I didn't expend one of my gift links on that because I didn't think you'd want to delve into why she stayed silent. A more compelling question is: Why would we be able to continue to read her novels?
December 8, 2024
"This time it’s real. He’s 50, free, a good man if I ever saw one, tough and gentle like in the old tire ads, and this is the big thing — grown-up."
That's the writing of a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Alice Munro, and that's not a flawed fictional character observed by a wise writer. That's Alice Munro expressing her own feelings in a letter, quoted in "What Alice Munro Knew/The Nobel-winning author’s husband was a pedophile who targeted her daughter and other children. Why did she stay silent?"
The article is by Giles Harvey, who writes: "Before the recent news emerged, my own opinion of Munro’s fiction could hardly have been higher. She seemed to have a more direct access to reality than any of her contemporaries, whose work, by comparison, could feel contrived and paper thin.... In the work Munro produced after learning what happened to her daughter, she seems to bear down on her horror and disgust with an implacable resolve...."
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a Canadian Liberal, that turned out to be a Pedo..
color me NOT Shocked
“She said that she had been ‘told too late,’” Andrea wrote in The Star. “She loved him too much and that our misogynistic culture was to blame if I expected her to deny her own needs, sacrifice for her children and make up for the failings of men.”
Don't sacrifice for your children, sacrifice them instead. Don't make up for the failings of men, cover up instead. This is vile and self-serving.
Good thing that the Nobel Prize has not been a reliable indicator of what to read for many years now.
Shades of Marion Zimmer Bradley, except Alice Munro was not an active participant in the abuse.
She is known for writing short fiction although it was said about her that in her short stories "there is as much as in many novels."
++
An excellent book store in Victoria, BC bears her name.
I can't imagine reading her work now. In some cases, it's possible to separate the artist from the art, but this stuff presents a pretty big hurdle. The fact that her fiction often looked at betrayal and abuse while she was herself a party to them makes me distrust her as a writer.
Some on corrupt left are working overtime to normalize pedophilia.
Never read her but I may start. Lots of "felt life" in her stories, apparently.
“Some on corrupt left are working overtime to normalize pedophilia.”
Cookie assured me this would never happen.
Societal norms change over time, “if” your only standard is what society thinks is right or wrong today. There are many things society used to believe were wrong or taboo that we are now required to celebrate.
I see no reason why this should be different.
I have not read any of Alice Munro’s short stories, and cannot imagine myself doing so, but back in the day I was a great fan of Marion Zimmer Bradley, a fantasy/science fiction writer who was renowned within the genre for her novels, particularly her famous take on the Arthurian legends The Mists of Avalon. After her death her daughter and son, Moira and Mark Greyland, not only did Bradley sexually abuse her own children, but her second husband, Walter Breen, was a pederast and Bradley helped procure children, some little boys as young as 8. The whole sick story is very well summarized in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Wikipedia page.
I bought The Mists of Avalon when it came out, and I loved it very much. It would be 30 years before I learned what a despicable person the author was. But I loved the book and still have it in my library. The writing is great, even if the writer was loathsome.
I don't read people's novels because I approve of their politics or personal life. Usually, learning some artist is a creep, sexual degenerate, or Communist, just confirms my ealier decision that their work sucks or has zero attraction for me.
For example, Arthur miller always bored the fuck out of me, and learning he was a communist, and lied about it, just confirmed my dislike. Munro is the same way.
Asimov seems to have been a pedophile as was Arthur Clarke. The Current SF scandal is Neil Gaiman who been accused by 1 million women of sexual assault and harrassment. He doesn't seem to be cancelled though. Just plain ol' sexual assault is pretty mild for SF authors.
Pedophilia, incest, polygamy, and other queer sexual orientations are legal under Democratic law. Discrimination of these queer practices is a hate crime under Loving. #NoJudgment #NoLabels
We live in interesting times.
Neils parents did PR for Scientology. I think he has a good handle on how to squash stories and is rich enough to legally harass people into silence.
His shows are being cancelled and not renewed, while he might have been able to keep ot fairly quiet he's done.
As with Pulitzers, they are Scarlett letters.
As we surmise...
He was just living his truth. Don't be a hater.
Funny things, those Robert Cook assurances.
I read the article. It's quite lengthy and a harrowing read. I'll say this for her: she wasn't much help to her kids, but, on the whole, she seems to have given them a better childhood than she herself had had. That's something.....She wasn't evil, but she was passively involved in evil. That's something too, but not deserving of the lowest circle in hell.......Co-dependency is a thing. Lots of women stick around with drunks or addicts. Those drunks or addicts wreak havoc on the lives of their children. They don't sexually abuse their children. The wounds inflicted on the children aren't so deep as a well or as wide as church door, but when it's comes to soul murder, they'll do.......I have never read anything by Alice Munro, and this article doesn't pique my interest. Still, there are writers with worse sins on their blotter than Alice Munro and they have survived with intact reputations.......Byron was sexually abused as a child. As an adult, he delved into every known perversion and was a negligent parent. He's still studied in school and is mostly forgiven for his many sins.
