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ALICE MUNRO Alice Munro published an essay in 1982 entitled “What is Real?” which says: Every final draft, every published story, is still only an attempt, an approach, to the story. This quote well introduces Alice Munro’s aesthetic and poetic perspective over art intended as an open and ongoing process rather than a list of perfectly crafted concluded story. MUNRO’S BACKGROUND Alice Munro was born in 1931 in Wingham, Ontario and she was the eldest child of Robert Laidlaws, a fox farmer and Anne, a teacher. Her family background is systematically narrated into her stories. On her father’s side, ancestors had immigrated in upper Canada from Scotland back in 1818, so they were among the settlers from Britain who moved to America seeking land and new opportunities after the Napoleonic wars. These Scots settled in the Toronto area and started farming. Some of the young generation moved then on Canada West in the Ontario province, near the region of the grand lakes that is relevant in Munro’s stories. These Laidlaws were among the first settlers from the European country to Ontario. On her mother’s side ancestors were Irish Protestants who had themselves emigrated to Canada about the same time as the first Laidlaws, so we have this interconnection within Alice Munro’s family history. Alice Munro in fact narrates her ancestors’ immigration from Scotland and their settlement in Ontario, the meeting of their parents, the beginning and striving, especially in the first stage of this migration process, her own presence there growing up, then her moving away and then her constant returns through the writing. In particular the artwork in which Alice Munro has talked about her family history is entitled “The View from Castle Rock” that was written back in 2006. Then Alice Munro attended University of Western Canada, but that was possible only for 2 years because that was the length, the duration of the scholarship she was able to have, so she received this 2 years scholarship at University of Western Canada because she had received the highest grade in English. She initially studied journalism, but then shifted to English for her second year and also on that occasion she won the prize for the best grade in a major. In 1950 she managed to publish the story “The dimensions of a shadow” in the undergraduate literary magazine at Western called Folio. At university she also met James Munro, about 2 years older, from an upper social class, who studied history. The couple got married in 1951 when Alice was 20 and they left for Vancouver in British Columbia by train. Vancouver however was a city that Alice Munro never really appreciated and liked. After this first movement we’ll have a second movement back to Ontario after Alice Munro divorced, in fact she moved to Clinton with her second husband. Initially, Alice Munro started publishing her stories in local newspapers, but later on, her stories started to appear in more prestigious ones, like The New Yorker, The Athlantic Monthly, Saturday Night, The Paris Review… Her works started to be recognized through numerous awards and prizes in Canada (3 times the Governor general Literary Award), USA (The US National Book Critics Award) and Europe; she also won the Nobel prize in 2013. Her collections have been translated into numerous languages of the world. THE SHORT STORY AS GENRE I did not “choose” to write short stories. I hoped to write novels. When you are responsible for running a house and taking care of small children, particularly in the days before disposable diapers or ubiquitous automatic washing machines, it’s hard to arrange for large chunks of time. A. Munro, “Introduction”, Short Stories, Penguin, Toronto, 1996 This passage tells us that there is a particular pragmatic reason behind her choice of writing short stories: she had too many domestic duties to find the time to write novels. Therefore, she decided to

accept some sort of compromise and write only short story. This is interesting because we understand that her choice of genre wasn’t planned, it wasn’t her original project. It was once again a compromise. In her second collection of interconnected stories, we read: I saw that the only thing to do with my life was to write a novel. […] I carried it—the idea of it— everywhere with me, as if it were one of those magic boxes a favored character gets hold of in a fairy story: touch it and his troubles disappear. Munro, [1971] (2001), Lives of Girls and Women In this passage we read once again of her plan and dream of writing a novel. This pattern is a pervasive element narrated or mentioned within the stories. We can really feel the talismanic power of this project. I had my own ideas about Flora’s story. I didn’t think that I could have written a novel but that I would write one. I would take a different tack. I saw through my mother’s story and put in what she left out. My Flora would be as black as hers was white. Rejoicing in the bad turns done to her and in her own forgiveness, spying on the shambles of her sister’s life. A Presbyterian witch, reading out her poisonous book. A. Munro [1990] (1996), Friend of My Youth In this passage we see the commitment and the certainty behind her project. This novel is not meant to originate from a void: it was supposed to be a rewriting of a story that Alice Munro had heard, in particularly, a story coming from her mother, about