Alice Munro on Writing (canceled post)

Update and content warning for sexual abuse: Taking down the previous "writing inspiration" post because of the following. 

Update 1/4/25

Here is Rachel Aviv’s superb article on the case in The New Yorker: 

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/12/30/alice-munros-passive-voice

It shows in detail in how some people can abuse with impunity if they have enough intellectual jargon (Gerry, the molester) and selfish desire not to inconvenience themselves (Alice Munro). All of Andrea’s pain was just so much grist for Munro’s fiction mill, so what Munro lost by denying the abuse she gained in a Nobel Prize.

The detective who interviewed Munro: “it was going nowhere. She was just disparaging her daughter” (39).

When Munro thought there would be publicity after Gerry confessed and was put on probation for two years (he’d also molested other girls), Munro was prepared to leave him if there was publicity.

There was not, so she did not.

Munro to her biographer Robert Thacker, who apparently did not discuss the abuse in his 600+ page book about her: she was out of touch with Andrea because Andrea is still somehow punishing her mother: “I thought maybe, as the years went by, it would become less necessary for her to make people suffer.” 

First of all, if Andrea was intending to make her suffer—good.

Second of all, it’s all “I, I, me, me, me.” No thought for her daughter.

 

Third of all, she imitates and mocks her daughters (Jenny, who stood up for Andrea, and Andrea), whining “What’s the matter—why can’t you let it be known that you’re married to a pedophile?” Munro’s answer: “I worked for a long time to be who I am,” so my children can just sod off (I added the last part). 

They are monsters.

https://archive.is/2024.07.07-111321/https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/my-stepfather-sexually-abused-me-when-i-was-a-child-my-mother-alice-munro-chose/article_8415ba7c-3ae0-11ef-83f5-2369a808ea37.html

and 

https://archive.is/2024.07.07-154335/https://www.thestar.com/news/in-the-home-of-alice-munro-a-dark-secret-lurked-now-her-children-want-the/article_69a63202-34cd-11ef-83f4-9b4275c26d84.html

That her monstrous husband, Gerry Fremlin--whom Alice Munro defended against HER OWN DAUGHTER--uses Lolita and calls a 9-year-old a "homewrecker" to justify his abuse is just . . . wow. 

P. S. Deleted the comments on the original post for obvious reasons: we're not celebrating Alice Munro in this post.

Update 7/15/24: 

Retired Ontario Provincial Police Detective Sam Lazarevich remembers a very angry Munro accusing her daughter of lying when he visited Munro’s home in 2004 to inform the husband that he was going to be charged.

 In an interview with The Associated Press, Lazarevich said Munro was furious, defended her second husband and the detective recalls being “quite surprised” by her reaction.

“'That’s your daughter. Aren’t you going to defend your daughter?'” he recalls.

https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/canadian-officer-alice-munro-claimed-daughter-lying-abused-111898890