Why Didn't Alice Munro Take Driver's Ed???

Not a great day yesterday.

First, the brown chicksa disappeared.

I suspect the rather beautiful golden fox I saw leaping across the hedge when I went outside with my first cup of coffee this morning. (I’m extremely light-sensitive. In the longer months, I tend to rise around 5 a.m., just as crepuscular turns diurnal.)

All day long, the black chicken clucked mournfully as she went about her hunting & pecking rounds.

“Do you think she misses her sister?” Iggy asked.

“Chickens are social animals,” I said. “It makes sense that she would.”

Of course, Ben was always accusing me of anthropomorphizing animals.

Iggy shocked the hell out of me by bending down to pet the black chicken. She obligingly squatted down to accept the caress.

It shocked me because Iggy doesn’t strike me as the type of person to lavish casual ❤️LUV❤️ on animals.

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Then L called to accuse me of stealing all her scissors.

“Are you out of your mind?” I asked. It was not a rhetorical question.

I tracked down Belinda so I’d have a chance to vent, and Belinda said, “You know, I think you may end up having to block Linda.” Which sounded true.

It is really odd how, after all the many, many nice things I’ve done that L’s disease process has somehow painted the twirling villain mustachio on me.

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Finally, Morgan sent me a link to an incredibly sad article written by Alice Munro’s daughter. (This is a link to another article that describes what happened in greater detail.)

Alice Munro is one of my very, very favorite writers. It would be accurate to say I venerate her.

And I have always been proud of my ability to separate the dancer from the dance, to enjoy the works of the artist while disapproving of the artist’s life—that Adolph Hitler! He had a real way with landscapes, you know? Etc, etc, etc.

But this.

I dunno.

To choose the man who sexually abused your child over your child!!! Who unequivocally sexually abused your child—because very often there’s a kind of grey area with sexual abuse; it’s not intentional as such, it’s more a kind of clueless over-reaching, an inability to express love without some kind of libidinous element. (See Sue Miller’s very excellent The Good Mother for one such example.) This is wrong, of course. But understandable and so ultimately redeemable.

This sexual abuse was not like that.

Here is an excerpt from the letter Alice Munro’s husband wrote to her after her daughter Andrea confided the details of her stepfather’s abuse to her mother:



This is so incredibly creepy. To write the kinds of stories that Alice Munro wrote—lyrical and merciless rendings of secrets—but to be harboring such a secret herself. Munro became a character in one of her own stories! Maybe she knew she was going to be all along, and that’s why she began writing.

I don’t know whether I will ever be able to read anything by Alice Munro ever again.

Why didn’t Alice Munro just take Driver’s Ed???