Alice Munroe: an appropriate choice for Noble Prize in Literature
She's certainly not Canada's greatest writer. Margret Atwood is better. Robertson Davies was better. Mordecai Richler was better. Among others. But, she's probably Canada's greatest purely literary, quintessentially Canadian writer. Alice describes rural Ontario with an absolute precision that is positively anthropological in scope: cold, controlled, boring, matriarchal. Precisely why she would want to do this, I really couldn't say. There's no accounting for taste, I suppose, or basic motivations. Obviously, it's worked pretty well for her. For me, having grown up there a few decades after Alice herself, reading her stories is a rather nostalgic experience. It keeps me in touch with this sub-cultural environment.
If it is the intention of the Swedish Nobel Prize Committee to make Alice Munroe more successful commercially, I doubt they'll be successful. After all, who wants to spend good money simply to experience the tedium of an Ontario winter, portrayed with absolute precision and in great detail?
My first impression -- and lasting one -- of Alice Munroe is from a book review in the Globe and Mail, many years ago. The review was accompanied by a picture of the then middle-aged Alice trying to look sultry. The reviewer described her as wanting to portray herself as a "timeless cutie". Well, now that she's won Canada's first Nobel Prize in Literature, I guess she'll get her wish!
If it is the intention of the Swedish Nobel Prize Committee to make Alice Munroe more successful commercially, I doubt they'll be successful. After all, who wants to spend good money simply to experience the tedium of an Ontario winter, portrayed with absolute precision and in great detail?
My first impression -- and lasting one -- of Alice Munroe is from a book review in the Globe and Mail, many years ago. The review was accompanied by a picture of the then middle-aged Alice trying to look sultry. The reviewer described her as wanting to portray herself as a "timeless cutie". Well, now that she's won Canada's first Nobel Prize in Literature, I guess she'll get her wish!
posted by Jerry Kraus at 10:53 AM
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