Legitimate Literary Styles

I've never been much of a fan of Alice Munro's fiction, but Lydia Millett's review of Munro's latest book questions her status among contemporary readers (which is very high indeed) for all the wrong reasons. According to Millett:

As the Grande Dame of Canadian realism, Munro is widely and rightly admired, both nationally and internationally, for the care of her craft, the economy of her sentences and the dignified reserve of her characterizations. . .

And of course, it is realism that reigns supreme, in Canada and the United States, though probably not in Europe, as the most popular and legitimate literary style. And yet -- and yet -- given that what Munro does, she does with immaculate precision -- why always, with such a richness of skill, this insistent choice on the purely personal, the proximate world of the self and its near relations? In the cosmology of this world, the personal, social world, the individual is seen delicately negotiating a balance with friends and family: Her journey is the steady sun around which all planets revolve.

Surely the vast universe beyond the minutely personal is also of some little interest. There is, of course, often a backdrop. Munro, for instance, loves the land, loves her region within it, and comes to the land in her prose with knowledge, deliberation and devotion. Still, the land is a setting primarily for a specific subset of us, for the foibles and discoveries and preoccupations of the social self. And in the broader, dominant literary culture of realistic and personal fictions, a culture where Munro tends to lead and others to follow, the land often drops away entirely in favour of a massive foreground of people with problems.

These problems are rarely starvation or war; they tend to be adultery or career disappointment, say, which leaves us with a literary culture whose preoccupation is not meaning or beauty, not right or wrong, not our philosophies or propensity for atrocities or corrupt churches and governments, but rather our sex lives, our social mistakes, our neighbourhood failures and sibling rivalries. . . .

Myself, I'm more likely to avoid reading Munro for those characteristics of her work Millett praises: "for the care of her craft, the economy of her sentences and the dignified reserve of her characterizations." Munro is a writer of highly conventional, carefully "crafted" stories (crafted according to the standards established by reigning orthodoxies in both creative writing programs and middlebrow book reviewing) whose "economy" and "dignified reserve" seem borrowed wholesale from previous writers, making her perhaps a competent artisan but not an artist. It's not so much that she's a realist--realism can come in other varieties than the bland and predictable--but that if I want to read "Chekhovian" fiction I'll read Chekhov.

However, that she doesn't write about "starvation or war" is entirely to her credit. I'm glad she writes about "the proximate world of the self and its near relations," because this is what presumably provokes her to write in the first place. Perhaps one day I will read a Munro story "about the foibles and discoveries and preoccupations of the social self" that rises to the level of great art, that shows me how this subject can be the catalyst for creating fiction of sufficient "beauty" and aesthetic depth that its putative subject becomes irrelevant--indeed, a story in which only that subject could have inspired the author to plumb such depths. I haven't read that story yet, but I'm pretty sure that if I do come to see the merit in Alice Munro's fiction it won't be because I've stumbled upon a story about "corrupt churches and governments."

I assume that Lydia Millett takes herself to be a writer capable of conveying "meaning," of discerning "right and wrong," of analyzing "our philosophies or propensity for atrocities," but I'm not sure where she's acquired this wisdom and these talents, and in general I'm not going to turn to novels for insight into these issues. (That Millett's own most recent novel Oh Pure and Radiant Heart could be described as about "nuclear disarmament" was enough to make me stay away from it.) I also assume that Alice Munro has never considered herself qualified to pronounce on such subjects, and that she considers it the fiction writer's job to stick to the mundane realities of individual lives ("people with problems"). This approach in itself does not guarantee the result will be aesthetically accomplished work (although it may gain a certain amount of admiration for the subtleties of "craft" involved), but it stands a better chance of keeping the aesthetic in sight as a desirable goal than the attempt to grapple with war and famine, or the "environment" as an abstract concept.

Comments

[Niall]

"but it stands a better chance of keeping the aesthetic in sight as a desirable goal than the attempt to grapple with war and famine, or the "environment" as an abstract concept."

Why?

I mean, yes, assuming that Munro's imagination is exercised by the intimate, personal subjects she writes about, then continuing to write about those is more likely to lead her into producing great art than falsely raising her gaze and trying to address other subjects. (I think it's fairly unlikely she's writing about them because she's decided "that's the writer's job"; I would hope she's writing about what speaks to her.) But you seem to be suggesting those intimate, personal subjects are *inherently* more likely to lead to great art than what we might call social subjects, which seems a little strange.

Perhaps it's a matter of perception. Maybe I would read a novel like, oh, The King's Last Song by Geoff Ryman, and feel that it's a great book because of the way it investigates the past and present of Cambodia, because of the portrait it paints of that society; and maybe you would read the same novel and argue that it's a great book (if you thought it was) because of the richness of the portrayal of a character like Map, and the vividness of his specific experiences.

