Person 2 Person: Alice Munro

welcome to a special edition of person-to-person I'm Paula Todd today we bring you a rare gem an interview with the extremely private literary giant Alice Munro she's won every major literary prize in this country three Governor General's Awards two killers and major accolades around the world Monroe's writing opens a window onto life in small-town southern Ontario but brilliantly captures the universal complexities of human emotion her writing has been compared to check offs and likened to a mirror on the heart but when it comes to Monroe's own life she herself hasn't revealed much at all that is until now today the woman behind the words candidly shares her story how she felt suffocated by the daily routine of running a home the debilitating writer's block that's plagued her career and the heart-wrenching death of her second child today I'm person-to-person open secrets with Alice Munro all the writers are winners today but we have to pick one winner and that winner is Ellis Munro quite a long time ago when I was fairly young I worked in a bookstore in Victoria BC and people would come in and chat with me there wasn't that much business and some people would say as a matter of pride of course I never read a Canadian book and other people would say as a matter of further distinction oh I never read fiction I can't get what it's all about and this was a pretty general attitude at that time but it isn't now Alice Munro is our living literary treasure for almost four decades she's thrilled readers with her spare prose and sharp insights into the human heart the author of such books as open secrets and friend of my youth she's won the Governor General's literary award for fiction three times and the Giller Prize twice she's also much admired and acclaimed in the US and Europe she's very unique greatness a boner that she draws people to her she doesn't have to go out and tell herself or put herself into other people's eyes of consciousness because she manages she's that magnetic quality that she draws us to her why alice is so extraordinary has to do with the clarity of her characters they come to the page fully form they have real lips they aren't being pushed around by leave by the writer they are evolving as as you read them and you get inside the story in a way that is extraordinary the first time I read Alice Monroe I was in junior high school and as soon as I finished that first story I was in love I thought she knows more about me than I knew about myself and I still I still feel that way I was so excited that I wrote a fan letter to miss Monroe and I told her how much her work meant to me and I urged her to keep writing I'm so glad she followed my advice Alice Monroe started life as Alice Laidlaw on July 10 1931 she was born into a farming family on the outskirts of Wingham Ontario her father Robert Laidlaw raised foxes her mother Anne a former schoolteacher developed Parkinson's disease when Alice was just 10 so much of Monroe's adolescence was spent doing housework as her mother's struggled with her illness after high school Monroe won a two-year art scholarship to the University of Western Ontario there she met James Monroe the two married in 1951 and moved to Vancouver over the next 13 years Monroe gave birth to four daughters despite a hectic schedule as wife and mother she managed to write her short stories by the early 1970s her literary career was launched with the groundbreaking collection lives of girls and women she quickly became part of Canada's literati in 2002 Alice Monroe underwent heart surgery now in her 70s she's enjoying her success and all that it brings notoriously shy of the media spotlight I had a special opportunity to speak with Alice Monroe about the writers journey when you were a young woman thinking how much you wanted to be a writer did you ever imagine it would be like this ah when I thought of being a writer when I was a girl in my teens I thought it would be a great success before I was 25 I thought that I would go to uh somehow I thought that I would go to England and meet Laurence Olivier and I had a tremendous crush on at the time and I sort of discounted the fact that he was married then - Vivian Lee and and I would have a wonderful blue velvet ballgown and I mean all this stuff was part of being a great success we're talking about when I was about 14 here I had have written one novel which was sort of the weathering heights of the 20th century this was not I may say a dream that I confided to anybody because it would have been highly ridiculous and I realized that so where did the stuff of the fairy tale come from where I was a young woman for breeding I read so much and I almost immediately from reading came the idea of just well you know a very dear friend of mine Jack Hodgins said that he read and read and it seemed like a world of magic to him and then one day he thought I want to be part of the magic and that is exactly what I felt it wasn't enough anymore just to have these stories it was making up my own story which would be of course highly imitative of the stories that I loved but I had a long walk home from school and it was quite a brutal walk but I made up stories all the way and I did that every day and I would be very annoyed if anybody picked me up and gave me a ride and took away at that time because I wasn't brought up in a in a community that thought what we call creativity now was sort of normal what did they think they thought maybe it was normal for a few people who lived in other countries and maybe even fewer people who lived in Toronto but not for us not for a young woman you were the oldest in the family yes so what did that mean what fell to you as the oldest it fell to me to take over quite