What I love about Alice Munro's characters is that they all, almost always, speak or act out of a sequence of memory and sensation, clearly put and essential to the narrative, sometimes tying back to an anecdote revealing their earlier developmental history. If a character acts on impulse, the story up to that moment has laid forth the preconditions to show how that impulse came naturally. The narrative begins to seem as braided with strands out of past consciousness, dramatic awareness, action and emotional reaction as a normal person's thought process, even so that other stories by other authors might seem to beg to be revealed with a like degree of detail, weighing of risk, surmise and defensive posturing leading to the considered outcome, ironic or rich in probability.
In 'Jutland' three school-aged boys are walking into town from near the river where they've discovered a drowned body in a sunken car, belonging to the local optometrist. Alice Munro has already outlined the boys in relation to each other: "...yet they hardly thought of each other as friends. They would never have designated someone as a best friend or a next-best friend, or joggled people around in these positions, the way girls did. Any one of at least a dozen boys could have been substituted for any one of these three, and accepted by the others in exactly the same way."
On the way downtown to the police they meet the victim's wife in her yard tending the forsythia bush.
"Here you are," she said. "Take these home to your mothers. It's always good to see the forsythia, it's the very first thing in the spring." She was dividing the branches among them. "Like all Gaul," she said. "All Gaul is divided into three parts. You must know about that if you take Latin."
"We aren't in high school yet," said Jimmy whose life at home had readied him, better than the others, for talking to ladies.
"Aren't you?" she said. "Well, you've got all sorts of things to look forward to. Tell your mothers to
put them in lukewarm water. Oh, I'm sure they already know that. I've given you branches that aren't
all the way out yet, so they so they should last and last." ...
The forsythia gave them something to think about. The embarrassment of carrying it, the problem of
getting rid of it. Otherwise, they would have to think about Mr. Willens and Mrs. Willens. How she
could be busy in her yard and he could be drowned in his car. Did she know where he was or did she
not? It seemed that she couldn't. Did she even know that he was gone? She had acted as if there was
nothing wrong, nothing at all, and when they were standing in front of her this had seemed to be the
truth. What they knew, what they had seen, seemed actually to be pushed back, to be defeated, by her not knowing it."
In Part IV, titled 'Lies' the scene has long since shifted to a farm where Enid, a trained nurse for a dying young mother, sits up for a whole night in the breathless realization of what almost certainly had happened to Mr. Willens: "She could not lie down in Mrs. Quinn's room. She sat in the kitchen for hours. It was an effort for her to move, even to make a cup of tea or go to the bathroom. Moving her body shook up the information that she was trying to arrange in her head and get used to. She had not undressed, or unrolled her hair, and when she brushed her teeth she seemed to be doing something laborious and unfamiliar...
'She got up stiffly and unlocked the door and sat on the porch in the beginning light. Even that move
jammed her thoughts together. She had to sort through them again and set them on two sides...
'The cows hadn't cropped all the weeds. Sopping wet, they brushed against her stockings. The path
was clear, though, under the riverbank trees, those willows with the wild grape hanging on to them like monkeys' shaggy arms. Mist was rising so that you could hardly see the river. You had to fix your eyes, concentrate, and then a spot of water would show through, quiet as water in a pot. There must be a moving current, but she could not find it.
'Then she saw a movement, and it wasn't in the water. There was a boat moving. Tied to a branch, a
plain old rowboat was being lifted very slightly, lifted and let fall. Now that she had found it, she kept watching it, as if it could say something to her. And it did. It said something gentle and final.
'You know. You know."
This week-end I was crossing the meadow south of home when I saw and remembered a plant I had drawn and painted in my late teens, the fringed loosestrife. The name 'loosestrife' is full of the suggestion of peace, tensions ended, strife loosened, either by the powers of the herb or the setting where it thrives. An old source cites loosestrife as having powers to quiet oxen at their ploughing by driving away gnats and flies, and the same benefits accruing to houses if the plant is burnt within them. The notion came to rest in my mind when I saw the face-down corollas in the grass, as golden as many an evening cloud, and considered the process of Enid, the protagonist in The Love of a Good Woman, in her decision-making as to her role in the wake of a probable murder. What she has heard is all talk, just the way we often learn of things, and then we're sitting off to one side, privately or with someone else assigning probable cause. But she is the only one given the insight, via her contemplative vigil at the edge of someone's death, and though she feels intensely that so grave a crime deserves punishment she also sees around her what else goes begging, even before the onset of her patient's sickness.
There seem such obvious, large-scale solutions to huge issues verging on crimes that challenge the world community, but the solutions are impeded by politics, religious difference and other failures of cooperation. Why, I wonder as Israel and Palestine accuse each other and attack with bombs and rockets, do we hear of nobody in charge talking about the need to agree NOT TO EXPAND? This doesn't just mean territorial expansion. If immigration and birth rates were stabilized especially within Israel but outside its borders too, real security could be sought in terms of adequate land area, water, etc. But all factions blindly seem to go on in the assumption that safety lies in numbers adding up so that collectively their own side keeps amounting to an ever bigger beast. But as they grow, so will the number and complexity of their problems.
As well-told stories illustrate, a problem is a complex made up of lots of littler problems. The process of breaking down issues deserves as broad as possible a scope, even with one person like Enid sitting up through a night seeing what she in partnership with at least one other person can best do to wage justice. Help for grave injustice is offered by courts for the whole family nowadays; beyond the family, committees and task forces are formed in the wake of public disasters. Visual schemes may emerge before our eyes, revealing possible courses of remedy. Of course we have memory and precedent.