But that doesn't seem to cover it either. You say you're not usually going to turn to fiction for insight into "these questions"; why not? If you assume that a writer is not going to be able to offer you a perspective you haven't considered yourself, well, that's somewhat hubristic; and if you assume that a writer is not going to have "acquired such insight", well, that's somewhat patronising. More to the point, I see no particular reason why a writer will be more likely to offer me insight into a personal experience than into a broader moral or social question. I don't expect any writer to offer *answers* in either case, after all; but they should be able to ask provocative questions.

You also speak of "fiction of sufficient "beauty" and aesthetic depth that its putative subject becomes irrelevant", but then immediately contradict yourself by suggesting that an example would be "a story in which only that subject could have inspired the author to plumb such depths." The putative subject in such cases isn't irrelevant, surely, it's essential, in that if the subject were anything else then the story wouldn't work. I agree that that's a fair definition of a great story, but I would cheerfully put Primo Levi's "Carbon" into that category -- an extraodinary piece, yet utterly removed from the personal.

[Dan Green]

"I see no particular reason why a writer will be more likely to offer me insight into a personal experience than into a broader moral or social question."

But I'm not asking fiction writers to provide me with "insight" about any of these things. Why should their insights be more insightful than anyone else's? I'm asking fiction writers to provide me with an aesthetic experience, to create art.

[Niall]

I find it had to conceive of the aesthetic experience of literature in terms that do not hold communication central. It could be communication of an experience, an idea, an image, something else, but writing is, at heart, about communication, and brilliant writers are, by definition, brilliant communicators.

So, as I said, while I don't think writers are more likely than anyone else to have the answers (dependent on their personal background and their subject, of course), to me they should be much more likely to be able to frame the questions in ways that provoke thought. That framing, that engagement of my mind, is what I think of when I think of a story that could only have been inspired by the subject it actually was inspired by.

Whether or not you agree with any of that is somewhat by-the-by, though. I happily accept that there are particular subjects that are more likely than others to give *you* the aesthetic experience *you're* looking for; similarly, different writers will find different subjects most fruitful. But if we're talking about the creation of art in abstract terms, I still don't see any reason why the use of any particular subjects should be more or less likely to meet with aesthetic success.

[Jonathan Mayhew]

No. Art is not primarily about "communication." Not even verbal art. It can't help but involving some degree comunication, but that is not its principal function. If you want to communicate pick up the phone and call someone.

[Richard Nash]

It strikes me an awfully self-defeating view of the world, Dan, be it a microsmic or macrocosmic one, to eschew reading a book (Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, which as you know I published) because it "could be described" as being about nuclear disarmament. A great many novels could be described as being about X, but it might be better to read them before concluding, as you seem to, that because it could be X, it is X...a great many fine critics in fact believed it was far more than just about nuclear disarmament.

[Christopher Sorrentino]

To chime in a second, Dan: I'm no Munro fan either, particularly, but as far as her own fiction is concerned I think you're selling Lydia Millett very, very short.

[Niall]

"It can't help but involving some degree comunication, but that is not its principal function."

I never said that it was, Jonathan. I said that communication is, for me, *central* to the aesthetic experience that literature creates. Different concept.

[DW]

How much Munro have you read?

[Kate S.]

I'm astonished to hear Munro described as "a writer of highly conventional, carefully 'crafted' stories (crafted according to the standards established by reigning orthodoxies in both creative writing programs and middlebrow book reviewing)." It seems to me that while her stories are conventional in subject matter, they are not conventional in form, at least not the ones that have been published in the last twenty years or so. Though they may well be carefully crafted, they don't read to me as carefully crafted. They almost always strike me as great tangled messes of stories that ought not to work, but somehow they do and often brilliantly. I can never quite figure out how she pulls it off. She seems to me to have a style all her own that does not lend itself to duplication. I just can't see her work as fodder for creative writing program orthodoxies. I read an interview with Munro not long ago in which she described her writing process as being largely intuitive. This made sense to me because I think if she tried to logic it all out in advance she wouldn't even attempt the things she attempts. But she does, and it works for me as a reader, so I'm glad for it. I haven't read the new book yet but it sounds to me as if it may be her most formally inventive yet and I'm looking forward to checking it out.

[Dan Green]

I based my decision not to read Oh Pure and Radiant Heart on the reviews I did read (along with my previous unsuccessful attempt to finish Everyone's Pretty), the collective upshot of which (in my reading) was that it was indeed about nuclear disarmament. (Washington Post: "Taken in and cared for by a disaffected librarian named Ann and her skeptical husband, Ben, the three scientists soon realize that nothing but complete worldwide disarmament will prevent Armageddon." Publishers Weekly: "Subsequent trips to Los Alamos and (with the help of a rich UFOlogist) Japan to view the monuments at Hiroshima persuade the three to work for disarmament.")