a bit of the housework because my mother was quite a ill she had Parkinson's disease which you know it takes a long time to really develop but she wasn't able to do things around the house very well from the time I was about 13 on so I did a lot of that but I never minded that why not gave me a sense of responsibility purpose being important I was a person around the house and that didn't bother me at all housework has never really bothered me what bothered me later about it was that it was expected to be your life but of the actual having to do things its interests so much that has been written about you in fact I can't think of anything that I've read and it's there's been so much I've read about you I can't think of a single piece that hasn't mentioned housework and it comes across as as work that you didn't like and as work that prevented you particularly later from writing well I don't think it was the housework that ever prevented me from writing it was the life of the host wife that prevented me from writing the fact that when you're a housewife you are constantly interrupted you have no space in your life it isn't the fact that you have to do the laundry that isn't that isn't I mean everybody has to do something to earn a living and when I was married that was how I was earning my living and I didn't think that that I shouldn't have to do it what I wanted was some kind of way that I could stop being a housewife and be a writer being not just having time but being defined differently in the outside world because the definition of housewife was then very it was constant and yet it was something that many women did aspire to become oh of course we did I did too of what I aspired to be was married because there was no other way to prove that it was it was the way you became successful if you weren't married by the time you were 23 or 24 what's the matter are you not wanted are you not and so I most girls at college I think we're hoping that they would be married or that they would be engaged by the time they graduated I think you started getting it in high school where it was terribly important to be popular and you began working out then and the only result of being popular the only proper result was to get married but also I think it was very glamorous you thought of the wedding dress the diamond ring there used to be a full-page ad that the ponds people ran in all the magazine's it said she's lovely she's engaged she uses ponds and it always showed her diamond and her diamond was displayed and and it was a great thing in in in the small-town society when somebody got the diamond and also it was the romance after all you wanted to fall in love with somebody and then then what followed the set of dishes the silverware the pots and pans the baby my mother spoke to me in her grave hopeful lecturing voice there's a change coming I think in the lives of girls and women yes but it is up to us to make it come all women have had up till now has been their connection with men all we have had no more lives of our own really than domestic animals he shall hold thee when his passion shall have spent it's novel force a little closer than his dog a little dearer that his horse Tennyson wrote that it's true to was true you received a scholarship to go to university yes that couldn't have been very commonplace no how did that happen I worked for it that's how it happened so your your singular goal wasn't to become bride no it wasn't for one thing I had never had a boyfriend in high school so I didn't think it was very likely that I would become a bride but but I pushed that aside I just wanted to get out of that town which just says nothing against the town it's just that at the age of 17 I wanted to leave and and I thought it would be wonderful to have nothing to do but go to classes and sit in library and write essays and things and read and that's what I did for two years it was only a two-year scholarship there was never hope of graduating the arts scholarships were only two years the science scholarships for four years and after two years I think you were supposed to get the money somehow and I think most people could because they had someone in their family who could help them but I didn't this wasn't it a bittersweet feeling though you must have liked University yes I did like it but you know I think I think by the time I was in my second year I saw that I was going to be learning some things I wasn't very interested in and I was I was dying to read all the great literature I could get my hands on which is what I did after I got married so when did Jim Monroe your first husband enter stage right ah sometime in my second year what happened well I was studying in the library and I was very hungry because I often didn't doesn't have enough to eat yeah I was on you know so much money per day that I could spend on food and he was eating pets which were a kind of peppermint coated with chocolate and he dropped one on the floor and he picked it up and then I saw him looking around you know he didn't want to pop it in if anyone was watching him and I was sitting across from them so I said I'll eat it and this was how we met and it was very nice did he give you the candy I don't remember that hmm you know I remember we began to laugh and then he phoned me up and asked me out did it seem inevitable then that you would get married oh yes yes how come I think because another thing in those days what was that you didn't expect to work through a bunch of boyfriends before you got married if you found somebody who felt right and who wanted to marry you that's what you did did you get a big white dress oh no I couldn't afford anything like that so but I had a very pretty sort of burgundy velvet dress we got