What's so great about Alice Munro?

I'm conscious of sounding hectoring which I don't mean to and people are just spitballing on a web forum. I'm in a different position since the art doesn't mean much to me in this instance but either way 'my relationship to the art' feels like an ugly framing device. For me, when it's this raw, I have a sense of wanting to wait - to give the emotional response a chance to settle.

But, as you say, sympathy aside, perhaps that's all we really have to offer.

yeah man idk, the more i grow as an individual the less i care about Art as some kind of daddy and the more i care about people who overcome trauma. obviously not everyone has to feel that way but in these kinds of conversations with these kinds of artists it always feels like there are a handful of (mostly men tbqf) who are on the side of the metrics and the universal standard of Art and while the other pov is represented it's kind of relegated to something minor. i want to advocate for it as the major thing. art is always with us, we will always have art we feel is great and ineffable and all that, but abuse and such, that's worth fighting for or worth drawing a line in the sand for, because abuse is bad for people, canceling alice munro is not. not sure how that sounds and it's not directed at anyone specifically itt, it's just how i feel.

i do think this comes down to personal exerience, essentially - either you can read her now or you can't, and i think that depends on your own background, your own trauma or lack of it. but i also feel like every time this happens it's really important for people to understand how this kind of thing affects people, to go a little further with the empathy.

for me there are artists who are or were obviously big ol jerks and I can still listen to them, but once they cross the line into something truly darker, it's really hard for me to ever want to see their books on my shelf, or their music in my collection ever again. I'm not sure where the line is exactly, it kind of differs depending on the situation. I know it when I see it.

it's okay not to know the line too! Nor do you have to defend yourself when you see that line comes imo.

For me for example, can I still listen to Grimes? Yes, and pretty frequently. Can I listen to Roisin Murphy? I don't know that I've done so since she revealed herself for what she was. And I listened to Roisin Machine as much as any album in that year or so after it came out.

roisin murphy has been an interesting example for me. being a terf is a kind of abuse i think. at first it was like, oh well this opinion is common, i don't want to stop listening to her. but the more i thought about it, where someone has to be to be like that in public, the more it illuminated about where she's coming from and how shallow she is. and being here, on this message board, with trans people i know and care about, helped bring me around to that too.

there are a lot of women writers writing about young women and girls with a darker or less foreclosed perspective, some of them "high-quality" literary fiction and some of them not. i'd rather read a cute ya author who i know isn't out there tossing their child into a pit, you know?

xp lol

🤜🏻💥🤛🏻

Yeah I know by that same rationale why would I want to listen to some narcissistic user, someone who decided she would enjoy the attention and adoration of the scene that she secretly bore some measure of disgust for, why would I listen to her when I got to listen to Kylie Minogue? Or Fever Ray?

*when I could listen to

haha absolutely

For me, it comes down to if I can enjoy the artwork without the Bad Things the artist has done intruding into my brain.

I know Marvin Gaye was a shit, but I can listen to him without thinking about it for whatever reason.

I can't listen to any Michael Jackson, because I start thinking about abused kids. I can't listen to the Jackson 5, because I think about the little kid singing who would grow up and abuse kids.

If the person is an active, living artist, I don't want my money going to them if they are an abuser.

I had never heard of Alice Munro before this. I love a good short story so I'm tempted based on what was said about her earlier in this thread. And she's dead, so it's not like she's benefiting off of me reading her works. But it sounds like the abuse echoes in the content of her stories, so I probably won't bother.

i always wonder how much i should even know about someone. before the internet i didn't really read much about artists and their lives. i mean, i did, but i don't think i ever learned too much that was scandalous. i read hollywood babylon. but for the most part i didn't seek out juicy tidbits. didn't read a lot of biographies. i liked the mystery of artists. i was always very uncomfortable meeting my heroes.

I know Marvin Gaye was a shit, but I can listen to him without thinking about it for whatever reason.

when i listen to marvin gaye i *do* think about how his entire life was fucked and doomed and how much he inflicted that on others... doesn't interfere with how much i love the music for whatever reason

i tried relistening to early red house painters a few months ago because it was my birthday and that stuff is the core, the heart music to me, but the experience was mostly miserable (how many of those songs are about abusive relationships???). i put on the golden age by american music club after and it was like breathing air again

Idk for me it’s like, art isn’t something that springs out of nowhere, with the person producing a mere conduit. The art is the person. If you don’t know anything about that person, the art will give you some kind of story about them. But once you know some truths about that person, well then it’s not just the art giving you their story, but now their story is influencing how you see their art.

