This line is so important: “The brutal honesty she deploys on the page is often cover for a life off the page that she can scarcely bring herself to look at.” Implications abound.
This morning I just want to add to what I wrote. For me, not reading Munro is not an implication. I don’t want to merge singer and song as someone else describes the situation. The weird thing to me is the status we give writers. I teach writing. I have seen a lot of life wisdom in people who cannot write super well and I should be as likely to be moved and influenced by them. I believe I am. We all read life as much as literature. Also, the question of style and what we expect from literature comes to mind. Is decency and wisdom an expectation? That slides into something sometimes hard to square with Art that pushes boundaries. Is it always a virtue for art to push boundaries? It probably must live on the boundaries in some way to challenge us. But. Artist beware.
I have no problem continuing to revere Munro’s work, even if she is a monster.
But why is this so common?
At what point do mothers stop protecting their daughters and start competing with them? How does this not end the relationship?? It’s an unfathomable and not at all unusual phenomenon.
whats equally compelling in this evolutionary tie that binds that it often suffocates is, at what point do daughters stop protecting their mothers and live thier lives authentically? When is it okay to tell the disturbing truth about how you put your mothers feelings above your own?
Beverly Cleary wrote in A Girl From Yamhill that a cousin's husband was never left alone with the young girls in the family after she told her mother that he was starting to creep on her. This was in 1925.
I will never forgive my biological excuse of a mother for leaving me with her stepfather when she knew from her own experience that he was a molester. That he "paid the bills" does not negate this.
This was so resonant for me. We have artists lining up for one cause or another and are supposed to believe that they carry some higher degree of understanding and morality than the non artists.
Well they don't.
That said, as for reading Munro in the future, it's the age old question - "Is it the singer or the song that we should admire"
In this day and age of moral scolds, from the right and now increasingly (and maybe now overwhelmingly) from the left, who tell me what I should like, who I shouldn't like, etc., my reaction to this news is to harden my heart and move on. I love Munro's work and will continue to read it and appreciate it with no qualms. If that makes ME a monster, so be it.
I have never understood the Munro worship and always found both her persona and her stories somewhat annoying. Christian Lorentzen pretty much captured everything I feel about Munro in this excellent literary takedown: https://archive.ph/SWusX
When the news broke and the Alice fans were all rending their garments and tearing their hair out, it came to me that her stories are just slightly higher brow versions of what passes as "feminist" angst on Twitter. Munro was the perfect heroine for the enraged editor, who more than a decade ago denounced a critic (male, of course), who had just proclaimed he wasn't interested in Munro, asking him, "How do you not connect to Alice Munro's writing? Are you not human?"
The editor's tweets are now protected so I have no idea how she's coping today. But as someone who never found Munro especially insightful or important as an writer, I'm not left wrestling with any grand contradictions about artists and their art as a result of these horrific revelations. I'm no more surprised about Munro's secret than any other mother who acted the same way in her position. The script is an all too common one.
I am loath to label her an art monster or literary genius either way, as the need to blithely slot a messy human existence into a single identifiable category seems to be the root of the problem. I am more interested in the social strictures that allowed her to exist as both and necessitated her perceived need to go underground as the former in order to become the latter. Maybe it’s the politicians and public figures who set the tone by portraying themselves as paragons of virtue in public while casting aspersions on the general public to induce guilt about failing to live up to their moral examples. Even those of us who don’t purport to be morally superior are driven to remain silent about our own moral failings, for fear of reprehension. Munro channeled this struggle into her writing, to the betterment of our understanding of our own similar struggles and to the greater detriment of her daughter. Her one-dimensional public persona prior to these revelations was ripe for a fall. It’s always when, not if, public figures will be revealed as multifaceted fallible creatures with complicated lives as messy as our own. Yet we continue to revere them beyond reason and express shock and awe when their sins finally surface and they’re revealed to be complicated figures who prompt essays such as this one … ad nauseum.
Monstrous in her codependence, dignified in her helplessness (Munro). I can imagine this playing out over decades, with layers and layers of self deception and distraction. I'm glad her daughter came forward, though waiting until after her mother's death also seems fearful. Perhaps putting her story out there will help her slay the dragon.
There are very specific events one draws the line on as a parent entrusted to keep their child safe — sexual abuse is unequivocally one of them. No hesitation.
I agree. I guess I did a poor job of just trying to suggest we need to feel the most compassion for those among us who have been so damaged by life as to act in ways most of us would consider inconceivable. When I am being honest with myself, I often have to admit "there but for the grace of god go I".