married at Christmastime and my my aunt I think made my dress and and it was very nice so I didn't mind where did he come from Oakville what sort of family a very very nice middle-class family it was a step up in class for me yes into a class I didn't really understand very well why the things you could talk about in the things you couldn't talk about and I just thrills there were a lot more in a way there were a lot more rules though though a middle class maybe I should say an upper-middle class home was free of some of the rules we had when I was growing up mainly about the things you couldn't do on Sunday you couldn't hang your washing out on Sunday or the neighbors would talk and you couldn't play games on Sunday and and of course that would be laughable to the family I was marrying into but there were other rules when I began to publish my first stories the people who were close to me were generally horrified or at least shocked horrified is perhaps too extreme but the thing is they did not understand why anybody had to write anyway I did because eing well let me see the first I published a story when I was still in university that ended up with one of the characters saying Jesus Christ and this was terrible it really hurt my family not my father though he had to keep quiet but that's the sort of thing that could this is we're talking about the early 50s and Canada was pretty puritanical at least wasp Canada but at the Canada that I knew were you in love with your husband I think we were both in love in a kind of very youthful way yes I think it was important to both of us to find someone who who understood us as well as we did and he did he understood about the writing did he and this was a marvelous gift to me because in all my life I've only met a very few men who really really care about their wife's work to the extent that it can be at times the most important thing in her life and I've been married to two of them so I think this is great luck did you talk before you were married about what sort of marriage do we want to have do we want to have children oh no how would you talk about do we want to have children what sort of birth control do you think we had you know it just you had children so there was some birth control oh yes but in general amongst my might the research I've done amongst my friends of my age it never worked very long for anybody and and you just you you never thought that you were going into a marriage where you would decide not to have children you might not have children for some kind of medical reasons but otherwise you'd have them is that something that you wanted for your life no I didn't not want it and I didn't want it it was something that was inevitable and it was also something that was part of being really grown-up and independent and so I welcomed it when it came you're sort of ik I was excited when I was 21 to think that my body could do this it was quite remarkable but you did you had what three pregnancies in a very short time I had three pregnancies in the short time that the middle baby died yes and yes I'm not not in a shorter time than but most of the women I knew it felt normal at the time oh very yes did it feel a bit tiring to you no no all my children were very easy babies are you thinking about writing still always always yes I would put the baby down all my children had nap snaps were a big feature of their life and I put it out and while she I would think you would think yes you wouldn't write you would think I would think and what would you be thinking but I'd be thinking about a story or a book one of the novel's the problem was that then if someone knocked on the door one of the other housewives in this area in North Vancouver I couldn't say I'm thinking that was my problem that I couldn't I couldn't fence myself off from them from what would have happened if he'd done that oh the same thing that happened when the stories finally came out weird she's good you became pregnant for the second time and carried your baby to turn when did you realize after giving birth something was wrong with Katherine immediately the doctor spoke to me and said that he thought you didn't use the word down syndrome then he said he thought she was a and so but he wasn't sure and so I knew right away and they didn't let me see her you didn't usually see your baby for a few hours so I never saw her she died that day and she was her kidneys had never developed and that gave her the symptoms which she had noticed and so she died that would have been shocking though yes yes it was and who was there to be with you when that happened nobody I mean my husband was at home looking after Sheila my older daughter and and also I think both my husband and I were very anti sentimental so we didn't you know we just rolled with it we didn't mention it much and it thought it'd be more later probably gonna get then no I became more open mm-hmm so what does one say after that happens how do you not talk about it much where do you put it you just put it away you don't you don't refer to it to refer to it would have been an in our the context of our marriage would have been self-indulgent so it it didn't happen it would have been like making a big thing out of a small thing but your body and your mind would have known it wasn't a small thing it took a while yes because your your body is prepared to look after this baby your milk comes in just as if the baby were alive and yeah I remember lying on the beach and this happened and the baby was not there so it's there's almost a physical pain that persists for quite a while I would think then of course I got pregnant again and I had Jenny and when I had Jenny I immediately wanted to know if she was all right and it was terribly