Family memory in particular comes to hand; often, we turn to what a parent or elder relative would have done or said, or even a chosen one in the younger generation. The probable reason for an unexplained event in one's lineage emerges in the face of new understanding. Family virtue and pathology determine all outcomes. But on a personal level, people are more often than not outwardly proud of certain kinfolk whom they knew or know of.
Here is where I introduce the illustrated family tree, homage in visual, decorative form to the folk each of us came from. There are their names and a flow of limbs and branches a little like a waterway, indicating who was most or least prolific, who bore a nickname and who was married to or born of whom. Extra details characterizing that clan may can be fitted in between and beyond the branchwork. Choice of a type of tree symbolic of the family is encouraged. Why not give them something to look at that spins off a whole flock of different conversations, even beyond this generation?
Kearney Family Tree from 2013
put them in lukewarm water. Oh, I'm sure they already know that. I've given you branches that aren't
all the way out yet, so they so they should last and last." ...
The forsythia gave them something to think about. The embarrassment of carrying it, the problem of
getting rid of it. Otherwise, they would have to think about Mr. Willens and Mrs. Willens. How she
could be busy in her yard and he could be drowned in his car. Did she know where he was or did she
not? It seemed that she couldn't. Did she even know that he was gone? She had acted as if there was
nothing wrong, nothing at all, and when they were standing in front of her this had seemed to be the
truth. What they knew, what they had seen, seemed actually to be pushed back, to be defeated, by her not knowing it."
In Part IV, titled 'Lies' the scene has long since shifted to a farm where Enid, a trained nurse for a dying young mother, sits up for a whole night in the breathless realization of what almost certainly had happened to Mr. Willens: "She could not lie down in Mrs. Quinn's room. She sat in the kitchen for hours. It was an effort for her to move, even to make a cup of tea or go to the bathroom. Moving her body shook up the information that she was trying to arrange in her head and get used to. She had not undressed, or unrolled her hair, and when she brushed her teeth she seemed to be doing something laborious and unfamiliar...
'She got up stiffly and unlocked the door and sat on the porch in the beginning light. Even that move
jammed her thoughts together. She had to sort through them again and set them on two sides...
'The cows hadn't cropped all the weeds. Sopping wet, they brushed against her stockings. The path
was clear, though, under the riverbank trees, those willows with the wild grape hanging on to them like monkeys' shaggy arms. Mist was rising so that you could hardly see the river. You had to fix your eyes, concentrate, and then a spot of water would show through, quiet as water in a pot. There must be a moving current, but she could not find it.
'Then she saw a movement, and it wasn't in the water. There was a boat moving. Tied to a branch, a
plain old rowboat was being lifted very slightly, lifted and let fall. Now that she had found it, she kept watching it, as if it could say something to her. And it did. It said something gentle and final.
'You know. You know."
This week-end I was crossing the meadow south of home when I saw and remembered a plant I had drawn and painted in my late teens, the fringed loosestrife. The name 'loosestrife' is full of the suggestion of peace, tensions ended, strife loosened, either by the powers of the herb or the setting where it thrives. An old source cites loosestrife as having powers to quiet oxen at their ploughing by driving away gnats and flies, and the same benefits accruing to houses if the plant is burnt within them. The notion came to rest in my mind when I saw the face-down corollas in the grass, as golden as many an evening cloud, and considered the process of Enid, the protagonist in The Love of a Good Woman, in her decision-making as to her role in the wake of a probable murder. What she has heard is all talk, just the way we often learn of things, and then we're sitting off to one side, privately or with someone else assigning probable cause. But she is the only one given the insight, via her contemplative vigil at the edge of someone's death, and though she feels intensely that so grave a crime deserves punishment she also sees around her what else goes begging, even before the onset of her patient's sickness.
There seem such obvious, large-scale solutions to huge issues verging on crimes that challenge the world community, but the solutions are impeded by politics, religious difference and other failures of cooperation. Why, I wonder as Israel and Palestine accuse each other and attack with bombs and rockets, do we hear of nobody in charge talking about the need to agree NOT TO EXPAND? This doesn't just mean territorial expansion. If immigration and birth rates were stabilized especially within Israel but outside its borders too, real security could be sought in terms of adequate land area, water, etc. But all factions blindly seem to go on in the assumption that safety lies in numbers adding up so that collectively their own side keeps amounting to an ever bigger beast. But as they grow, so will the number and complexity of their problems.
As well-told stories illustrate, a problem is a complex made up of lots of littler problems. The process of breaking down issues deserves as broad as possible a scope, even with one person like Enid sitting up through a night seeing what she in partnership with at least one other person can best do to wage justice. Help for grave injustice is offered by courts for the whole family nowadays; beyond the family, committees and task forces are formed in the wake of public disasters. Visual schemes may emerge before our eyes, revealing possible courses of remedy. Of course we have memory and precedent.
Family memory in particular comes to hand; often, we turn to what a parent or elder relative would have done or said, or even a chosen one in the younger generation. The probable reason for an unexplained event in one's lineage emerges in the face of new understanding. Family virtue and pathology determine all outcomes. But on a personal level, people are more often than not outwardly proud of certain kinfolk whom they knew or know of.
Here is where I introduce the illustrated family tree, homage in visual, decorative form to the folk each of us came from. There are their names and a flow of limbs and branches a little like a waterway, indicating who was most or least prolific, who bore a nickname and who was married to or born of whom. Extra details characterizing that clan may can be fitted in between and beyond the branchwork. Choice of a type of tree symbolic of the family is encouraged. Why not give them something to look at that spins off a whole flock of different conversations, even beyond this generation?
Kearney Family Tree from 2013
