us are growing up it was almost like short stories are a --and there is something really difficult and really wonderful about them. >> Steve: chanel, doug gibson I think was so successful with her because he says I'm never going to try and force you to become a novelist but you tell me, is it harder to write a good short story than a good novel because it's harder to say a lot in fewer words? That's what I hear, you tell me. >> Chanel: for me, I haven't written a novel yet. I'm in the process of trying to write a novel but I can respond to it's hard to write a short story because you are trying to get as previously said you're trying to get a whole life story into a very limited word count. And that's not easy and requires discipline. It requires being able to --getting into that short story form and it requires ensuring that there is every word online and he write carries the story forward. And it takes like as I mentioned, it takes a lot to do that and it's something I'm performed --perfecting and working on, and it's at lifetime learning experience to write a short story because the more you write and the more you learn about the form and I think monroe, she was a master. I don't know how she did because she wrote so many of them and they were all exquisite. And he left her stories knowing that these characters lines continued because they were nice never nicely wrapped up. And I think that is the difference between novel and short story for me is that satisfaction is that few word count before the longer form. >> Steve: heather, did she seem to you to be I don't know,

uncomfortable in the spotlight, did she prefer being out of the spotlight? >> Heather: oh, I have no idea. I really wanted to answer that short story question fire. >> Steve: way on that one then. >> Heather: I find for me a short story it is in a way harder even though that seems counterintuitive because I look at a short story is packing for a trip, you only can put essentials in and everything has to be... There has to be some reason for it. So then I love and feel so much easier when I'm in 8 novel because it's like a novel is more like a giant trunk that you are packing to go across and you throw everything in and all your back stories so you can go on and pages for the philosophy of cats and whatever. And I think monroe who fashioned her... Maybe it has to do with her sort of the way she kind of was humble and wanted to stay away from the public was because she lived... When she started writing she had so many children and wasn't able to publish until her late 30s so she always said that writing a short stories the only way she could because she did it in snatches of moment. So it was the moments that were precious for her that she was able to have these really exquisite as a chanel described them, stories. >> Steve: can I follow up with you on that because I think this is fair to say men don't get mad at me but women assume a disproportionate burden when it comes to the home life and certainly a woman of her generation would've found that to be the case. How did she be a wife, mother, and still managed to figure out how to write all of this great and is? >> Speaker: I think even now, there's an economic thing. You need more money if you want to set aside time to read a novel, I see heather nodding. But you can try to write a short stories about economic factor is still there. I think what happened with munro is that she did it between the irony. And did it in the laundry room and even in... She elected and I know because she gave me her telephone number, I don't know how she worked with people interrupting her, she told me when and when I couldn't phone her, it would take me something to phone her but I think maybe something about her being willing to be interrupted and to beat writing as she had that story short story in her head, she had that story in her head and she was crafting it and but she is a storyteller, not a short story teller writer when it comes to up if any, she captures of the process of telling the story, the storytelling process in which we all do it but at the same time, she would have this very grafted thing. Like how could she do that and I think her stories are actually closer to poetry then they are two novels because of how carefully there are like the japanese loading world, with spaces in between and you can focus so strongly on images on how she writes from a particular image and the characters specifically one character, she is our charlie chaplin, all characters are clans and as she leapfrog's over herself, but the stories are there and they go in and out of the consciousness of whatever the woman is, whether it's juliet or rose or whatever. And if they float. They float. You don't feel trapped in the stories and that's why when they are over you can start reading them again or you can go tell your own story. You feel so... It feels like you're participating in them all the time so they don't feel limiting at all. I'm sure people could say she's our check of the person who said that must have been more familiar with them than I am but maybe she's more like --like our charlie chaplin or something because when I had lunch with her she took me out for lunch to celebrate mothers and other clowns, she offered to take me out, she came to toronto and said, I could meet her at tall poppies which is across from the art gallery of ontario, it was a nice restaurant and when I arrived there, she said she arrived there the previous week because she got the date wrong. Anyways as you can imagine, I was very nervous meeting her for the first time and she kept saying over and over again how she was so glad that this was back in 1992?

but anyways, when my book came out and she said over and over again how glad she was that I treated her as a comic writer rather than a grim realist. And she did that in here on county. And I said, alice, do you think of yourself as a clown? And she says always, maggie. Always. And that's better understood now I think it was james wood who said when he viewed to much happiness, there are seeds of laughter sprinkled through and between the lines of every story and I think that's all her stories. There is this depending on how you respond, on your own intimate connection with her is working, you will find yourself laughing. But that potentiality is always there and from anything, I read a story called fiction, which I concluded must be about infant death because of the allusion before I knew it I was like reading the book and it was meant to be a tragic story let's go. >> Steve: around on this final question here, how many readers and writers will remember alice munro, chanel, start. >> Chanel: us off I think because her books transcend time and generations, and I've been rereading her stories almost once every other month, I think just because there's so much that you can get from her stories whenever you read it, readers will find themselves going back to those stories over and over again no matter what age they are. I think heather mentioned reading her when she was younger, it's the same thing with me, I'm going to be reading until I'm 100 years old. >> Steve: heather, how about you? >> Heather: as maggie was saying before, there's so many things we still had to talk about alice munro. Her humour and sexuality which are things women are not supposed to have an alice munro had them and in such a wonderful normandy and I think she will be recognized all over the world everywhere I travel whenever I mention that I'm from canada, one of the first things I hear is old, you're from alice munro's country. So she's out there, synonymous and all canadian writers find a platform in ways to be recognized in the world stage. >> Menaka: when I was in wing a for a short story this is where alice is from and in the downtown strip there's always little shops like you would expect in southern ontario small town but for the festival, everyone had put papers on the windows with their favourite quotes or different quotes from the book and walking down the street was such a magical experience because he just got little snippets of all these lines from the book and I think that's how people remember her. There's something that spoke to them from the story and they hold onto those little nuggets and I think that's what i. >> Steve: katherine. >> Katherine: I think alice belongs to the world now but we have to remember as canadians that we grew alice munro. Canadians money paid for those short stories that were brought on cbc anthology and even magazines like shanda lane. There was a broad canadian public that bought into this kind of feeling of this is what we are like right inside our country, this is what we do privately at our dinner tables and our family and so on. And I think you need to keep that sense as we become global and the sense that there is something at the core canadian essence in these stories. >> Steve: last word to maggie reddekopp. >> Magdalene: I'm going to be rereading her as she is remembered because she will be reread. Not everyone invites rereading but alice munro does. Every time you see more, you see different things. Because you're different. And with that I think people will remember her incredible compassion. She's like a beckett or shakespeare she's not like one of those writers who has their sharpness, every character, those nasty little girls, the plot, that murder in other girl, it's shakespearean. She's got an understanding of every character she writes about. She lets her self into those characters, it's the breath and depth of that but she will be remembered as I like merriam tate's comment on how she visited alice when alice was already moving into dementia and

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