important to me and she wasn't it sort of was okay I have used this I used it in a story called my mother's dream I hope you've read it but I from the time that I lost the baby until I had Jenny I used to dream often about having left a baby out in the rain and having left her up for weeks I'm just remembering oh that baby yes yes and going out and finding her so obviously that was the way I was dealing with them so did you feel guilt then about Oh probably my stuff yes yeah I think one does maybe I felt some guilt about not being a totally motherly woman you know about wanting other things and that at that time was the measure of motherliness to want only one thing I want only one thing to be one-dimensional yes it's interesting so many women have dealt with their miscarriages or their stillborn children or children they they lose early on by never speaking of it again really yes well I practically did that I think except now we know her name and you have your biographical material lists her as one of your children there's a very modern and many people think healthy way of dealing with it but why did you do it I began just to think about her a lot when I when oh I don't know maybe 20 years ago I think was when my oldest daughter was getting married I was out in DC and I I knew that I wanted to have a gravestone for Katherine so I went and got one and it's in the north bound cemetery and I go there and put flowers on it so what this is I have no idea I I would not have done that when I was younger but I think there has to be some recognition that this person did live maybe if I'd been in those parts of the world where women suffer such terrible losses all the time it would not seem important at all because you're always losing children you're always you're always having her feelings torn but you've taught us that even a single gesture or a sound or a fragrance can be important it only makes sense I guess as you became more yourself that something is oh yes as huge as Katherine would matter yes yes yes and that I was not afraid to to do something that might be seen as sentimental and and false and self gratifying I think when I was younger that might have been the interpretation having three daughters and who you were rearing and wanting to do this writing did you feel at some point as if there might never be time you know I don't think I ever felt that it was really the daughters and the the rest of my life that was getting in the way what I felt very strongly from a boat sort of increasing from 25 to 35 was that I didn't have it in me I didn't hit the town I couldn't do it and at one time when I was about 29 I think I I was completely blocked so blocked that I got sick or so that I got I had anxiety symptoms that were very strong and it was just because I had realized I had realized that what I wanted to do was so hard and I was I kept trying and it wasn't coming out right so you were writing you were writing short stories you were mailing them away to publishers they were coming back except that every once in a while I would sell one I would sell one maybe every two years and that would be enough to sort of keep me going but I might I might even think that the one I had sold was wasn't very good I hadn't it was much more of an artist problem than a specifically women's woman's problem I think it was just coming up against your limitation what seemed to be limitations that was another great cautionary phrase and my family which some members of my family still use you must recognize your limitations and I I had not of course and I still haven't because every time you try to write something you're you're breaking through and you have to have faith in yourself if you went around recognizing your limitations you just wouldn't try at all but what happened was that that I lost faith in myself completely and I really couldn't complete a page probably couldn't complete a sentence what got you to that point though just trying and trying and didn't wasn't working and I was getting older this happened I think 30 is a bad age for many people maybe not now because 30 seems a lot younger now but in my time you were expected and you expected yourself to have made some kind of a place for yourself by that time and so you felt the wall descending I'm not going to make it I'm not going to do it my imagination seemed worn out it didn't seem that the ideas I had could be translated and and so I I went through quite a it didn't show I didn't have any kind of breakdown that I was feeling quite awful about things and then then my husband and I my second no not my second my first husband died it seems like a second because it was our second life we opened a bookstore in Victoria and I had to work in the bookstore but it was wonderful because it gave me something to do that I could do and I love to talk to people about books and it was just I loved I loved working in the store before we get to the recovery I want to talk a bit about the darkness when you hit that false wall of thinking it was over and you weren't going to make it as a writer you became depressed yes but you say it didn't show how did you hide it it I did show it a bit because after a while I had to go on anti-anxiety pills whatever they were I felt I had to have them with me at all times in case I stopped breathing is that how the anxiety was showing itself yes so you actually physically thought you weren't going to be able to draw breath I felt that like the next breath wouldn't come and I would just suddenly die oh my goodness it's just like writing the last word won't come I suppose again I suppose I was transferring the problems of right again to the problems of being alive but whatever sort of the same thing for you yeah so how long are you