Alice Munro's death was announced yesterday. Her self-described "second oldest remaining friend and colleague," fellow Canadian author Margaret Atwood, has written this tribute to her on her Substack, In the Writing Burrow. It's meant for paying subscribers, but a substantial portion is free to read.
"Alice could be quite mischievous, and not only in her writing. Both of us had dark curly hair at one time. We were about the same height.
"Alice: I was standing on a train platform and a man came up to me and said, ‘You’re Margaret Atwood!' 'Yes,' I said, 'I am.' Then we had quite an interesting conversation about your working methods and where you get your inspiration.
"Turn and turn about: After we both had white hair, and after Alice had won the Nobel, people would come up to me and murmur, 'Congratulations.' 'For what?' I would say. 'You know. Winning that prize.' After a while I stopped trying to explain, and just murmured back, modestly, 'Thank you.' Though the Thank Yous were really for Alice."
@AnnaAnthro The article says Munro never embraced the novel. I would argue that she did; her short stories were novels (or perhaps novellas). The completeness and depth of her short stories made them so compelling. The incompleteness and shallowness of so many short stories are a reason I mostly don't like that genre. Munro was the best. RIP #AliceMunro.
Oh drat, we've lost #AliceMunro, a great crafter of crisp, vivid, people-centric stories as notable as any author that the history of literature has given us.
There was a false alarm 4yrs ago, but a bit of verification on multiple media outlets seems to back it up. A loss for Canada and the world.
Die Literaturnobelpreisträgerin Alice Munro ist im Alter von 92 Jahren gestorben. Die Kanadierin war eine der angesehensten Autorinnen von Kurzgeschichten, die meist in der ländlichen Provinz Ontario spielten.
Alice Munro, the Canadian writer, has died at age 92. In 2013, she became the first Nobel winner cited exclusively for short fiction — an achievement that came after her retirement from her 60-year writing career. Prior to that, she had won Canada's Giller Prize twice, then disqualified herself in 2009 to make way for younger writers. Ms. Munro “brings as much depth, wisdom and precision to every story as most novelists bring to a lifetime of novels,” the jury of the Man Booker International Prize declared in 2009, awarding her the prize for her overall contribution to fiction. Here's a tribute to her from the Globe & Mail. [Story may be paywalled]