"We can lay ourselves bare on the page while keeping our actual selves in a protective shell." I'd say that part of the laying bare requires building and maintaining that protective shell. In fact, they often feed each other.
No excuses for Munro here, but I don't find it very surprising that someone who shows great courage on the page can't do the same in real life. She was no feminist within her own home. Many women, despite feminism, still find it impossible to confront or challenge a husband or boyfriend. There are just so many reasons not to, as we read in her daughter's essay. Family, social and professional reasons. And of course Fremlin, the predator, knew this. It's why the domestic violence victim rarely chooses to prosecute.
Munro was clearly a very needy narcissist. And a brilliant writer on the human condition, especially the female variety. The two are not mutually exclusive.
I won’t be throwing out my Munroe collection. Actually, I’m eager to revisit her works with this new understanding of her psyche. I suspect she was aware of her daughter’s assault long before she was told. Her life was saintly in its simplicity, yet internally, she navigated a labyrinth of denial, justification, compartmentalization, suppression, silence, and shame.
It’s all too common for parents to protect secrets rather than their children. Munroe, with her extraordinary talent, offers through her characters a glimpse into this unsettling truth. Her insight remains invaluable. What captivates me about Munroe’s writing is her portrayal of lives that appear unremarkable but conceal unsettling realities, including moral decay. Paradox was her domain; she herself was a feminist icon who never lived without a man and couldn’t even drive.
I discovered Munroe during a long, difficult pregnancy and found solace in her depictions of complex women enduring the hard, often horrific work of leading ordinary lives. There I was, feeling alien, my body transformed, and Munroe understood. She knew that a woman’s exterior could disguise an inner turmoil. At nine months, I was ambivalent about motherhood, unsure if I’d made a mistake, resenting in some ways the life inside me. A baby, after all, is a kind of parasite. Munroe explores what happens when natural maternal instincts are absent, the mental and physical contortions required. This is why Munroe’s voice remains essential, no matter how monstrous it may seem.
Essentially, Munroe told her daughter she was done with the selfless work expected of mothers, sacrificing for her children and putting her own happiness on hold due to a man’s perverse desires. It would be a powerful statement if it weren’t a twisted defense of a serial child molester. Munroe sheltered him, normalized his behavior, looked away when he harmed other children, and accepted estrangement from her daughter and grandchildren to stand by her man. While that may be unforgivable, her voice deserves to be heard, because her work and life offer a glimpse into why this story continues to be a common one.
Insightful piece, Meghan, and so well said. As for memoirists (which you address at the end) and speaking the truth, I will just add a comment by Abigail Thomas from a recent interview with Ronit Plank on Let's Talk Memoir. Thomas advised memoirists to sometimes write in third person while drafting. I have found this to be a helpful way to become more objective and honest in my own writing. As for Skinner, I commend her for speaking up in public now. She has created a much needed discussion.
I'm also leery of the timing. and she has 2 sisters and a brother who are also affected by her public proclamations; I wonder if she told them in advance about this piece
You should read the piece. Her sisters and brother all support her and initiated the reconciliation. The step father pleaded guilty in court. He wrote letters in which he describes what he did.
I can't speak for other commenters but I suspect their question is not about the truth of the assault, but instead about Munro's complicity and knowledge.
Until two days ago, I had never heard of Alice Munro. Yet I find your post compelling, as you well-articulated the thoughts I've often had when these "cancellation" situations arise. The most chilling aspect is as you mention, the glee with which some commentator take down an icon.
We have no idea what's going on in someone's head. Why do some women seek out and date/marry men who are already in jail for heinous crimes? That's far different from being in love with someone who later commits a crime and choosing to remain in love with them so it's beyond my comprehension.
When Meghan first started this series a few weeks ago, I commented that memories of our parents can quickly vacillate between demonization and hagiography. For all we know, at this very moment Skinner could be reminiscing about good times with her mother, to be shortly followed by rage . . . and then back again.
I have two wishes: First and foremost, that Skinner finds inner peace and tranquility. Second, that this controversy spurs a serious discussion about the nature of cancellation when we operate on limited information and dispense with nuance or complexity. (I'm not holding my breath on the second wish).
This line is so important: “The brutal honesty she deploys on the page is often cover for a life off the page that she can scarcely bring herself to look at.” Implications abound.