working in the bookstore before I think I was three years there yeah and then I started writing more I was writing I wrote two stories during the three years that I was working in the bookstore and I sold both of them and so I was getting back but the main thing was that I had I had an excuse now what was it it was working in the bookstore I had no time to write and so the writing it ceased to be this all-important thing that I had to prove myself with it became something that I'll just I'll just toss off and it isn't really important and then it became easy yes you need that sometimes to take the focus off yes so you're starting to write now you've got a couple of stories published and you suddenly become pregnant again quite unexpectedly did you think oh here we go again oh no I was so happy why oh I don't know well I guess it made me feel young again yeah and I was thirty-five thirty-six you're young I was young but I didn't know it and and so it was very exciting and it was nice really hmm after she was born it because very difficult because I was older and it was harder to look after the baby and and look after this great big house we had moved to in Victoria and and also worked some of the time in the store so the first year after she was born was very hard but just hard physically you were tired learning not much that year but still by that time Ryerson Press had picked me up and yeah yeah there was somebody pushing me to write and so I did finally a deadline yeah yeah yeah well obviously you matter somebody believed you could do it yes yeah it's demanding it and then the first book came out I guess when Andrea was about a year maybe two two years old or something with that how excited were you I was terrified when the books came I was Jim was away somewhere I was running the store by myself so I didn't have to tell him that had come and I took them all you get I guess you get six copies and I took them and I hid them in a closet so I wouldn't have to look at them if I did that it wouldn't exist they wouldn't exist and I was really very very nervous and but one night I made myself just go down and take one book out and sit up and not go to bed until I read it all through and when I read it all through I thought well it isn't too bad it's not as bad as I thought so no no it was okay and then what happened uh it won the governor-general's and yeah what did I think of that there are writers who will wait their entire life to win a prize as important as that and they never will this is for your first book I thought it was kind of a fluke no no that sounds no like false modesty but it isn't really I I couldn't quite believe it someone made a mistake yes yes and and then of course I had a very very hard time starting writing again it was going through a whole block all over again but to whenever I went in to think I'm I'm delighted in a way but also just believing in a way I it's as if I didn't trust any kind of success and I don't know if many people are like this if writers happen to be like this or if it's something about my upbringing that just makes me say it can't be true and I want I won't recognize it on behalf of the jury I'm pleased to announce that Alice Monroe is the winner of the 1998 Giller Prize research collection the love of a good woman this is a wonderful moment for me and I think it's a great moment for those of us who can't kick the habit of writing short stories what does it mean to you to be and this is my bias but to be among the chosen people the people who've been chosen to have the gift of meaning and words coming through you and then being able to give that to other people to share experience that way to record it I hardly think about that at all because I always think about the next story I don't think about what anything I've done in the past and the next story is so hard to do that I don't feel that I have the gift in particular I just work at trying to to get it for this one time is that that is true and yet now you're telling me with all these prizes all these books international recognition that it's just all about the next story in a way that's true it's as if the books that you've done we're done by somebody else and you were lucky you're very lucky that they've been so well received but if you try again isn't something like figure skating you get out on the ice and you have to do those spins and it doesn't matter that you did them yesterday you're going to try to do them today and so that that's sort of how I feel about it which sounds ungrateful because in a way it seems sort of to the side for me and and what I'm what I'm doing and it does seem very much a matter of luck it's part of it too though I mean there's the upbringing that you know you write so well about the Canadian experience some people say it's the southern Ontario experience that when one acknowledges an accomplishment that's the end of it it's bragging and that used to be said to me a lot don't brag always yes yes so I'll rest on your laurels me if life is so hard can't you have some laurels to slow this is what I think too I think it would be nice just to I think oh this is all really wonderful and when I think about retirement that's probably what I think and not having to work at it anymore but you'd have to become a different person I can't think of anything she doesn't excel at well she's just got you know a marvelous sense of character and a very sophisticated narrative technique beautiful description and sense of place but I I think overall it's her her authenticity and her her vision that is just so clear and so precise and so real that is ultimately what it's about when did you allow yourself in your first marriage to acknowledge that you may not have been particularly happy or