Ghosts of my Past, or Why I Can't Write Short Stories.It will be interesting to see if I'm now able to get past my initial 'don't like,' work my way through 'understand,' and then perhaps even arrive at 'like.' Having read all of this blog's entries on Munro, I plan on reading and rereading more of her stories in the future. If I find myself not enjoying a story that I have reason to believe has depth, I should try to withhold judgement on it until I've put some effort into teasing out what a deeper understanding might have to offer. I guess this shows a lack of sophistication in my reading. Or Raymond Carver's, who may not be lovable or even likable, but who are passionate beings whose feelings I can't help but care about.

Contrast this with Lorrie Moore's characters, whom I generally fall in love with after the first couple of pages. Her characters may not be the 'point' of her stories, but doggone it, I just don't like being around them. I find them humorless, passionless, dreary, lifeless.

For me, the great failing of Alice Munro is her characters. But even knowing and believing that, I think it's only human nature to respond to those elements of a story, and perhaps to form our initial like/don't-like reaction based on them. If there's one thing that you've worked to convey in this blog, it's that a good short story will consist of far more that its plot, characters, and writing style. Appreciating something to its fullest depths may require understanding it, but often, and I would say for most people, just plain liking the thing has to come first. I think there's some wisdom in that bit of comedy. In an episode of the 1980s British comedy TV show 'The Young Ones,' one of the titular twenty-something characters launches into a generation-gap tirade with an elderly man, finishing up by accidentally reversing a classic generation-gap complaint: 'and the only reason you don't understand our music is that you don't like it!'

Selected stories by alice munro