And those ever-evolving societal norms are so good for the psyche. The next big thing: guilt-free chattel servitude. A TED Talk on that subject coming soon.
1 million women? How did he have time enough to write?....Or eat?
Pedos work to make sure there are women around to protect them from the angry mob. Those women are usually quite vigilant in unwitting defense
A woman without a man is like a fish without her old, reliable, tough and gentle bicycle tire.
And we can’t look at Caravaggio’s paintings because he was a pederast and a murderer.
I've read several of her books of short stories and they are quite good in a subtle, quiet sort of way. I would compare her to William Trevor, the British author. About the other stuff, beats me.
When I read a book, I'm not picturing the author in my mind as I read, I'm picturing the characters and the story. Once in a while, the author can get in the way. It's irksome, because you don't want another character intruding.
I'm not interested in reading anything by this vile creature. She's worse than a criminal, she's somebody that watched another vile human prey on her children, but stayed within doctrine for what some consider a 'dismissable' infraction. And now she has her Nobel prize, something that continues to be debased as a fiat currency for decency and meritable achievement.
I remember reading a book of her short stories when I was in my twenties. The title was something along the line of "Tales of Girls and Women." I quite liked her writing then but not so well as to track down more of her stuff as I did with the English novelist Mary Wesley who didn't start publishing until she was seventy.
Speaking as someone who was molested as a child and so had the trajectory of my life affected (never married and childless and unable to form a stable relationship with a member of the opposite sex until in my fifties) I can understand the inertia that would keep a person in such a relationship but I cannot forgive it. This is a blot on her escutcheon.
Not so bad as Marion Zimmer Bradley, so far as we know, but this is perhaps another case of why we should never assume that virtue accompanies talent or intelligence. Those attributes are tools, not virtues.
Many—perhaps most—authors, artists, and scientists were horrible people. Why is that, I’ve often wondered.
Having been close to Ground Zero when the Jerry Sandusky/Penn State revelations came out, I saw first hand the mental gymnastics people will go thru to deny/minimize what is right in front of one's nose. Frankly, like Munro, looking the other way comes down to the desire to protect one's position in a marriage,family, or community.
There were a whole host of people at the summit of a academia, business and civic life in the Penn State who knew all or major parts of the story. Their inaction still rankles me to this day.
not an active participant in the abuse.
assuming that she didn't ACTUALLY participate in bed with them,
that is still a LOT like saying that guy running Dachau wasn't "an active participant"..
After all, ALL HE DID, was sit and run the camp, he didn't gas any one
After all, ALL SHE DID, was sit and run the house, she didn't do any one
right?
if a child is old enough to chose their sex, they're old enough to chose..
She's 45, mid-life crisis divorced her first husband (and father of her children). Sounds like one of those 20 year high school reunion-type romances. That her 9 year old daughter was part of his attraction to her was something she was willing to ignore. Human, all too human.
This is the same mindset that leads to legal and prevelant abortion.
I can find no source for you claim that Asimov was a pedophile. He groped women, no question, but I can't find any accusations of pedophilia. Clarke seems to have liked teenaged boys.
Name them and show some proof.
Quiet a few articles out there, including one by Malcolm Gladwell, that cast doubt on what happened at Penn State. An article in Skeptic points out that many accusers changed their minds after having "recovered" their memories during therapy. https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/trial-by-therapy-jerry-sandusky-case-revisited/ I know people accept a version of the story that seems to be proved beyond doubt, but a little digging shows a much more complicated picture. Google it and you'll find some articles that point to prosecutorial misconduct, questionable behaviour by therapists, and some avarice on the part of accusers. I have no dog in this fight, but this is an issue that causes hysteria, and for good reason, but this was a media driven incident that allowed little time for reflection. The article in the Times about Munro makes a strong case against her and her husband, and her daughter's story is based on events that she remembers vividly. That's much more plausible.
What dates? Before the 70s child sexual abuse wasn't a public problem, i.e. not on the public radar as a public problem, just a personal moral failing. Like drunk driving used to be before the late 50s. Illegal but not a ratings winner.
Child abuse (non-sexual) arrived as a pubic problem in the 60s. Before that there was spanking and rods, the limits being a personal moral issue even though it interacts with the law at that personal level.
This is not like the Caravaggio problem, where the art and the bad action are separate. The writer's bad action and art come from a mind that understands and judges. The action tells us something about the mind and therefore undercuts the value of the observation and analysis to be found in the writing.