as happy as you deserve to be I think I did that when a lot of women my age were doing it women who had buried when they were 20 were suddenly 39 40 and it was that great era of everybody bursting out the great music the drugs the singing the freedom everybody with long hair and oh you remember what it was like do you remember I've seen the pictures yes the factors okay there were all the women like me we're getting old but we weren't really old yet and all of a sudden we were wearing these clothes and we were dancing and we were thinking well you know we were much younger in our self estimate then then we had been over 25 and this was kind of difficult for our teenage children if we had any but so the whole society truly the whole society seemed I'm sure there were pockets for this didn't happen and maybe in small towns like where I grew up it didn't happen but in cities and certainly on Vancouver Island it happened with a vengeance and so when you suddenly had a little bit of freedom what came to mind I need to get out of this marriage I just need to go to parties it's hard to say because I was going to say foolish but that wasn't quite it I need to question everything and everything that was very intense we were we were really like you know like eighteen year olds in some ways your oldest daughter Sheila says she remembers you old but encouraging her to smoke marijuana did you ever god I don't think I encouraged her but when I knew that she was doing it I didn't have a fan you said bring a joint back for me I don't think I said that but you know maybe I did God knows the comparison the recollections no others have I don't think I would show John but smoke marijuana oh oh yes I did but not then a bit later well maybe a bit then but not to any very memorable extinct was that the extent of your experimentation with drugs okay let's start there yeah I never experimented much of drugs about my generation was the drinking generation if you wanted to feel good really that's what you did and no I can't I remember it as in in a way a very silly period but it was such a mass movement but you didn't judge it what was silly about it what did you do that was sick oh just the feeling that you could make your life over I mean we all felt that marriages broke up all around mm-hmm in fact people whose marriage didn't break up we're almost apologetic and sorry it's my first so there was this this feeling of adventure and fulfilment not particularly of of remaking your life in any steady way like of leaving this marriage and getting another marriage I think of it as a silly period in or perhaps a regrettable period in terms of maybe the way we related to our children I feel there probably that it would have been better if we'd had gone on be mothers and fathers give me an example of something you might have said or some some behavior that you think is regrettable well just the way it was more negative things the way I didn't get alarmed about drugs and I didn't really know very much about drugs and I didn't get alarmed about bad language and I didn't get upset about I assumed that my children would have sex at a certain stage you know and and I think maybe what children want is not an enlightened parent they want a mother standing at the ironing board saying I don't know what the world is coming to they want something you know that it's very different and very firm and it seems to them quite idiotic but at least it isn't boundaries being erased however that wasn't the kind of person I was so I couldn't have done it how is it that you and your husband came to separate it just sort of happened gradually and it was happening to so many people at that time people just decided that they they would be happier apart how did you meet your second husband REE meat oh well you know the story of how I went to university with him but he didn't pay any attention to me it was a small university and there were these veterans he was one of them and they were they were very very glamorous to us young girls but he had a girlfriend and I used to ride on the bus with her as a matter of fact she lived not very far from where I did and she used to tell me about him and I thought she was the most fortunate girl in the world but then afterwards after I got back here I met him again and I met him through an interview I did an interview with Harry Boyle on CBC and I don't know how I managed to get through the information that I was divorced and that I was living in London but he picked this up he was listening to the radio and he picked it up and he phoned me so but did he remember you yes he did but he had also heard of me since I'd been writing and he got one of my he got one of my books I was pleased to discover and then he said well it was Book of the Month Club so so he had already got this book and he had seen my picture on the back of it and so on was he was attractive to you later in life as he was at university yes mmm isn't that interesting yes so was it love at Second Sight yes mm-hmm these things happen people will be so pleased to know how long have you been married Oh a long time I mean this is 30 years 30 years both marriages I've probably been married close to 100 years well you did the right thing right you got married when did you have heart surgery ah it was three years ago I think yeah that's huge isn't it yeah yeah when did you first realize there was something wrong with your health it had I had the surgery almost a year you know I had it in October I think I know it had been maybe getting towards Christmas the year before that I began to has sort of seizures and what was wrong in there one of the major arteries was practically blocked so and I was very on disbelieving because I said I've never smoked I've never