This morning I just want to add to what I wrote. For me, not reading Munro is not an implication. I don’t want to merge singer and song as someone else describes the situation. The weird thing to me is the status we give writers. I teach writing. I have seen a lot of life wisdom in people who cannot write super well and I should be as likely to be moved and influenced by them. I believe I am. We all read life as much as literature. Also, the question of style and what we expect from literature comes to mind. Is decency and wisdom an expectation? That slides into something sometimes hard to square with Art that pushes boundaries. Is it always a virtue for art to push boundaries? It probably must live on the boundaries in some way to challenge us. But. Artist beware.
I have no problem continuing to revere Munro’s work, even if she is a monster.
But why is this so common?
At what point do mothers stop protecting their daughters and start competing with them? How does this not end the relationship?? It’s an unfathomable and not at all unusual phenomenon.
whats equally compelling in this evolutionary tie that binds that it often suffocates is, at what point do daughters stop protecting their mothers and live thier lives authentically? When is it okay to tell the disturbing truth about how you put your mothers feelings above your own?
It’s always the non biologically related male in the household.
I posted this on metafilter:
"our misogynistic culture was to blame" BULLSHIT.
Beverly Cleary wrote in A Girl From Yamhill that a cousin's husband was never left alone with the young girls in the family after she told her mother that he was starting to creep on her. This was in 1925.
I will never forgive my biological excuse of a mother for leaving me with her stepfather when she knew from her own experience that he was a molester. That he "paid the bills" does not negate this.
This was so resonant for me. We have artists lining up for one cause or another and are supposed to believe that they carry some higher degree of understanding and morality than the non artists.
Well they don't.
That said, as for reading Munro in the future, it's the age old question - "Is it the singer or the song that we should admire"
In this day and age of moral scolds, from the right and now increasingly (and maybe now overwhelmingly) from the left, who tell me what I should like, who I shouldn't like, etc., my reaction to this news is to harden my heart and move on. I love Munro's work and will continue to read it and appreciate it with no qualms. If that makes ME a monster, so be it.
If you are truly feminist you never stay with a man who has molested your daughter. It’s just obvious.
I have never understood the Munro worship and always found both her persona and her stories somewhat annoying. Christian Lorentzen pretty much captured everything I feel about Munro in this excellent literary takedown: https://archive.ph/SWusX
When the news broke and the Alice fans were all rending their garments and tearing their hair out, it came to me that her stories are just slightly higher brow versions of what passes as "feminist" angst on Twitter. Munro was the perfect heroine for the enraged editor, who more than a decade ago denounced a critic (male, of course), who had just proclaimed he wasn't interested in Munro, asking him, "How do you not connect to Alice Munro's writing? Are you not human?"
The editor's tweets are now protected so I have no idea how she's coping today. But as someone who never found Munro especially insightful or important as an writer, I'm not left wrestling with any grand contradictions about artists and their art as a result of these horrific revelations. I'm no more surprised about Munro's secret than any other mother who acted the same way in her position. The script is an all too common one.
Lorentzen's piece in the London Review of Books is pretty wonderful.
I am loath to label her an art monster or literary genius either way, as the need to blithely slot a messy human existence into a single identifiable category seems to be the root of the problem. I am more interested in the social strictures that allowed her to exist as both and necessitated her perceived need to go underground as the former in order to become the latter. Maybe it’s the politicians and public figures who set the tone by portraying themselves as paragons of virtue in public while casting aspersions on the general public to induce guilt about failing to live up to their moral examples. Even those of us who don’t purport to be morally superior are driven to remain silent about our own moral failings, for fear of reprehension. Munro channeled this struggle into her writing, to the betterment of our understanding of our own similar struggles and to the greater detriment of her daughter. Her one-dimensional public persona prior to these revelations was ripe for a fall. It’s always when, not if, public figures will be revealed as multifaceted fallible creatures with complicated lives as messy as our own. Yet we continue to revere them beyond reason and express shock and awe when their sins finally surface and they’re revealed to be complicated figures who prompt essays such as this one … ad nauseum.
Monstrous in her codependence, dignified in her helplessness (Munro). I can imagine this playing out over decades, with layers and layers of self deception and distraction. I'm glad her daughter came forward, though waiting until after her mother's death also seems fearful. Perhaps putting her story out there will help her slay the dragon.
You see a monster. I see suffering, a tortured human being. How easy it is to pass judgment on another whose shoes you have never been in…
Allowing your daughter to be sexually abused is a line no one should cross.
Can't someone be both?
Be both what? She was a mother and she was an utter failure at that. And furthermore it was truly disgusting to stay with that man.
There are very specific events one draws the line on as a parent entrusted to keep their child safe — sexual abuse is unequivocally one of them. No hesitation.