Flora. Her idea was to modify and manipulate this particular story, and this is an important motif that we will consider later on (adaptation in terms of subversion). How are we to live is the book’s title. A collection of stories, not a novel. This in itself is a disappointment. It seems to diminish the book’s authority, making the author seem like somebody who is hanging on to the gates of Literature, rather than safely settled inside. A. Munro, “Fiction”, from Too Much Happiness This vivid image from the short story “Fiction ”, in the collection Too Much Happiness, reports a comment from the protagonist, Joyce, upon a volume she spots in a bookstore. We understand that the short story is represented as a minor and marginal form: the short story genre is ironically disregarded and dismissed in this passage. Safely is used ironically, as if the novel was a legitimate choice, but also a safe one, precisely because of this legitimation, while the short story is presented as a more challenging form. Alice Munro doesn’t offer many times a theoretical conceptualization of the short story as a genre, so this essay – What is real? – is exceptional on this matter. Ironically, she doesn’t like talking about her writing, but she loves writing. I don’t take up a story to follow it as if it were a road, taking me somewhere, with views and neat diversions along the way. I go into it, and move back and forth and settle here and there, and stay in it for a while. It’s more like a house: everybody knows what a house does, how it encloses space and makes connections between one enclosed space and another and presents what is outside in a new way. This is the nearest I can come to explaining what a story does for me, and what I want my stories to do for other people. A. Munro “What is Real?” In this dense passage we can find many elements that sustain us in our conceptualization of the short story for Munro. First of all, we have a rejection of a linear perception of the short story. Her idea is far from that: she uses a domestic metaphor and says that a short story is more like a house to be inhabited from a dynamic point of view, where positions and perspective change constantly.

The temporal dimension is very important in this house fruition: it has to be varied, fragmented, discontinued, unpredictable. Intertextual cross connections are a key element in Munro’s work, both within the same story and different stories. A lot of attention is given to perspective, and from the view that you can enjoy from inside – even if the viewpoint is always changing. “This is the nearest I can come to explaining what a story does for me” is a strategy of hedging: she’s not writing a manifesto, she’s just trying to hedge, to blur her proposition. This strategy of modulating or tempering the proposition, is very common for Munro. Publications Munro’s publication of short stories during the past decades: 1) Dance of The Happy Shades, Ryerson Press, 1968 (childhood story) 2) Lives of Girls and Women, New American Library, 1971(published as a novel, because it was considered as a more legitimate genre) 3) Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You, McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1974 4) Who Do You Think You Are? Macmillan Canada, 1979 (published as a novel) 5) The Moons of Jupiter, Macmillan Canada, 1982 6) The Progress of Love, McClelland & Stewart, 1987 7) Friend of My Youth, McClelland & Stewart, 1990 8) Open Secrets, McClelland & Stewart, 1994 9) The Love of a Good Woman, McClelland & Stewart, 1998 10) Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, McClelland & Stewart, 2002 11) Runaway, McClelland & Stewart, 2004 12) The View from Castle Rock, McClelland & Stewart, 2006 13) Too Much Happiness, McClelland & Stewart, 2009 14) Dear Life, McClelland & Stewart, 2012 (childhood story) Across the decades and across the publication of these 14 collections, Alice Munro has constantly questioned and revised the short story form, making it longer, more tangled, more challenging… This innovation is what granted her the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 as the “master of contemporary short story”. The award is no way to say that she has reached a perfect formula for short story writing. On the contrary, she has always worked within, against and beyond the short story in order to constantly revise it. The Italian translations of Munro’s collections started in 1989 with Serra and Riva, who published Il perscorso dell’amore. Then La Tartaruga, a feminist publishing house, published other three collections. After that, the translations of her whole narrative has been performed by Einaudi’s brilliant translator, Susanna Basso. 1) Il percorso dell'amore, Milano, Serra e Riva, 1989 (trad. C. Spallino Rocca). 2) La danza delle ombre felici, Milano, La Tartaruga, [1994] 2001 (trad. G. Maneri). 3) Chi ti credi di essere? Roma, Ediz. E/O, 1995 (trad. A. Rusconi). 4) Stringimi forte non lasciarmi andare, La Tartaruga, 1998 (trad. G. Maneri & A. Rusconi). 5) Segreti svelati, Milano, La Tartaruga, 2000 (trad. M. Premoli). 6) Il sogno di mia madre, Torino, Einaudi, 2001 (trad. S. Basso). 7) Nemico, amico, amante…, Einaudi, 2003 (trad. S. Basso). 8) In fuga, Einaudi, 2004 (trad. S. Basso). 9) Le lune di Giove, Einaudi, 2007 (trad. S. Basso). 10) La vista da Castle Rock, Einaudi, 2007 (trad. S. Basso). 11) Troppa felicità, Einaudi, 2011 (trad. S. Basso).

