The Lucknow Sentinel, 1978-01-18, Page 29PAGE TWEWTY.EIGHT'
THE LUCKNOW SENTINEL, LWJCKNOW, ONTAP WEDNES0AX.,. JANUARY .18, 1978
Author raised inWingham, writes CBC script
BY KEN ADACHI
OF THE TORONTO STAR
Small towns are obviously a
lifelong obsession for dice Mun-
ro - not surprising for a ,writer
whose short stories nearly always
are set in rural southWestern.
Ontario, the special mental and
physical territory she has mapped
out in her fiction and made
triumphantly her very own.
"Hike small town life," she.
said during a screening this week
of the second 'segment of The
Newcomers, the CBC television
series about immigrants to Can-
ada which can be seen Sunday
night. "I can gofor long walks in
the countryside, .do some cross-
country skiing and, of course,
write. I've often functioned, for
one reason or another, as if cut off
from society." •
RAISED IN WINGHAM
Munro, who at 46 is ° an
engagingly amiable and attractiye
mother of three daughters, was
born and raised in Wingham,
Ontario, the setting the fictional
version is called Jubilee for
many of, her superbly crafted
stories about childhood, adoles-
cence and womanhood.. She
attended University of . Western
Ontario until 1951, and then'
marriage to James Munro took
her to Vancouver and Victoria for
the next two decades, years in
which she secureda place as one
of finest writers by winning the
HILL TA
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 27
The schedule will run . on a
rotating basis hopefully until the
summer months but I will put out
. a notice if any changes areto be
made. If I am unable to attend , on
any particular day, _1 will try .to
arrange to have a notice put up at
the, Town Hall to indicate the
change. I will be there from 10
a.m. to 2 p.m. approximately.
i hope .you will keep these date
in mind and I hope many of you
will find it convenient . to meet
with me to discuss your particular
concerns. Everyone is welcome. I
am looking forward to meeting,
many area residents.
.e
Governor-cjeneral's .award for
fiction for her first book, Dance Of
The Happy Shades ' (1968), and
then enhanced her richly deserv-
ed: international reputation with
the publication of Lives Of Girls
and Women (1972). °
Her life, in a sense, has come
full circle since then, with her
return to. Ontario, a subsequent'
second marriage and residence in
the town of ,Clinton, just 20 miles
from her .birthplace. Her third
volume of 'stories, Something I've
Been Meaning To Tell You, was
published in 1974.
Writing the script for 1847. the
segment in the CBC series which
dramatizes the hardships which
Irish immigrants endured in
Ontario, "was quite different
from anything I've written before.
It's a documentary;" based on a
diary and letters of an Irish
couple, so I didn't make anything,
up. 'One of my sources . was
Susanna Moodie, who said some
awful things about the Irish;°she
saw them as savages, as so they
must have seemed to her.
Anyway, my script is written in a
much more melodramatic way -
tugging at the heart strings in the .
style of, . say Dickens - than I
would " normally° write if. I were
thinking of the material as
fiction."
Yet the Alice Munro touch, so
familiar from her fiction, . is
recognizable even within the
limits of the documentary: The
surface and texture of life, the
way things look, sound, perhaps
even smell; the heightened sen-
sibilitiesof the main characters;
the conflict with a self-limiting,,..
bigoted society; the restrictions ,
imposed by gender in a masculine
society; thepervasive tone of
alienation and nostalgia. ; • And
then there's the rural setting , of
bleak 'farms .and solitary houses.
It's hardly -likely, though, that
she will turn to writing scripts as.
a permanent part ofhercareer. "I
like writing for the screen, but
then I want the control to be all
mine. There are so many people
between the script -writer and the
finished product:
Despite the fact she has so far
published only three books, Alice °
Munro is, as she says, "never not
writing. I write slowly; 'things jell
• ENENNO%
S!
0111 MISSED;
IT!
Turnback
to Page 17
.
a for
Sale Specials
� at
Bill's Place
• LesPetter'
Char-mdi'5Char-ma:int* 0
°V11'ork Clothing
UseknoW
nownwoonson
Shoes
slowly. I do a lot of rewriting and I
keep taking out words if anything
seems merely decorative and
presents an obstacle between the
page andthe reader."
Is there a novel in the wo,rks?
`I'm writing a lot of short stories
now - obviously that's where my
skills lie. For - a long time my
publishers wanted me to write a.
novel, but it didn't • really work
with Lives Of Girls And Women,
' which is really a collection of
self-contained stories linked by a
common setting . and narrator."
One of the most widely-anthol-
logized writers in Canada$our of
her stories appear in a book called
Personal Fictions recently pub-
lished by Oxford University
Press, along -with the stories by
Rudy, Wiebe, Audrey Thomas,
and Clark Blaise, Two. new
stories, . Royal Beating and The
Beggar Maid, were published last
year in the New Yorker magazine;
both stories, which are set in
southwestern Ontario - in London
and in a small, town called
Hanratty - will likely be included
in a new collection to be
published this, year.
FULL OF COMPASSION A
The two stories, are full of
compassion for the sensitive
adolescent and the vulnerable
woman whose lives are -somehow.
maimed by' their conflicts . -
confusing; humiliating and recog-
nizably human •- with family .and
4
society in the form of steptnoth-
ers, lovers and husbands. They
are, . as . Hugh Garner said . in
praise of another Munro collec-
tion, about `ordinary people in
ordinary situations."
"Unlike some other people, I
haven't developed. as a writer,"
she claims. "I've been writing the
same kind of stories all along."
She's too self-effacing and
modest. Her new writing justifies
onee_.again all the praise shower.
ed on her since her work first
appeared. Her deceptively casual
style seems eytn More finely .
tuned, her insights more acute
and profound, and the situations
even more moving and memor-
able.
Pick up a free .. ,
Complimentary. copy
( at your favourite
newsstand.'