Tree Tulips, Iggy, & Alice Munro

[mallorys_camera]

Tis the beginning of tree tulip season.

I tromped seven miles yesterday in the rain to see as many of them as I could.

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Meanwhile, I was all set to launch a new TikTok-cum-Instagram-Story feature: Housing Patrizia: Can a Curmudgeonly Boomer Find Relevance and a New Home? when an email bore fruit:

Hi Patrizia,
Thanks for the detailed note. I wish everyone would go into this level of detail! Please feel free to text me at [my easily guessed contact info is probably on the Dark Web already] to discuss further. You sound like you could be a great fit!
Iggy

Iggy!

Who would not want to live in a household with someone named Iggy??

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Other than that, I Remunerated (reluctantly) and read Alice Munro’s Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage.

The last story in this collection, The Bear Went Over the Mountain, may be Munro’s most famous. It got made into a well-received film called Away From Her. Kind of the anti-The Letter (Nicolas Sparks) as it, too, details a relationship between a wife with dementia and the husband who loves her. But, you know—it ain’t sappy.

It’s a powerful story. All the stories in this collection are powerful. But with the knowledge that 12 years after this collection was published, Alice Munro herself succumbed to dementia, this story carries special poignance. Was Munro already tracking the subtle, selective changes in her own memory? Had she begun fixing yellow Post-its to the flatware drawers?

Hard to know.

Many of Munro’s stories have a strong autobiographical element.

But not all.

In this same collection, there is an absolutely breathtaking piece called Floating Bridge about a woman with cancer who finds herself taken on a kind of joyride by a slightly sinister teenage boy. The setup reminded me a bit of Joyce Carol Oates’s fabulous Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

I steeled myself for a macabre resolution.

But the story ends on an unexpectedly sweet note.

And you realize quite literally that the story is about a woman who is feeling the ground she is standing upon shift from under her.

The brilliance of that actualized metaphor!

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(Munro herself was a cancer patient.

But not until eight years after this story was published.)

Comments

[bleodswean]

She was a QUEEN and I hope she is resting in peace now. She had a time of it at the end, eh. I love Oates passionately, but her King-like qualities (Stephen) somehow in some way take a bit of the shine off her brilliance and Munro's oeuvre doesn't have to contend with THAT!

[mallorys_camera]

Yah. Oates is an unabashed fan of the Gothic. Munro distinctly isn't.

When Oates gets going in full-Gothic vein, she can be a bit... much. 😀

[bleodswean]

It's interesting to me, contemplating writers whom I think are geniuses. Trying to sort out what makes them such and is it sustainable.

I believe that "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is the most flawless bit of writing to have ever been written. That good. And it set a bar for her that she tried to reach and vault, but did she ever??? I mean...yes? But not really? And King's "Salem Lot" was so fucking astonishing, did he ever exceed that?

Whereas Munro....maintained a steady relentless hum of craft and skill that never needed to be contended with throughout her career.

[mallorys_camera]

Trying to sort out what makes them such

Well, Munro was famous for writing and rewriting endlessly. Polishing each sentence with a watchmaker's meticulousness.

Whereas Oates just pours it all out.

That's another of their essential differences. (Oates' love of the Gothic being the first.)

[smokingboot]

I have never read Alice Munro, and now I am going to.

Best of luck with Iggy!

[mallorys_camera]

If you're serious about reading Munro, Hateship, Friendship, etc is an excellent place to start. 😀