I’m not good at talking about this stuff, sorry. Props to map for being so articulate.

so many great artists seem to be psycopaths lmao, better imho to have other heroes xp

i think your posts about this have really clarified how this stuff affects me, just1n3, as i really suck at talking about it

haha thx justine! hi ivy!

i think i get most depressed when i realize the art only exists so the artist could have access to more people to abuse. (obv we are talking way beyond alice munro now)

There's part of me that wants to spend more time with their work, seeing what made their life not completely wasted or toxic. It's a more magnified version of, say, knowing a pastry chef who's an asshole (I've known a few!) but appreciating what they make because it's their most generous, least fucked-up part.

People who take their own lives...that's where I land closer to what a lot of you are describing here with Munro. It takes a lot for me not be distracted by that, or to see the work as a reflection of that dark impulse.

that's an interesting pov.

Idk for me it’s like, art isn’t something that springs out of nowhere, with the person producing a mere conduit. The art is the person.

You're not having any trouble explaining yourself pithily.

For me I guess when that happens, I see the art as an honest journal of their own life, and it's one that I have to look at with some measure of respect for what they went through. When you have musicians for example who tell stories full of empathy or longing, and meanwhile they're sliding into the DMS of underage fans or something, it just feels like sensitive guy bait meant to lure people in.

So much male '70s soft rock codes in that fashion.

i learned something about an artist whose most famous work was not only profoundly influential for me aesthetically, thematically, etc. but which was likely instrumental in me figuring out i was a trans lesbian, a work that if i ever actually start writing my n*vel it will inevitably be compared to, and what i learned about him suggested that he had not actually internalized the themes of his own work, which is just..... *siiiiiigh*. but it also makes me think about how i expect to hear something unsettling about ***** ***** one day, despite the fact that his best work prioritizes female subjectivity even as its being undermined and abused and destroyed by men, and i think about how artists are often working through nigh-unconscious guilts and regrets in their work, and the art does not, cannot make up for the harm they caused others, but that it doesn't exactly nullify the usefulness of the art and the degree to which it helped me realize things about myself. idk, i think i can read alice munro in the future under these conditions but it's always fraught, unknowable until i get there

Or I don't know things start to come off as justifications for the harm done to other people. And yeah they code as the sort of wistful explanations of the complexities of being a man, and yet why do such complexities lead to them wanting to have a specific, simpleminded pattern of abuse they return to over and over again. Obviously that's just the most common one, there are other forms of abuse or abhorrent views from all genders. Xxp

Xps thanks, I really appreciate that bc ilxors are generally highly articulate and I get self conscious about being much less able to say what I want to say.

I’m a notorious grudge-holder so it’s pvmic for me to renounce my admiration of an artist once I find out they’ve really hurt someone/s. But it’s not the kind of standard I think everyone should have. And if you’ve benefited from the influence of an artist’s work, the way ivy describes, then i especially understand that and respect it.

I was a total die-hard for the Pumpkins until I found out about Billy corgan’s association with alex jones. I happily ignored all the goofy-ass pretentious shit he said before that. Now I just can’t take him seriously. But I still regularly listen to those pre-2000 albums because that music was a gateway for me, and got me through my awful teenage years.

my w1fe told me several years ago that she noticed one of her favorite indie musicians was following all sorts of MAGA accounts, Candace Owens and that type of person, she saw her commenting with "vomit" emojis on some BLM content, etc. she told me this as this artist's most recent, long awaited second album was in the mail. i quietly returned it.

The 500 songs podcast, while awesome, is very dispiriting when so many of those people were awful.

At least we’ll always have Fats Domino and Otis Redding, certified good guys.

i think a lot of successful fiction writers get really good at shutting out the real world/people/irl emotions in order to live in the world they are creating on the page. which is why so many of them have so many wifes/husbands/girlfriends/boyfriends. people get tired of being shut out.
i can remember even my part-time writing used to bum maria out pretty bad because i would shut myself off so completely. i couldn't go back and forth from real world to writing world. i had to stay in the zone. i can only imagine what it would have been like if i was a full-timer.
i also think this can lead to writers getting good at just shutting things out in their real lives that is uncomfortable or hard. or maybe that's just people in general. using their work to avoid things.

so, yes, what i'm saying is that being a full-time writer can make you more sociopathic. haha. i mean its kinda true. i do remember (and i miss) that feeling of writing something long and being really into it and nothing else mattered to me. the world didn't matter. people didn't matter. i liked that feeling!

would anyone prefer to have not learned of this? or is it important to know (even though she’s dead)?