[DW.]

> Munro is a writer of highly conventional, carefully "crafted" stories (crafted according to the standards established by reigning orthodoxies in both creative writing programs and middlebrow book reviewing)

Again, how much Munro have you read? Because I have to say, Kate S's take seems more accurate to me.

[Richard Nash]

Dan, that's called a plot device. Selectively quoting from two reviews pretty much demonstrates that you are being unusually narrow-minded. Read Jennifer Reese's review in Entertainment Weekly, read the cover review by Donna Seaman in the Chicago Tribune, or read the cover review on the Toronto Globe & Mail, but don't selectively quote from the two reviews Amazon.com happens to subscribe to. You've a great many insightful things to say, I don't know why you won't just step away from an off-the-cuff statement...

[Dan Green]

How much Munro do I have to read? Is this a test? I've read enough to reach my conclusion. Kate likes Munro more than I do. That's fine.

Richard: Why would I need to step away from my explanation of why I chose not to read the book? It's an accurate explanation. Sometimes you have to make decisions about what to read and what not, and that's how I made mine.

[DW.]

> How much Munro do I have to read? Is this a test? I've read enough to reach my conclusion.

I don't know if it's a test, but it's a simple, straightforward question, and I think it's a relevant question, given the sweeping, generalized pronouncement you make about her work.

And that's a pretty vague answer.

[Dan Green]

Do you want a number? Is this the bean counter approach to literary criticism? I read her last book, Runaway (I don't remember how many stories it contained.) I also read one of her previous books (again don't remember the number), as well as several other stories in magazines (The New Yorker) and anthologies. Is this sufficient, or is there a certain threshold of Munro exposure one has to reach in order to express an opinion?

[DW.]

Personally, I think that's plenty. Others might disagree. But either way, why such outrage at the very question? Doesn't it have to do with such basic rhetorical values as ethos / credibility? Does anyone who's curious about the basis for your Soundbite from the Mount have to be a "bean counter"?

[Jonathan Mayhew]

It would take a very rigid idea of the well-crafted "New Yorker story" to see Alice Munro's work as very much a departure from this norm. Dan was simply echoing Milett's initial characterization--one that rings true for me too, though I am no expert on Munro's work. I bet if you looked at reviews of her work the idea of well-craftedness and immaculate precision would recur quite frequently. Isn't this the way she's normally been read? If I'm wrong, I'd be glad to be corrected.

[DW.]

It's not the idea of craftedness that I take issue with -- yes, Munro's stories appear to have, er, been written with care. But to call her work "conventional" and "bland" and "predictable" seems superficial. In their structure and odd time jumps and free associations, her stories seem plenty weird and idiosyncratic to me, so I'd be curious about what makes them so conventional, predictable, etc.

The "Chekovian" thing also seems superficial to me. I guess she's "Chekhovian" in the same way the Velvet Underground are "Beatlesque," since just like the Beatles, they play guitar and bass and drums and a lot of their songs have verses and choruses. But when I listen to the Velvet Underground I don't think, "I might as well be listening to the Beatles."

[Jonathan Mayhew]

Your odd time jumps are my conventional fictional devices. It's a matter of perception to a large degree. The Checkovian label comes from people championing her work, not from its detractors.

[DW.]

> Your odd time jumps are my conventional fictional devices. It's a matter of perception to a large degree.

True indeed.

> The Checkovian label comes from people championing her work, not from its detractors.

Well, it also came from this detractor:

> It's not so much that she's a realist--realism can come in other varieties than the bland and predictable--but that if I want to read "Chekhovian" fiction I'll read Chekhov.

[Dan Green]

I was indeed alluding to the "people championing her work."

[Timothy Francis Sullivan]

I underwent an Alice Munro conversion. I'd started numerous stories of hers in the New Yorker and also read Hateship, Courtship, etc... and I was always shocked at how a writer so unspeakably venerated could be so boring. The stories seemed to be mindless accumulations of meaningless, everyday events. And then I picked up an issue of the New Yorker maybe a year ago. I had just been playing basketball for like three hours and was covered in sweat and shirtless and sort of highly focused. I grabbed the magazine, flipped through it, and started reading an Alice Munro story. And about a third of the way through it, it occurred to me that it was amazing. It was about Irish immigrants on a boat on its way to North America. And there was something about its effect--the sort of passive, imaginative response my mind made to the particular sentences in their particular order--that made me say to myself, 'oh...this is entirely different; this is sort of fierce and vivid and decidedly unconcerned with ordinary narrative mechanisms.' I went back to the old stories and found that I'd been missing the effect, but that I could now pick up on and enjoy it.

I don't know where that places her in the pantheon of important contemporary writers, but I do understand why she gets the response she does from readers.