A brave insight. I once read a lot of Munro, and I think these revelations are just particularly damaging for her because her relationships with men and children, and her fraught, almost exhausted view of feminism, are the subjects of her stories. Her later books do have a coldness and a distance: the woman characters, versions of her, are unpleasant and in flight from other people. I took it then as a critique of the lives animated only by the politics of the day. She was no shrill Margaret Atwood. Now I would have to see these women as exhausted by the secrets they kept. You make your own hell, was her theme. I thought it was honest, if unpleasant. It wasn’t honest either.
Yeah, Gladwell always bats 1000. There were adult witnesses to Sandusky. Read the case evidence if you want to know more. There’s a lot of bullshit fantasizing in the second-hand sleuthing industry.
Your point is?
What happens behind closed doors of a home can be harrowing for the children, who often have no one and nowhere to go for safe shelter. Adult children's estrangement is often linked to childhood abuse by those shunned parents who tell friends and extended family that they've no idea what caused the estrangement and/or that the estranged adult-child is the problem.
The fact that her fiction often looked at betrayal and abuse while she was herself a party to them
...makes me wonder, as the article's title says, what did she know and when did she know it? I don't think I've ever read anything she's written, and I do try to keep the art separate from the artist, but a common tenet of writing is to write what you know. If indeed she writes about abuse, well.
I don't hold to that tenet, to be clear. I think a writer can at least attempt to write on any subject. But it is certainly easier to draw on your own experiences.
Thanks a lot, Big Mike. I remember enjoying The Mists of Avalon when I was in college - if only I could labor on in blithe ignorance.
I enjoyed The Once and Future King a lot more - at least I have that.
"tough and gentle like in the old tire ads" ?????
Prof: "This is not like the Caravaggio problem"
Could you elaborate? The only difference I see is that Munro used the written word, while Caravaggio used the painted image.
His paintings are full of violence and homoeroticism, just like his life. 'Chiaroscuro' isn't just his painterly technique - it describes his typical day!
Or is that the point: that Caravaggio's work shows us his life issues, while Munro apparently has been hiding hers from her work?
Since you are both a wordsmith and a visual artist, I trust that you have deeper insight into this than I do. Please help me get clarity from my obscurity! (see what I did there?)
JSM
I don't believe I've read any of her stories. For short stories, I'm more H.H. than Alice.
Daughters with "benefits", neighbors, employees, etc. is trending in our liberal Democracy.
Elizabeth Wurtzel, who died of cancer far too young, was brilliant and beautiful and talented and knew she was an absolutely terrible person. While many here would likely gnaw off their arm to escape her, she wrote with insight about this tendency.
You still would not want to be stuck in an elevator with her.
guitar joe makes my point. There are still so many in and around the Penn State community who deny or minimize what happened to those boys. I suspect their denial is driven by their adoration of Joe Paterno. Saying anything bad about the legendary coach is similar to walking into a Catholic Church and talking sh!t about Jesus.
Divorced middle-aged women are often desperate for men. Predatory middle-aged men understand this.
I don't care about Paterno, although I think he was maligned in this case. What changed my mind was the information that a lot of these young men denied abuse, but then went through counselling and remembered incidents through recovered memories. I'm sorry, but the cases that have been reversed because of this evil trend in behavioral science that has been proven to have no basis in actual science are legion.
Apparently, it was all about Alice.
“I … was overwhelmed by her sense of injury to herself."
Having great talent or even genius does not guarantee someone is a good person. In modern times where a person's history can be known there are so many examples from OJ Simpson, JFK, and Ernest Hemingway to name but a few. Don't hero worship fam. All of us are a mixed bag even the talented. Appreciate their talent for what it is but don't raise the talented to apotheosis. "Don't follow leaders watch the parking meters" said one talented but imperfect musician once. That's good advice.
From the BBC:
In her piece, Ms Skinner said she was first assaulted during a summer visit to her mother and step-father, Gerald Fremlin, in their home in Clinton, Ontario.
She later told her step-mother, who then told her father, Jim Munro, who decided not to confront Alice Munro at the time.
Ms Skinner returned to her mother's home the next year.
The step-mother, Carole Sabiston, is quoted by The Star in a separate news story as saying: "I told her she didn't have to go. But she wanted to spend time with her mother."
It sounds like neither of her parents nor step-mother believed her, or they're all horrible parents. The article says Alice learned of it in 1992, fifteen years later.
So the 9 y.o. spent most of the year with her careless father? That does not sound at all normal for the 70s, even in screwy Canada. The creep claimed she came on to him (typical), but she may have resented her mother. F'ed up family, even without the sexual abuse.
Yes, Tina, secrets are exhausting, an energy sink.
Actually, her first husband's name. He, apparently, also knew about the abuse of his daughter by her stepfather, but kept that knowledge to himself.
Historical imagination.