(nb i’m not at all suggesting that the victims should have kept quiet or anything!)

lurking - just wanted to say thx for this discussion it is v helpful to read. between this and the Gaiman stuff it all has really put me into a bad place

I think it's hugely important to know, first because it was important for the daughter to tell, but also because it's impossible to ignore such an event if you want to analyse someone's work.

Otherwise, I think the point of experience is true but it can go different ways. I have heard stories of abuse from people close to me that happened fairly recently, that are close at hand. And always with some people knowing and shutting up. Canada 1976 is pretty far in comparison, even if the letter is already much closer. There is always outrage when you read such, but it is somewhat detached, more part of some great misery.

Even if it feels wrong to compare or order suffering obviously

A complex essay from Brandon Taylor:

What I love about her stories is that they come with an aftermath. They dare to offer the reader a glimpse into that rarely seen world to come. When the choice has been made and one has to get on with it. I was told too late. I loved him too much. Is that not the most Alice Munro thing you have ever read?

Furthermore, it’s a kind of thinking I was raised among. It’s how I got through much of the abuse and trauma of my own life. Well, that’s that. Anyway. Not a shrug. But a setting the shoulder against the stone and pushing onward. It is a kind of thinking common to the rural poor and the working poor, among whom and by whom I was raised. I have struggled for a long time in trying to explain it. It is a world without history. Not a world without a past. But a world without a history, which is a story we tell ourselves about the past. Among my people, the rural and working poor, to make a history out of the past is taboo. To speak of a thing done is to make too much of it. To be fishing for sympathy, and for what, when there’s nothing to be done about it anyway.

makes her stories sound less appealing than i remember

These abuse situations, where a parent fails to protect their child, can often have nuance that at least leads to some sympathy for the parent’s position.

But Munro straight up treated the situation like she’d been cheated on. And tbh this story has some parallels to my relationship with my mother so that’s probably why I have a pretty black and white reaction to it. My own mother *accused me* - not gently inquired with concern - of having an affair with my stepdad when I was 16 (fyi there was nothing like that happening) and it permanently damaged not just my relationship with her but also my stepdad.

wow complex is right. but useful too? thx for sharing, really intense food for thought

she did leave at first. alice munro. after her daughter told her what had happened. but then went back to him. i don't know how long she left for.

gotta figure she was the victim of some kind of gaslighting and abuse as well, it makes sense bc you get the sense that this guy was a smooth-talker who intellectualized his toxicity, made it poetic, acknowledged his flaws and his imperfections, tied everything up in a nice little bow, and would love to get into just how unfair it was to hold him to impossible standards, how in being a fallible man prone to what all men are prone to, he was taken advantage of by a duplicitous female. her returning to him is something you see a lot of victims do, people who have been tied up in horrible relationships for so long, justifying not just what's done to them but done to others. not that it excuses what she did to her own daughter whatsoever, plenty of people out there would have fled the situation, or killed the fucking guy.

yeah i suspect a.m. was damaged by abuse earlier in life too. people who have been abused tend to stick with abusers later on. the thing about accusing a 12-year-old of being a homewrecker and a sexual threat, that kind of damage, you only do that if it was done to you once upon a time and you haven't dealt with it afaict. my experience is similar to justine's in that my mother was the one who was treated like that, and she was sexually abused pretty heavily, by her father. she didn't reckon with it, she was in great pain, but ultimate she chose the side of her abuser and was very emotionally abusive, cruel, and narcissistic to me. thank god she didn't abuse me sexually. the rest of that side of the family, that kind of thing of sexually weaponizing minors in order to justify the abuse of men, that was definitely happening with cousins and so forth. anyway that's where i'm coming from when it comes to this story so it's impossible for me to see straight about it. i have nothing against anyone who continues to read and enjoy a.m., in fact i'm maybe a little jealous haha. but there's always joy williams :). i think she runs an animal sanctuary in wyoming or something, i'm pretty sure she's safe.

basically if you've internalized "i am worthless" it's very easy for you to treat others esp your own children like they are worthless too.

I find Brandon Taylor's supreme confidence in the value of his thoughts, and the lesser value of other people's thoughts, annoying as usual.

A certain "There's no right way to think about this, but my way is the rightest" kind of vibe

“Before Alice Munro's husband sexually abused his stepdaughter he targeted another 9-year-old girl. Munro “suspected that her husband might have raped and murdered [12 yr old] Lynne Harper.” It’s increasingly clear that Alice Monro was a sociopath savant.https://t.co/zdgvt0kS58 pic.twitter.com/G9oqqUvaRn

— Tabatha Southey (@TabathaSouthey) August 3, 2024

what the fuck is a "sociopath savant"?

the fuck even knows

The full story: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/08/magazine/alice-munro-andrea-skinner-abuse.html