I agree. I guess I did a poor job of just trying to suggest we need to feel the most compassion for those among us who have been so damaged by life as to act in ways most of us would consider inconceivable. When I am being honest with myself, I often have to admit "there but for the grace of god go I".
"We can lay ourselves bare on the page while keeping our actual selves in a protective shell." I'd say that part of the laying bare requires building and maintaining that protective shell. In fact, they often feed each other.
No excuses for Munro here, but I don't find it very surprising that someone who shows great courage on the page can't do the same in real life. She was no feminist within her own home. Many women, despite feminism, still find it impossible to confront or challenge a husband or boyfriend. There are just so many reasons not to, as we read in her daughter's essay. Family, social and professional reasons. And of course Fremlin, the predator, knew this. It's why the domestic violence victim rarely chooses to prosecute.
Munro was clearly a very needy narcissist. And a brilliant writer on the human condition, especially the female variety. The two are not mutually exclusive.
And she failed her daughter miserably.
I won’t be throwing out my Munroe collection. Actually, I’m eager to revisit her works with this new understanding of her psyche. I suspect she was aware of her daughter’s assault long before she was told. Her life was saintly in its simplicity, yet internally, she navigated a labyrinth of denial, justification, compartmentalization, suppression, silence, and shame.
It’s all too common for parents to protect secrets rather than their children. Munroe, with her extraordinary talent, offers through her characters a glimpse into this unsettling truth. Her insight remains invaluable. What captivates me about Munroe’s writing is her portrayal of lives that appear unremarkable but conceal unsettling realities, including moral decay. Paradox was her domain; she herself was a feminist icon who never lived without a man and couldn’t even drive.
I discovered Munroe during a long, difficult pregnancy and found solace in her depictions of complex women enduring the hard, often horrific work of leading ordinary lives. There I was, feeling alien, my body transformed, and Munroe understood. She knew that a woman’s exterior could disguise an inner turmoil. At nine months, I was ambivalent about motherhood, unsure if I’d made a mistake, resenting in some ways the life inside me. A baby, after all, is a kind of parasite. Munroe explores what happens when natural maternal instincts are absent, the mental and physical contortions required. This is why Munroe’s voice remains essential, no matter how monstrous it may seem.
Essentially, Munroe told her daughter she was done with the selfless work expected of mothers, sacrificing for her children and putting her own happiness on hold due to a man’s perverse desires. It would be a powerful statement if it weren’t a twisted defense of a serial child molester. Munroe sheltered him, normalized his behavior, looked away when he harmed other children, and accepted estrangement from her daughter and grandchildren to stand by her man. While that may be unforgivable, her voice deserves to be heard, because her work and life offer a glimpse into why this story continues to be a common one.
Is it a common story, though?
Insightful piece, Meghan, and so well said. As for memoirists (which you address at the end) and speaking the truth, I will just add a comment by Abigail Thomas from a recent interview with Ronit Plank on Let's Talk Memoir. Thomas advised memoirists to sometimes write in third person while drafting. I have found this to be a helpful way to become more objective and honest in my own writing. As for Skinner, I commend her for speaking up in public now. She has created a much needed discussion.
Is this proven? I mean, waiting for her Mom to die reduces the reliability of the account. Why broadcast this story? For the daughter’s therapy?
I'm also leery of the timing. and she has 2 sisters and a brother who are also affected by her public proclamations; I wonder if she told them in advance about this piece
You should read the piece. Her sisters and brother all support her and initiated the reconciliation. The step father pleaded guilty in court. He wrote letters in which he describes what he did.
I can't speak for other commenters but I suspect their question is not about the truth of the assault, but instead about Munro's complicity and knowledge.
Until two days ago, I had never heard of Alice Munro. Yet I find your post compelling, as you well-articulated the thoughts I've often had when these "cancellation" situations arise. The most chilling aspect is as you mention, the glee with which some commentator take down an icon.
We have no idea what's going on in someone's head. Why do some women seek out and date/marry men who are already in jail for heinous crimes? That's far different from being in love with someone who later commits a crime and choosing to remain in love with them so it's beyond my comprehension.
When Meghan first started this series a few weeks ago, I commented that memories of our parents can quickly vacillate between demonization and hagiography. For all we know, at this very moment Skinner could be reminiscing about good times with her mother, to be shortly followed by rage . . . and then back again.
I have two wishes: First and foremost, that Skinner finds inner peace and tranquility. Second, that this controversy spurs a serious discussion about the nature of cancellation when we operate on limited information and dispense with nuance or complexity. (I'm not holding my breath on the second wish).