12) Uscirne vivi, Einaudi, 2012 (trad. S. Basso). 13) Amica della mia giovinezza, Einaudi, 2015 (trad. S. Basso). 14) Una cosa che volevo dirti da un po’, Einaudi, 2016 (trad. S. Basso). 15) La vita delle ragazze e delle donne, Einaudi, 2018 (trad. S. Basso). Alongside the publications by Einaudi, we have to mention Mondadori’s publication of Munro’s short story in a collection called Racconti, which appeared in Italy some month before the Nobel Prize was assigned. It collects 55 short story and it is a very prestigious book, the biggest in the world, which testifies Italian appreciation for Munro’s work even before the Nobel Prize. Other than that, there were also some events organized by Italian academics in 2007: • Alice Munro – The art of the Short story, organized by the University of Siena and the Centro Siena-Toronto; • La Casa di Parole – Alice Munro, organized by the Italian Association of Women Psychiatrists in Florence. This testifies her importance even outside the literary domain. Munro has continued to experiment within the short story form, always attempting to represent more adequately the complex layering on the way things are or rather the ways things might be interpreted from different perspectives. Howells C.A., Alice, Munro: Contemporary World Writers, Manchester UP Manchester, 1998, p. 9 This is a quotation from a British scholar on Munro’s style, that once again highlights the coexistence of different perspectives that can be enjoyed from that window inside the house that is a shirt story. Howells also celebrates the fact that Munro constantly challenges the genre of the short story. Other than that, we see the importance of layers in the description of reality, that will be important when we will take on the stylistic analysis the narrative. The last point is once again focused on the various viewpoints, the different alternatives that Munro offers when depicting reality. Stories In this section, we will analyze the relationship between Alice Munro and short stories, that is to say the creative process of storytelling. I did not think of the story I would make about Alfrida — not of that in particular — but of the work I wanted to do, which seemed more like grabbing something out of the air than constructing stories. A. Munro, “Family Furnishings”, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage In this first passage, we have a character who would like to become a writer (many of Munro’s characters are writers or simply like listening to or telling stories). In the second line, we have a definition of this project which is less related to constructing stories, to an architectural approach to storytelling in terms of shaping and building a perfectly crafted story. This is a more spontaneous approach, “grabbing something out of the air”, an unplanned process that is able to grasp an idea from nothing. Many critics have taken this passage as Alice Munro’s manifesto, because it celebrates storytelling as an unplanned and spontaneous process (Sabry Francy agrees with them). And Mary found herself exploring her neighbour’s life as she had once explored the lives of grandmothers and aunts—by pretending to know less than she did, asking for some story she had heard before; this way, remembered episodes emerged each time with slight differences of content, meaning, colour, yet with a pure reality that usually attaches to things which are at least part legend. A. Munro, “The Shining Houses”, Dance of the Happy Shades, [1968] 1997 In this short story from the first collection, the protagonist is asking for a story. In this passage we have the process of listening to stories (the opposite of storytelling). Mary is asking to listen to the

same story being retold, told again. This repetition means that every time the story is told, we can find some differences in content, meaning, color… The attractiveness of this old stories is, in fact, the fact that the recollection and narration of episodes from the past comes with differences. The narrator uses the metaphor of exploration: listening to a story is an acting, challenging and involving process, where the listener is knowing, immersing and growing thanks to that activity. The roof was steeply pitched, so that you could walk around in the middle of the attic. Juliet used to do that, when she was a child. She walked around telling herself some story she had read, with certain additions or alterations. A. Munro, “Soon”, in Runaway, [2004] 2006 In this other passage, we have an intimate process of storytelling, that is profound and solitary: she tells herself a story she has read. She’s not the creator, but she is making some variations that make her narrative more fascinating, interesting. If I could have been a writer — I do think I could have been; I could