Can a short story writer win the Nobel Prize For Literature?
Alice Munro made her way to heaven this last week, on 13th May 2024.
When the Nobel was conferred upon her, the common question was, ‘does a short story writer qualify for a Nobel’? A majority of readers may sheepishly confess that they do nurture a prejudice against short story writers. Alice Munro might’ve never bothered ; she nurtured her own stories, producing 14 volumes of them.
Take for instance ‘Wenlock’s Edge’, a story about a possessive older lover and a vulnerable young woman, who has to dine without her clothes, while reading books aloud to him. Disturbing facets of human behaviour and strange quirks define her short stories, which span the commonplace to the bizarre!
Here are our five #BookStrapping insights in the form of five of her finest collections of short stories:
1. Ever heard of the phrase ‘good riddance to bad rubbish’? I read this first in the short story ‘Love of a Good Woman.’ A story that examines what is wiser- should one keep secrets or divulge them, she goes on to say, ‘The night had seemed so long and then too short, because nothing had been decided.” Haven’t we all had nights like this? Can we always rely that all people in a given situation, will conclude in the same way?
2. ‘The View from Castle Rock’ is probably her most personal collection of short stories. She has often been referred to as a ‘regional writer’ borrowing from familiar settings in her home in Canada. In this collection, you find her establishing contrast between “those days” and “these days,” even as she writes ‘fiction’ that’s set in an autobiographical context. An early risk perhaps?
3. We cannot miss the compilation, ‘Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage’, which was released in 2001. A story from this compilation, ‘The Bear Came over the Mountain’, which spoke of Alzheimer’s disease, was made into a film titled ‘Away From Her’ in 2006.
4. The ten short stories featured in ‘Too Much Happiness’, are meaty to say the least. ‘Child’s Play’ may perhaps be the most disturbing one in this book. It talks about the cruelty that children can easily inflict on one another! The book also features a story about the life of Sophia Kovalevsky, a Russian mathematician, who struggled to receive the recognition she deserved. In the author’s words, ”She was an utter novelty, a delightful freak… Men whose brains were blowing old notions apart were still in thrall to women whose heads were full of nothing but the necessity of tight corsets, calling cards, and conversations that filled your throat with a kind of perfumed fog.”
5. ‘Dear Life’, another collection released in 2012, was intended to be her last. Her stories are everyday stories of everyday people- those whom we don’t expect to encounter in books. Remarkable stories like ‘Dolly’, talk about how dangerous it is to have ex-lovers come back into your life! Ha Ha!
Munro painted the canvas of literature fearlessly! Her great message, was that we render ourselves helpless, by losing our minds in the maze of consequences brought about by the decisions we make! The absolute necessity of making judicious decisions therefore, cannot be denied!
Reeta Ramamurthy Gupta is a columnist and bestselling biographer. She is credited with the internationally acclaimed Red Dot Experiment, a decadal six-nation study on how ‘culture impacts communication.’ A reading coach, you can find her on Instagram @OfficialReetaGupta