been overweight I you know I exercise every day and the doctor said you're getting old he so that's the one thing that can't you can't fight against and that's why it was there is it are you well there now mm-hmm I still have to take pills and there's all kinds of things I can't eat cheese pate mmm so you have to be careful as a writer though does it seem unusual to you that a woman who spent so much time examining the human heart had her heart exam let's not think about just interesting now isn't it I suppose so it's hard for a writer to miss something like that yeah yep I have never thought of that you will no I will I know your brain thank you you're not old at all and you certainly have talked about how odd it is that your mind and your your personality feels so much as it always has it's just that a vehicle's age but you do speak more about aging than you've ever done before oh I am aware of it I am old this is not no no but I mean you're older than when you were 25 I guess yes and I'm older than when I was 64 most people think 64 you know so it's something like that just like everything that happens to me I I have to really I have to consider and think about it and it does surprise me this is one of the things that surprises you all the time just to think of how many years you can add up and that even though you feel like the same people other people perhaps are seeing you differently or treating you differently yes yes when I got out of the car today the car that brought me here the driver said okay dear he helped me out you hear all sorts of people call me dear it's dreadful but yes in part because we judged so much by the superficial and we don't one of the reviews I got in England started off with I didn't hope for much from this book because the cover photograph showed me a Decker's old biddy and then he said he was surprised to find that this Decker's old biddy didn't write sentimental stories and this this is part of him I don't think this happens to man as much Saul Bellow limps into his eighties and didn't get this kind of thing nobody nobody said Saul Bellow it was going to get sentimental because he's a granddad but it happens with older women older women become a kind of a nice negligible quality they're there they what they're supposed to think is fairly well set out what does it feel like to have for whatever reason being able to reflect a whole growth the whole evolution particularly for women and now you're speaking to me in the same way about not being limited by people's expectations of age in the same way that you did about marriage that's true yeah because those limitations perhaps are not here anymore but I think there there are age limitations or cliches about age but simply are there and have to go I think so I think so what else is good about getting older Oh lots of things a sense of not having to a lot of things you just don't have to do anymore a lot of things have if if you've done them because you think you are to you kind of let them guide us that freedom come with age is it because it could have accomplished things now maybe just that you're the world's opinion and other people's opinion matters less that you feel free and I don't think this is having accomplished a great particular thing it's just having got through this many years of life you've accomplished something so there you are why is it that over the past many years you've been quite hesitant about doing an interview like this for example and yet in the last few years there is the sense we could be wrong that you're coming out a little bit more probably because I think I'm getting to the end of my life and I might as well and if I fall in my face during an interview it doesn't matter anymore I was nervous but the exposure would would humiliate me and now I don't care and it won't anyway no and the judge is a great thing about getting older humiliation vanishes how is it that you are a woman who as a young person hid her writing and yet when you write you write you write with exposure you're right little calendar I figure it isn't worth doing unless you do it that way I don't set out to do self exposure but I I write as many people do out of what I know about life and what I know about life is in myself and so and since writing means so much more to me then than anything else I I don't have any choice it never occurs to me I am being candid hmm candor has become something we look for in writing we don't necessarily say this was you I put the person who's doing the writing but I think we all know that so at least the the inner not maybe the incidents of themselves but the inner experience must come from the person him or herself what is it you're so in love with about writing it just seems to be the best thing you can do with your life so what is it is that the they're telling the truth as near as you can get to it it's not all together that it's sort of tackling the experience of being alive as best you can I don't know why I've been reading Dostoyevsky again and it just seems to me I he didn't have a very good life he had a lot of problems he was in many ways not an admirable person but to have got so far into human experience seems to me like a marvelous use of one's time on earth does that answer your question helped Evo create a better world through the power of learning visit support TV org and make a tax-deductible donation today

Channel: TVO Docs

Views: 33,565

Rating: 4.8636365 out of 5

Keywords: TVO, TVOntario, TVOKids, Polka Dot Door, Polkaroo, education, public television, Elwy Yost, Steve Paikin, Allan Gregg, Big Back Yard, Big Ideas, Canada, Literature, Writing, Alice Munro

Id: TlXjN6rnGb4

Length: 57min 10sec (3430 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 21 2015