have been a writer—then I would have written the story of Flora’s life. And do you know what I would have called it? “The Maiden Lady”. A. Munro, “Friend of my Youth ”, in Friend of my Youth, [1990] 1996 Here, once again, storytelling can be translated as story-writing. The protagonist of “Friend of my youth” wishes to be a writer and he has a clear idea: he has a project, a dream, a wish. I put all this material together over the years, and almost without my noticing what was happening, it began to shape itself, here and there, into something like stories. Some of the characters gave themselves to me in their own words, others rose out of their situations. Their words and my words, a curious re-creation of lives, in a given setting that was as truthful as our notion of the past can ever be. A. Munro, Introduction of The View from Castle Rock, 2006, 2007 We know that in this collection, Munro wanted to write a story about her family, and in particular about their movement from Scotland to Canada, as settlers. She says that she had carried out an archival research on her ancestors during a visit in Scotland, that had been labelled as Archival Research based on Historiographical Documents. Despite that, in the introduction she seems to negate that historiographic dimension, to inscribe her project along a narrative, artistic and fictional horizon. Over the years, the author says that the information that she had gathered started to shape themselves autonomously into something like stories. Here we have also the idea of truth being related to the fictional dimension and to the conception that writer and readers can have of the past. This blurred border between history and fiction is at stake in The View from Castle Rock, and it is very common in all her last works, where we can find a miscellaneous between autobiography and fiction: The final four works in this book are not quite stories. They form a separate unit, one that is autobiographical in feeling, though not, sometimes, entirely so in fact. I believe they are the first and the last—and the closest—things I have to say about my own life. A. Munro, Introduction of Dear Life, 2012 Here, what has been presented as autobiography is questioned as such: we know that autobiographical writing should be faithful and reliable accounts of one’s life, but Munro seems to blur, question and veil the referential value of her story. Let’s see why “the final four works in this book are not (negative polarity in the verb) quite (blurry) stories” (referring to the fictional dimension): her short stories are not completely autobiographical because the narration is autobiographical only in the emotional component (feelings) but it is not as reliable in the factual viewpoint (facts and events narrated).

In her writing we see once again a strategy of hedging, blurring, veiling her proposition. The mother The figure of the mother plays a crucial role in Alice Munro’s life and writings. She was trained as a teacher at the Ottawa Normal School and she later worked as a teacher from 1919 to 1927, when she married Robert Laidlaw. She was socially ambitious and intellectually curious and as so she is represented in Munro’s early stories. in 1943, when Alice was 12, Ann started showing symptoms of Parkinson disease, often narrated within Munro’s collections. Alice took over domestic duties on her behalf. We will try to analyze the description of the mother’s illness in the stories, and we will concentrate on the detailed representation of the symptoms of this disease, but also through a temporal perspective, which is also important. My mother, during this summer, would have been forty-one or forty-two years old, I think, somewhere around the age that I am now. Just her left forearm trembled. The hand trembled more than the arm. The thumb knocked ceaselessly against the palm. She could, however, hide it in her fingers, and she could hold the arm still by stiffening it against her body. A. Munro, “The Ottawa Valley”, in Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You, 2004 This passage describes some symptoms, notably the tremors, and the fact that the woman tried to hide them – probably not to show it to other people, or to avoid recognition of her own disease. It’s interesting how in the first lines the temporal perspective shifts from the present to the past with a temporal filter that regards the remembrance of a period that happened years before. This temporal perspective, which operates as a filter, can change or modify the perception or remembrance of events. She would be looking quite well−not exactly youthful, not entirely untouched by the paralyzing disease that held her in its grip for a decade or more before her death, but so much better than I remembered that I would be astoni...