The Oeuvre of Alice Munro

I'm currently reading Alice Munro's first collection of short stories called Dance of the Happy Shades. My enthusiasm for it drove me to purchase nearly every collection of short stories she's ever published. The volumes now sit on my floor in my bedroom waiting for my perusing eyes.

The idea for studying a single writer's body of work came to me from Pam Painter's revision class at Emerson College. Choosing Alice Munro had to do in part with her being considered the best short story writer in the last century, in other part with Anni Shamin, a fellow writer, who mentioned planning to do this very thing: read all of Alice Munro during the summer.

I remember thinking of The Beggar Maid, the only complete volume of Munro's stories I had read and wondering how much of her I could take. Perhaps it's because I read the book as assigned reading and perhaps as a class we talked all the magic out of it. But the prospect of a Munro summer didn't quite appeal to me.

That is, not until I started reading Dance of the Happy Shades. Almost all of the stories are written from the child to young adult's perspective. Yet Munro manages to never devolve into the Young Adult category. They also have a sense of humour, which I did not expect from Munro. And the writing. The writing. It is the epitome of fine.

After meeting Anthony De Sa, whose linked short stories were so well embraced by Canadian readers, and my recently sprung but ever deepening infatuation with Munro, also a Canadian short story writer, I can't help but feel a buoyancy about my future as a writer. You gotta take hope that feeds your ambition where you can get it.