Type a new keyword(s) and press Enter to search

The Life and Works of Alice Munro

 

Oh, the young people still narrate and judge - the sly schoolgirls, the intellectual young women, the self-important 30-something fathers cheating on their wives - but her repertoire has expanded to include scenes among the elderly that are so vivid they could be our own memories. She has such authority that she could write about the afterlife in the first person and we"d all believe her. (Shulman, 2001).
             From some of her first writings onward, Munro's stories seem in a sense larger than life and yet those who have some background about the author can absorb the fact that they do have an emotional connection to her no matter how thin or strong it may seem. Robert Lacy writes about Munro's first story, "Walker Brothers Cowboy," which is from one of her earliest collections saying, .
             Set during the Depression, it's a stark tale told from the point of view of a traveling salesman's daughter looking back on a day when their father took her and her little brother with him on his rounds. During the course of the day the father-salesman gets rebuffed repeatedly at the run-down farmhouses he calls on, then suffers the humiliation of having urine dumped at him from an upstairs window. In reaction, he flees to a farmhouse in another salesman's territory, where a heavyset woman named Nora lives with her blind mother. And there, during a brief social stay filled with reminiscence, longing, and a little bit of whiskey, the daughter gets a glimpse of a life her father might have led, and even of a mother she might have had. It's a powerful piece of work, made all the more remarkable by the fact that Munro accomplished it in just 12 pages. (1996) .
             This story is a good example of the point this paper is seeking to prove in that it is even set in.
             the period when Munro grew up.
             In one particular interview with D.J Bruckner, Munro herself expressed that her mother in particular kept popping up in many of her stories.


Essays Related to The Life and Works of Alice Munro