In Search of Alice Munro
By John RC Potter
When I was in high school I had the good fortune to meet and interview Alice Munro. She lived in my hometown of Clinton, located in the heart of farming country in southwestern Ontario, in the vast country that is Canada. At that time, in 1977, Alice Munro had already gained an international reputation as one of the world’s best fiction authors. However, she was not yet as celebrated as she would be in future years, culminating in being bestowed the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013.
How did I come to have this glorious opportunity to meet Alice Munro? It was rather serendipitous in nature. At that time in the Province of Ontario, students still had the option to attend Grade 13. In essence, a finishing year for those who chose that path because they were destined for university and, supposedly, charmed professional and personal lives. I was one of the rather small and rarefied (ie. nerdish or bookish by nature) group of students who were enrolled in the Grade 13 Canadian Literature class – commonly referred to as CanLit.
I would never have had the chance to interview Alice Munro if my friend had not been the son of an English teacher at my high school. Paul’s mother was a highly respected and worldly woman, as well as the Head of the English Department. Moreover, she knew Alice Munro! As a result, Paul’s mother procured for him a meeting with the celebrated author, as background for an essay that he was writing for our CanLit teacher. Paul asked me to accompany him because everyone in the class knew that I loved Canadian literature, wanted to become an author, and had in fact read most of Munro’s works that had been published up until that point in time. Therefore, that was the impetus for my fortuitous meeting with one of Canada’s – and the world’s – most accomplished writers of fiction.
The meeting – or interview as I liked to think of it – had been arranged to take place at Bartliff’s Bakery, a well-known and long established eatery and coffee shoppe in the town. Townspeople knew that Alice Munro had come to live in their midst and that her second husband, Gerald Fremlin, was a Clintonian; for the most part they tended not to make a fuss about her, and in fact, rather ignored her. I expect most people in the town at that time had not read her literary works, and perhaps tended to relegate Munro to the general category of artist, and thus rather suspect and viewed askance. As my own mother proclaimed with conviction when I had first told her that I wanted to become an author, “But writers are weird!” That comment always seemed strange to me: it was perhaps a rather telling statement considering my mother sometimes wrote poetry, albeit only for her own purpose and pleasure.
In order to prepare for what was in my mind the interview of the century – a veritable meeting of the minds – I reread Alice Munro’s only novel, ‘Lives of Girls and Women’, as well as became reacquainted with stories from ‘Dance of the Happy Shades’ and ‘Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You’. I told Paul that I was well prepared in advance for the meeting with Munro, and that he had nothing to worry about in terms of material for his essay on the author, in case he was not. Out of the mouth of babes!
For practical purposes, at the time I lived with my maternal grandmother in an attractive red brick, ranch-style home near the high school. As I recall, on the day we were to meet Alice Munro, Paul came to pick me up. We were both excited and nervous about our first meeting with someone of such importance and renown. After parking the car, Paul and I walked to Bartliff’s Bakery, which is situated at the junction of the main thoroughfare and Rattenbury Street, one of the most venerable addresses in the town. Of particular significance, Bartliff’s Bakery is kitty-corner to the Clinton library, originally and officially known as The Stavely Reading Room, one of the most impressive and historical buildings in the town. In 2018 a bench in Munro’s honour would be placed on the library grounds, inscribed with a reference to her Nobel Prize in Literature. However, in 1977 when my friend, Paul, and I met Alice Munro and interviewed her for his CanLit essay, the author’s wider recognition and respect by the majority of Clintonians was in the future.
When Paul and I entered Bartliff’s Bakery we looked around and spotted Alice Munro sitting inconspicuously at a table. If I had not known that Munro was in the restaurant, I would probably have been unaware that she was a person of any particular importance. She fit right in like any other Clintonian would have; but that said, there was an air about Munro that seemed to suggest there was more to her than what met the eye. We went to her table and introduced ourselves. I recall that the author was dark-haired and attractive. Paul and I began to ask our questions. I now wish that we had tape-recorded the interview, not that it would have been a revelatory piece of journalism, but at least for posterity’s sake!
Munro struck me as rather shy and retiring on one hand, and yet had such presence on the other. I do not recall all the questions that Paul and I had prepared for the meeting, except for one that I had felt indicated my nascent but piercing research skills. I made reference of course to Munro’s works of fiction and in particular, ‘Lives of Girls and Women’, which we had read in CanLit class. In my reading and revisiting of Munro’s stories prior to that time, I had perceived there was a certain aspect that may well have some deeper significance. It was my final question, and I asked it with all the seriousness and preparedness of a star reporter.
“Ms. Munro, in reading your works of fiction I have noticed there is often reference to dust. Is there any particular symbolic meaning to the presence of so much dust in some of your fiction?” I stared intently at Munro, feeling I had scored a major point. I imagined my interview being published in major national, and perhaps even international, magazines, a Clinton boy who made his mark!
Alice Munro appeared to give the question careful thought and slow deliberation. I was waiting for Munro to tell me that of all the people who had interviewed her or asked about aspects of her work, that I was the first one to discover the overarching importance of the presence of dust in selected pieces of her fiction. Instead, finally Munro smiled slightly, and responded something to the effect, if that were the case, it was probably because, when she was a young girl, there were not many sidewalks nor paved streets in towns at that time, including in Wingham (near where she was raised on a farm). In other words, if there happened to be an inordinate presence of dust, there was indeed a prosaic reason for it. I felt somewhat deflated and embarrassed, but Munro had such a calming presence and kind smile that I was not unduly perturbed.
