Until this week, if you had asked who is the greatest living writer working in English, perhaps the likeliest, and arguably best, answer would be Alice Munro.
The author, who died on Monday at 92, was known for her virtuosic short stories. She won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013, the first Canadian to do so (though that distinction is a subject of some dispute). In 2004 Jonathan Franzen, in a review of her collection "Runaway," wrote that Munro had "a strong claim to being the best fiction writer now working in North America," exhorting American readers to seek her out.
Canadian readers have long celebrated her — I speak as a Canadian when I suggest that she was probably the most revered figure in the country. (Sorry, Wayne Gretzky.) The chorus of voices in praise of her work is a testament to how widely she was read and loved.
She also existed as an aberration in the modern literary world: an artist almost solely focused on a single form (the short story), and one who eschewed promotion and never strayed far from her rural Ontario roots. This, too, serves as a kind of inspiration, as the novelist Sheila Heti notes in a guest essay this week. Heti is also Canadian, and also widely celebrated beyond the country's borders, though her writing, as she notes, is quite different from Munro's. Yet Munro, in her dedication to artistic rigor, still served as "a North Star for many writers and was someone I have always felt guided by," Heti says.
Munro's writing career effectively ended when she announced her retirement in 2013, but many readers' relationship with her is just beginning. For a starting point, follow Franzen's advice and read "Runaway" or, really, any of her collections. It's safe to expect that Munro's days as a North Star, for writers and readers, will continue indefinitely.
Read the guest essay:
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 | | Bryan Adams/Trunk Archive |
Guest Essay I Don't Write Like Alice Munro, but I Want to Live Like HerWe are very different writers, but I have kept Alice Munro in mind, daily and for decades, as an example to follow. By Sheila Heti |
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