Munro made the old seem new

Since Alice Munro’s death on May 13, the world has been full of wonderful tributes to my friend. She has been such a major figure in so many people’s lives that it is hard to produce anything really new.

- DOUGLAS GIBSON

But that is fine, because Munro’s readers knew that nothing in her work was really new. She had a genius for making the old seem new, and, for making the ordinary extraordinary.

Munro and I published 12 collections of short stories together, to my eternal pride.

When I first met Munro in 1974, she had moved back to London, Ont. I was thrilled to have lunch with her there, because I had read her first three books and could see that her writing was so good that for her the sky was the limit.

What I found, however, was that her writing career was in crisis.

Everyone — other writers, book reviewers, booksellers, publishers — everyone was telling her to stop writing short stories and to start writing novels.

“Nobody will take you seriously as a short story writer,” they all said.

And because EVERYONE was saying it, she believed them.

So, she had stopped writing the short stories that seemed to come naturally to her and was trying to write a novel. But the change of pace made it hard. She was “blocked” as they say, unable to write at all.

I said, “Alice, if everyone is telling you to stop writing short stories, they’re ALL WRONG. You’re a great short story writer. I’m a publisher and if you were to spend the rest of your life writing short stories, I’d be delighted to publish them and I’d never, ever, ask you for a novel.”

That was what she needed to hear. She signed up with me at Macmillan of Canada (and later moved to follow me to McClelland & Stewart), starting with “The Progress of Love” in 1978.