Who Do You Think You Are? (Or: I Love Ice Cream!)

Ordinarily I'm a novel girl, myself.

It probably started back in grade one, when I was given the burgeoning-nerd's equivalent of a Golden Ticket: admittance into the "big kids" section in the school library. While the rest of my class was stuck reading the Little Mr. and Miss oeuvre (lovely in its own right), I sailed smugly past them, down the forbidden stairs and straight into Chapter Book Land.

Learning to read was probably the most explosive thing that has ever happened to me in that nothing before or since has fostered such continual transformations of my worldview. It was tremendously freeing, and I quickly grew addicted to the high of literary escapism. I'm still teased for blowing off a friend "because I was too busy reading," and I can't actually remember the summer between grades two and three except for the sound of flipping pages.

If reading was my vice, then novels (or their chapter-book-predecessors) were my drug of choice. Their quality was irrelevent; whether it was E. Nesbitt or Ann M. Martin, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz or Sweet Valley High, it was all devoured with equal enthusiasm.

(Except for autobiography. There were a few years around junior high when I loathed anything first person. This made I Am David excrutiating in grade eight. That and the fact that it was taught by Miss McKay, who also taught me Phys. Ed. I'm sure that every time she opened her mouth about the protagonist's motivation I expected her to make me do push-ups.

Of which I could do four at the time. But I'm up to seven now, so maybe I should give the book another shot, too.)

It's not surprising that I majored in English, nor that I ended up gravitating toward the novel. Sure, I did my time with poetry. But poetry is kind of like an extra thick milkshake from BDI. If you try to just sip from the top, you only get the watery, melted stuff and it gets all over your face. You have to go deep - all the way to the bottom - with a straw that concentrates your efforts. But it's super hard work cuz it's so very thick. And rich - too much of it and you just feel sick.

Plays were pretty great, too, especially ol' Will. But they're like a chocolate dip - you have to break through the outer shell of characters and plot and jesting to get to the real stuff underneath, and sometimes it's too tempting to just eat the chocolate and not go any further.

But, ah, novels. They of the long story arc, in-depth characterization, narrative structure, cohesion. The more complicated the better - hence the specialization in Victorian Lit, I guess.

[I suspect this is why Middlemarch is my favourite book ever. Doesn't get much more novel-y than that. I remember a teaching colleague striding into the staff room and asking incredulously, "You assigned them MIDDLEMARCH?! Are you crazy?" D*mn straight. They're the better for having read it. Even if they don't think so. In fact, the world would be a better place if everyone read it. You can bet your bottom dollar there wouldn't be a recession right now if all those bankers had considered the object lesson of Fred Vincy. And five bucks says we wouldn't be in Iraq if someone understood the inter-connectedness of humanity like Eliot.]

Novels are the Goog of literature. (For the uninitiated, a Goog is a BDI special: a blueberry milkshake topped with bananas, an upside-down hot fudge sundae, peanuts, whipped cream, and a cherry.) They've got everything! The richness of the ice cream and the lightness of the fruit. The sticky sweetness of the fudge and the crunchy saltiness of the peanuts. There's a different variety in each bite, each chapter.

The one type of literature I just couldn't quite do was the short story. Sure, I read my Chekhov and Tolstoy like a good girl should. But short stories just seemed like kids' vanilla cones with sprinkles. Good and all, but no real depth once you got past the maddeningly few bright spots. Plain, simple, and ultimately not enough to do much more than whet your appetite.

Then I discovered Alice Munro.

I read her first in university, and was extremely taken by her easy, deceptively-simple style. She writes about ordinary people in seemingly ordinary ways. At first, you think it's a vanilla cone. But then, you realize, you've just been focused on the whipped cream. There be peanuts underneath. And hot fudge. And echoes of blueberry milkshake, subtle but distinctive. In truth, her stories are mini-Googs.

But what really made me love her was when I read her introduction to Selected Stories:

I did not "choose" to write short stories. I hoped to write novels. When you are responsible for running a house and taking care of small children, particularly in the days before disposable diapers or ubiquitous automatic washing machines, it's hard to arrange for large chunks of time. A child's illness, relatives coming to stay, a pile-up of unavoidable household jobs, can swallow a work-in-progress as surely as a power failure used to destroy a piece of work in the computer. You're better to stick with something you can keep in mind and hope to do in a few weeks, or a couple of months at most. [...] I took to writing in frantic spurts, juggling my life around until I could get a story done, then catching up on other responsibilities. So I got into the habit of writing short stories."

How can you not love a woman who admits that she has to fit her creativity in between the spin cycle and after-school snacks? This, I can understand. I can barely squeeze out a few blog posts now and again, much less an entire story. A novel is utterly out of the question (although I have been known to while away pleasant hours imagining how chagrined Oprah will be when I pull a Franzen and decline to be in her Book Club. Is she still doing that? Don't tell me if she isn't - you'll destroy the daydream. Wait, do tell me - it would make my heart happier knowing that millions of women are now being given the freedom to choose for themselves what goes in their bookbags).

Alice Munro writes about the things that matter most - people loving one other, hating one other, being petty with one other, being gracious with one other. Her characters are so human that they don't suffer from the relative lack of description they receive. In some ways, it's hardly escapist literature at all, so close to home it is - it feels effortless and ordinary, yet it stays with you long after you've moved on to the next story.

I was absolutely thrilled to read this week that Munro has won the Man Booker International Prize. It's so incredibly well-deserved, and I smile thinking about the readers who will now hear of her and find out how lovely her works are for themselves.

So, summer is upon us, everyone - march out to the Jake Epp Library or your favourite online bookstore and get yourself some Munro! Treat yourself to some mini-Googs on me.