Asimov's son was arrested with the largest collection of underage videos in California history, video cameras, lighting systems, etc., but somehow got a very special plea deal that didn't go after him for PRODUCING the films.
When she was 16, a friend of mine was at a party in NYC at which Asimov (almost 80 at the time) was present. She was with a classmate from high school. Asimov came over to them and asked how old they were. When they said "16," he replied "But the two of your together would be 32, which is legal." So I wouldn't be surprised.
Alice Munro was just being elevated into sainthood back when I was in the "Creative Writing" academic world in the late 80s—early 90s. I just could never bring herself to really like her stories even though everyone else was just gushing over them. Same thing with Neil Gaiman. His CONCEPTS for stories and books always seemed much better to me than the books themselves, which I could just never enjoy.
I always felt that there was something just a little off or false about both writers' works, as if they were just a little bit soiled or greasy in some way.
I keep thinking of the part in Sandman in which a man has captured a Muse, and keeps her imprisoned and, I think, rapes her, to get an inexhaustible stream of ideas. He ends up being cursed to be overwhelmed with so many ideas that he can't distinguish good from bad and can't keep his attention on any one of them. Cool concept, right? Getting inspiration from a MUSE in some unjust way and then getting a nice poetic-justice curse in return. But why does it have to be rape? Why does the comic--if I'm remembering it right--portray the victim as if she's posing in a skin magazine rather than having suffered brutalization?
A lot of great artists are assholes: selfish, grasping, refusing to pay their debts, cheating on their partners, etc. But most of even the worst of them don't molest children or teenagers or enable molestation. That has to so thoroughly disfigure someone's soul that its effect show up in the art.
"American Gods" was made into a television series. From what I saw the first season was just Ian MacShane driving around the country to meet the various gods and bring them together. Nothing actually happened, so I quit watching.
Best not to think about what Saki got up to. Was Clovis or Reginald autobiographical?
"OJ Simpson, JFK, and Ernest Hemingway ". LOL . What made you put those 3 together. JFK died for his country, and won the medal of honor in WW II. Yeah, he was serial adulterer and sex addict, but y'know...
As for Heminway, he drank too much, and had 4 wives, but otherwise was not too bad, as artists go. Colonel Lantham, USMA and war hero thought Hem was a great man. As for OJ - he was a football player who murdererd two people.
I would agree that the art and the artists should be dealt with separately, but we passed that Rubicon years ago. If the liberal/left. which controls the art and publishing world along with the critics, doesn't like a novelists politics or they're too white or too male, they get cancelled. Or if they're dead, they get memory-holed.
I suppose that makes sense of a sort, if you regard reading as entertainment. I've never read anything she wrote, but my impression is that you wouldn't read it for entertainment. It's the kind of arty garbage you read to make yourself fell superior to someone or other. I don't see how her evident self-absorption needs to interfere with that operation. I suppose that the feeling of superiority is in a sort of kinship with the author; "She and I are superior!". So, yeah, I guess knowing that the author is incapable of effective empathy with her own child lessens one's desire to feel kinship with her. I mean, she's either pathetically weak, or a monster, or both.
"Why does the comic--if I'm remembering it right--portray the victim as if she's posing in a skin magazine rather than having suffered brutalization?"
Hmmmm. Tough one. Did you, by any chance, pay money for this "comic"? Prof?
It sounds like none of the adults wanted to upset Alice. I understand that Mr. Munro owned a very successful independent book store. I wonder if he was afraid of sullying its reputation and/or its connection to a famous and beloved Canadian author if he made a fuss.
“JFK died for his country, and won the medal of honor in WW II. “
He got a lifesaving medal for bad boat handling while saving part of his crew. Not a MOH.
He died 20 years after ww2
When you respond to someone, actually respond to the points they’re making.
She was confronted, not only by her daughter, but by a neighboring couple who told her years earlier that her husband had exposed himself to their young daughter. Her ex-husband knew, but did nothing. He owned/owns the Alice Munro bookstore and apparently put self-interest before protecting his own daughter. He even made her continue living half a year with the molester and sent his own young daughter along to “protect” the other child. He is also culpable of sexual endangerment of a child, two children.
Is it surprising to anyone that, once the adult victim brought evidence (letters confessing the crimes at length), he only received two years probation? The same would happen here. Our laws in several states protect adult victims far more than raped children. Why? Pick your answer.
Levi: we are addressing child sexual abuse. Yes, we had to lobby and educate prosecutors and judges and juries. No, it’s not anything like a lifestyle choice made by consenting partners.
Imagine if someone made you live with someone who stabbed you on the subway. For years. You had no legal rights over him: he legally controlled your life. He stabbed you over and over again. You still couldn’t get anyone to act. I don’t think you would be so lackadaisical about that.
Very temporary history. Look at 2000 years of Judeo-Christian literature. Heck, look at 100 years.
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