Between the Lines / Peter McDermott
If there were to be a designated "greatest living writer in the English language" then many readers and indeed writers would likely choose a woman from rural Ontario who turns 80 on Sunday (July 10th).
The biennial Man Booker International Prize was thinking along those lines in 2009 when it made Alice Munro its third winner. (Philip Roth became the fourth recently.)
American novelist Jane Smiley, who chaired the judges' panel that year, reported that picking a winner from the 14 nominees had initially been "a challenge," but Munro had won the panel over. Smiley said: "Her work is practically perfect. Any writer has to gawk when reading her because her work is very subtle and precise. Her thoughtfulness about every subject is so concentrated."
The Canadian, born Alice Ann Laidlaw, simply said after she received the award at a ceremony at Trinity College, Dublin, that she was "totally amazed and delighted."
Munro, who is of Scottish ancestry, has always acknowledged the influence of Irish short-story writers, particularly her fellow New Yorker contributors Frank O'Connor, Mary Lavin and William Trevor.
The last named has returned the compliment and later generations of Irish writers have fallen under her spell. Joseph O'Connor, author most recently of "Ghost Light," told the Echo: "Alice Munro's stories are great because they are masterpieces of compression. While often appearing very simple, they are charged with meaning. Also, she always knows what to leave out of a story, creating a desire on the part of the reader to walk in."
Belinda McKeon, whose first novel, "Solace," has just been published, said: "Munro's fiction is extraordinary for the way it combines absolute calmness with absolute precision; she knows that the tiniest human foibles are often the ones which wind up shaping a life. I read her stories again and again, and 'Chance' and 'Tricks' are two of my favorites."
The Longford-born writer added: "Seeing Munro being interviewed onstage at the New Yorker festival a couple of years ago was a real highlight for me -- a highlight not just of the festival, but a highlight full stop."
American novelist Richard Russo in a recent interview in the Boston Phoenix said: "I think the knock on short stories is that they can be slight when compared to a novel, but you always feel when reading an Alice Munro story that there is a novel there that she has condensed, somehow, into 30 or 35 pages, and the characters are just as rich as characters you meet in novels."
Sometimes the praise itself is compressed. A few years back in the hipsterish Brooklyn outlet The L Magazine, Mark Asch summed up her fans' view with the line: "Alice Munro is the windshield and pretty much every other living writer is the bug."