When it was clear that there were no more questions, and indeed not going to be any revelations that would serve to inspire either Paul or me to sit down and write a thesis on Alice Munro’s body of work directly afterwards, our meeting with the author came to a close. We thanked Munro profusely and indicated what an honour it had been to meet her, and how fortunate we were to have done so. However, I doubt that Paul and I realized then what a marvellous and rare opportunity we had been given by his mother, due to her connection with Munro.
Paul and I left Bartliff’s Bakery literally walking on air. It was only when we were in his car that it really hit us that we had done something that few people had previously, and certainly not high school students like us. We had met the celebrated author, Alice Munro, and interviewed her! We looked at each other and had the same inspired idea. “Let’s see where she goes when she leaves the restaurant!”, I exclaimed. In short order Paul had turned the car around and drove to the main thoroughfare. “There she is walking down the street!,” he exclaimed. We drove past her as Alice Munro sauntered down the main street, looking in store windows. Did she have any idea that those two high school students who had just interviewed her were now following her every step like obsessed, starstruck fans?
In Clinton it was then the norm for young people to drive around town, usually from the north end to the south, or vice versa, and back again. It was particularly a ritual in the evening and on weekends. Paul and I did just that for a few times whilst keeping track of Munro. On one of our north-south tours we lost her! “Where did she go?,” I cried out. We drove around, in search of Alice Munro, who was somewhere in central Clinton. No doubt unknowingly, she had given us the slip! After our momentous interview with the author, we did not want to give her up just yet.
“I see her,” Paul said, “she’s coming out of that store.” He sped up somewhat in order that we were abreast with Munro as she made her way further down the main thoroughfare: in my imagination, in essence a literary ship sailing with a sense of purpose in a southwesterly direction, no doubt toward the author’s charming home on Frederick Street.
Paul and I did not want Alice Munro to notice that she was being tracked so earnestly, thus we sometimes let her out of our sight and did the odd detour around the town. We certainly did not want Munro to regret having met us that day, coming to the erroneous conclusion we were a couple of Clintonian stalkers. It was obvious that Munro was headed home. During one of the last sightings we had of her, Munro had almost reached her destination. By the time Paul turned the car around to go back down Frederick Street, the author was apparently ensconced in her home, hopefully unaware that she had been pursued by two literary fans.
I do not recall how well Paul did on his essay that dealt with Alice Munro, but I expect he received a very good grade for it from our CanLit teacher. The following year both he and I attended the University of Western Ontario, where Munro herself had studied. Eventually I became a teacher. Several years later my Master of Education thesis dealt with Munro’s work. I contacted the author and she kindly agreed to respond in writing to a list of selected questions. After several years teaching in the London area, I moved overseas. Although I have been an international educator in a range of countries (Indonesia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Israel), I continued to read and re-read Munro’s fiction.
One of my sisters would always inform me via email when a new Alice Munro book was on display in a gift shoppe in Clinton. Being a friend of Munro’s, the proprietor of that gift shoppe asked the author to sign copies of her book that could then be sold there. My sister always purchased a copy of each new, autographed Alice Munro collection on my behalf. I would then collect them during vacations when I was back in Clinton staying with my sister. One of my most treasured possessions is a signed copy of Munro’s ‘Too Much Happiness’ in a Turkish edition entitled ‘Bazı Kadınlar’. It is not a direct translation of the English title, rather the name of one of the stories in the collection (‘Some Women’). Apparently Munro had in her possession copies of her collected works in other languages, as provided by her publishers. I may well have been the only person to receive a signed copy of one of the author’s translated books from her, or at least almost certainly the only recipient to whom she gave one of her books published in Turkish.
According to my sister, who is also a friend with the owner of the gift shoppe, when Munro signed the Turkish translation of ‘Too Much Happiness’, she was rather intrigued and pleased that it would be ending up in my hands. Apparently, she had remembered me as one of her devoted readers, and I expect she recalled that I had interviewed her all those years ago in Bartliff’s Bakery, and had contacted her when working on my Master of Education thesis. I recently checked the English language version of ‘Too Much Happiness’, which my sister had acquired for me. It is not only signed but personalized with a brief message, ‘To John, Alice Munro’. I went immediately to the integral story, ‘Some Women’, set in what is commonly known as ‘Munro Country’ by those who read her fiction or write about it. The opening passage makes a reference to dust, which took me back to that moment over forty years ago when I had the unique opportunity to meet the author, and asked my key question.
Over the intervening years when I would be on vacation in Clinton, one or other of my sisters and I would sometimes drive by Alice Munro’s distinctive white, Victorian cottage-style home on Frederick Street. It was reassuring to know that my favourite author was still living there and writing her stories. Even after her husband passed away, Munro would spend part of the year at her home in Clinton. A few years ago Munro sold her house and is no longer in the town, indeed a loss for the townspeople. Although for several years new fiction by Munro has not been published and she may have retired from writing, I like to think that she is still creating stories that deal with the vagaries of the human condition – about life, love and loss – and the extraordinary aspects of ordinary lives. For that reason, I am still in search of Alice Munro.
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John RC Potter is an international educator. He was born in the small town of Clinton in Canada but is currently living in Istanbul, Turkey. John completed his Honours Bachelor of Arts (English and Drama), degree as well as his Master of Education degree, at the University of Western Ontario (London, Canada). When in high school in Clinton, John had the opportunity to interview the Nobel Prize-winning author, Alice Munro, who resided in his hometown. It inspired John to begin creative writing and was the inspiration for this non-fiction story. Due to the demands of work during the intervening years as a teacher, principal, and college counsellor, his creative writing endeavours have been irregular. He had two poems published previously, as well as more recently stories in the Bosphorus Review of Books: The Fern That Fell (March 2022) and Ruth's World (May 2022). Due to having been without work commitments for several months during the pandemic, John was able to take a renewed focus on his writing, including this story, In Search of Alice Munro.
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