Reading Deep, Seeing Deeper in Alice Munro's Fictions

Writers learn from life–and from reading. How do Munro's Nobel-Award short fictions convey deep, secret complexities, family, era, community and individual characters? present and historic? myth and real? We will discuss her shifting points of view, plots and counter-plots, secrets, contemporary and historic revelations, fluid characterizations, amazing and unfathomable "ordinary" lives. Readings will include "Miles City, Montana," portrait of the artist in "Meneseteung"; history, faith and murder in "Wilderness Station," exotic plots and counter-plots in "Albanian Virgin." Short writing prompts will be given and presented in the last part of each class. Carried Away (Everyman's, Knopf 2006) has these stories, and a very useful personal/literary/historic time-line.