Generations of Canadian readers knew it. Writers around the world knew it. Now everyone knows it. sa国际传媒鈥檚 Alice Munro is the greatest living writer of short stories.
The Swedish Academy made it official on Thursday, announcing that Munro has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Swedish official who broke the news called her a 鈥渕aster of the contemporary short story.鈥�
Canadians might ask: 鈥淲hat took them so long?鈥� But the award is all the sweeter for crowning a career that spanned five decades. Munro told a reporter in June that she was 鈥減robably not going to write anymore.鈥�
While fans are saddened by the thought that nothing new will come from her typewriter, the body of work that the 82-year-old has already written will keep them reading and re-reading.
鈥淭he surface of Alice Munro鈥檚 works, its simplicity and quiet appearance, is a deceptive thing, that beneath that surface is a store of insight, a body of observation, and a world of wisdom that is close to addictive,鈥� said Jane Smiley, a judge when Munro won the Man Booker International Prize in 2009.
It was one of many prizes she received over the years, including two Scotiabank Giller Prizes, three Governor General鈥檚 Literary Awards, the Commonwealth Writers鈥� Prize and the American National Book Critics Circle Award.
Margaret Atwood once wrote: 鈥淎mong writers, her name is spoken in hushed tones. She鈥檚 the kind of writer about whom it is often said 鈥� no matter how well-known she becomes 鈥� that she ought to be better-known.鈥�
As of Thursday morning, Munro is about as well-known as a writer can get.
Although she was born in Ontario and spent most of her life there, Victorians have always claimed her as one of our own because she lived here in the 1960s, when she began her writing career. Working in the bookstore she and then-husband Jim Munro started here in 1963 is often credited with reawakening the literary interest she had shown in her youth.
Whatever the spark, her talent quickly pushed her into the front rank. Her first collection of stories, Dance of the Happy Shades in 1968, won the Governor General鈥檚 Literary Award.
Her stories are set in southwestern Ontario and have a clear sense of place, but her main interest is in the characters, particularly the women.
She said: 鈥淚 want to tell a story, in the old-fashioned way 鈥� what happens to somebody 鈥� but I want that 鈥榳hat happens鈥� to be delivered with quite a bit of interruption, turnarounds and strangeness. I want the reader to feel something is astonishing 鈥� not the 鈥榳hat happens鈥� but the way everything happens. These long, short-story fictions do that best, for me.鈥�
And best for her readers.
Canadians have long had an inferiority complex, or perhaps just a sense of puzzlement, about our writers鈥� place on the world stage.
It sometimes seems to us that our literature is too idiosyncratically Canadian to travel well. With typical self-effacement, we can鈥檛 imagine foreigners being interested in our settings or our insights.
The Nobel committee鈥檚 plaudits and the immediate praise from writers around the world should lay to rest some of those misgivings. No one said: 鈥淲ho is Alice Munro?鈥� Her reputation is long established beyond our borders.
If Munro has truly put away her pen, Thursday鈥檚 announcement comes at a perfect time.
The Nobel committee has placed the world鈥檚 most famous seal on a peerless career.
