Alice Munro wins Nobel Prize for Literature

October 10, 2013 • 4:25 am

Again from the BBC, we learn that Canadian author Alice Munro (born 1931) has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.  I’m sorry to say I’ve read nothing by her, though this will inspire me to do so. If you’ve read her, please weigh in below.

And next year, can it please be Salman Rushdie?

33 thoughts on “Alice Munro wins Nobel Prize for Literature”

  1. She is a remarkable writer, one of my favorites. The prize is well deserved, and you are in for a treat if you decide to read her. She’s the closest thing to Chekhov on the contemporary literary scene.

  2. Gorgeous, subtle short stories. Sarah Polley made a beautiful movie from her story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” starring Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent, an actor I hadn’t known before, a few years ago. Often quite melancholy, but with flashes of humor. Characters who are intelligent, real people, not cartoons summoned up for the convenience of plotting.

  3. I read the collection of her short stories “Hateship, Friendship…..” a couple of years ago when I was reading alot of literature. Beautiful little stories that reveal the inner lives of the characters through the situations of their lives. Not a whole lot happens in the stories but then not much happened in Joyce’s “Dubliners” or Salinger’s “Nine Stories” either.

    Don’t miss reading at least one of her books.

  5. Like others have noted, she’s exceptionally gifted and she excels and specializes in short-story writing. Her ability to capture the minutiae of life without getting bogged down in heavy description is quite magical.

    Check out “Open Secrets” or pick up an old Granta or The New Yorker…reading one of her stories will pretty much give you an idea of whether you’ll like her style or not.

    I’m not sure about next year, but I suspect Haruki Murakami is gonna be considered for the prize at some point (this isn’t a novel observation, many have said it).

    1. There was a news item on the Japanese news just now, showing people waiting in front of a computer (a live stream, I presume), hoping it would be Murakami. Alas. They already had the champagne ready …

      —

      As for Munro, I read her “The Moons of Jupiter”, and although it has been a while and I don’t have it with me now, I liked it a lot.

  6. Along with William Trevor, Munro is the greatest living writer of the short story in English. This prize is well deserved–and all the more so because she is not a politically minded writer. She is a elegant stylist with a sweeping command of time, setting, and point-of-view.

  7. Alice Munro’s short stories are wonderful. Her stories are frequently published in the New Yorker before they are published as a collection.

    My favourite is Friend of My Youth.

    The intro to this 2012 Globe and Mail article says,
    “She may not have won the Nobel Prize she so richly merits, but Munro’s latest, very personal work proves yet again that she is among our greatest writers.”

    tinyurl.com/lfagzfp

  8. I thought it likely it would be Rushdie this year, with his autobiography about the fatwa just out. So much for the business of prophecy.

    1. Yes Dominic I noticed that as well. The Globe articles rephrases the information “She also becomes only the 13th woman to receive the distinction.”

      This comment makes me shake my head as well:

      Ms. Munro’s longtime publisher Doug Gibson called the Nobel decision “wonderful news for all of us. Canada has just won the Nobel Prize for Literature.”

      No, Alice Munro has won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

      2. I agree. I’m thrilled for Alice Munro.

        Here’s a nice article about her from CBC:

        http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/alice-munro-is-1st-canadian-woman-to-win-nobel-literature-prize-1.1958383

        I have read and thoroughly enjoyed “The Love of a Good Woman” and “Lives of Girls and Women”, and just recently read one of her short stories “Miles City, Montana” which is part of an anthology of many Canadian authors — “From Ink Lake”, Canadian stories selected by Michael Ondaatje.

        I plan to read her latest and what she says is her last book, “Dear Life” which she describes as her most autobiographical.

  11. Regrettably, I suspect that Rushdie will never win it, though if any English language author deserves the recognition it’s him.

    I can’t imagine a Nobel committee willing to risk offending Muslim sensibilities by awarding it to him.

    1. Probably not a chance with Joseph Anton, his brilliant memoir of his time dealing w the fatwa.

  12. She’s an absolute genius. The place to start is probably the collection simply called “Selected Stories” published in the 1990s.

  15. I remember an old editorial cartoon regard the literature prize: it show a group of men surrounded by piles of books with one guy standing in the middle, holding up a book and exclaiming: “We finally found someone that nobody has ever heard of!”

    Also, there’s a local TV personality that used to go to the announcement of the winner every year and exclaim “finally!” when the name was read, also a commentary on the obscurity of many of the winners.

    That aside Munro seems more well-known than the more esoteric choices of the academy.

    1. Perhaps Munro is “more well-known” than others because she writes in our language? This is an unavoidable issue with international literary prizes: people don’t often read literary fiction in translation, and so aren’t especially familiar with authors who write in other tongues than their own.

  16. Small world. I’d never heard of her, but I read very little fiction. I did note that my daughter’s about to marry someone with that name, tho, and now I learn that they’re distant relatives. My daughter writes, too, so she finds this all pretty exciting.

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