new Nobelist Alice Munro: for the New York Sun

[Mark Kohut]

  Margaret Atwood introduced Alice and 'disappointment
with men' the resonant murmer that went through the crowd.
And the Michael Cunningham definition of real literature.




Members in black bow ties and classy dresses surrounded the
primrose-adorned tables at the National Arts Club last evening where
it seemed that almost all 1900 members of the National Arts Club
turned out to honor a great writer, Canadian writer, Alice Munro.
"Such a list of speakers!", said longtime NAC member, Dorothy Borg.
Novelist Russell Banks was the masterful master of ceremonies,
introducing writer and Random House editor-in-chief, Dan Menaker,
Margaret Atwood, a 1997 recipient of the National Arts Club Medal of
Honor for Literature, and Michael Cunningham, who won the National
Arts Club scholarship as a high school student not that long ago!
Michael Castellano and Sarah Perito were honored with the scholarship
this year, also presented this evening.

Dan Menaker told a story of accompanying Alice to another event
once--she is semi-reclusive, but one has to be present to receive this
Award---where she expostulated, "Why do we do these things,
Dan?"...That is the question her fiction explores in deep human
variety, said Dan. Russell Banks, describing himself as a
"near-Canadian" via grandfather's genes, said he has learned from
Alice's fiction and "it has changed my life"---the highest honor
indeed. He said her fiction was often about men in their relation to
women, 'sometimes loving, sometimes hostile, always disappointing"
which the whole assembly seemed to resonate with.  Margaret Atwood,
who became friends with Alice just by "calling her up" back in 1969,
after reading her first book. Alice invited her to sleep on her floor.
She did. Margaret said she couldn't write words like "exceptional" or
a "sacred treasure of Canada" about Alice, who hated the
"high-falutin" and "would be judging my well-judged words". So, she
called her "a secular item of modest value" for Canada and for the
world. Margaret recreated an imaginary conversation from Alice's home
town:

1st speaker: 'Maybe she is the greatest writer in the world, you hear
that a lot", says one neighbor..."but I wouldn't know 'bout that"....

2nd Speaker: "She tells the truth, ya know, and people don't always
like that, eh?"

1st speaker: "But she never puts on airs...if you ask her to bring a
pie to the bake sale and she agrees, she will bring that pie."

Michael Cunningham told the most moving story of reading Alice's book
Open Secrets during his mother's last illness---a book he had sent his
mother. Rereading aloud from the story, "Real Life" which he was
reading when his mother's breathing changed, he said, "the only books
that really matter are those that can be read in such circumstances".
"Alices' matter". One could hear one's own breathing then, it was so
still.

Alice herself said it was ignorance that enabled her to become a
writer: "I was ignorant that there could not be any Canadian writers
[of note]; ignorant that the short story was dead; and ignorant of the
fact that women couldn't write.", she said shyly.

A portrait of Ms. Munro by Wendy Shrijver was unveiled and hung among
all the Chuck Close portraits (and self-portraits) hanging in the
dining room.

Only Eudora Welty and Grace Paley have ever been given the NAC medal
for writing predominantly short stories. Perhaps Anton Chekhov, the
100th anniversary of whose death has recently passed, is the seminal
world author who never wrote a novel. Like Alice.


--
Mark Kohut (& Associates)
646-519-1956

Redburn Press
P.O. Box 16022
Pittsburgh, Pa. 15242
646-519-1956


-- 
Mark Kohut (& Associates)
646-519-1956

Redburn Press
P.O. Box 16022
Pittsburgh, Pa. 15242
646-519-1956
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