Some Things Are Simple
In the literary world, critics often disagree as to what makes a good book. One critic will describe a book as inventive and earth-shattering and singular, while another will use it as a doorstop. No one is surprised by this. All artistic creations are inherently subjective, and there’s no quantifiable standard for taste. Compelling work is often even designed to create controversy. Like courageous people, the best books are confident enough to be unlikeable. Your favorite book and mine probably aren’t the same - and that’s okay. In legalese, there’s an expression for this lofty bickering: reasonable minds may differ.
Yet there are exceptions, and I’ve come of age inside one of them. For decades, there’s been a constant drumbeat from critics and readers alike: Alice Munro, the master of the short story, is our modern-day Chekhov.
Institutions have lavished Munro with seemingly every accolade they could, from Canada’s Governor General’s Award for Fiction (three times) and the Man Booker International Prize. In 2013, the Swedish Academy awarded Munro the Nobel Prize in literature.
Munro’s work is full of contradiction. Her prose is spare, but each story is fully formed and intensely layered. Characters speak haltingly, yet the reader understands when they want to scream. Ordinary people face exceptional struggles. Munro often leaps through time and space, knitting reality and memory into a compact powerhouse of tale. Each story is a ride meant to leave the reader breathless, and they do - every single time.
As a woman, I feel exposed after reading her work. I read Lives of Girls and Women right after I had my twins. For me, Munro nailed the torn feeling of wanting children and a professional life, of wanting a family - yet not wanting to disappear into it. The bittersweet mixture of devotion and exhaustion. The unending feminine longing of wanting and needing to be in two places at once.
Other people will cull different lessons from Munro’s work, and their quiet epiphanies belong to them. As I’ve grown, I read her stories with an eye toward excavation. They mean different things to me now than they did when I first read her work in my twenties.
They mean different things to me now than they did when I read her work a month ago.
While Munro famously kept to herself - often shying away from interviews, I thought I knew her from her work. When I noticed her trending on social media, I figured she’d simply won another award posthumously. Because Alice Munro, a literary wonder who lived quietly and demonstrated immense empathy, wouldn’t ever put a foot wrong. And in believing this - that genius can raise people above human failings, I myself made a mistake.
On July 7th, the Toronto Star published an essay written by Munro’s daughter, Andrea Robin Skinner. In the essay, Skinner claims that her stepfather sexually abused her from the age of nine. After reading a story her mother wrote which displayed understanding toward a survivor of similar abuse, Skinner opened up to her mother about her trauma in her twenties. Munro chose to remain with her husband, Skinner’s abuser.
Horrifyingly, Munro treated the abuse like infidelity. Skinner wrote that Munro claimed that "she had been told too late … she loved him too much, and that our misogynistic culture was to blame if I expected her to deny her own needs, sacrifice for her children and make up for the failings of men. She was adamant that whatever had happened was between me and my stepfather. It had nothing to do with her.”
In 2005, Skinner filed charges with the police. Her stepfather, Gerald Fremlin, pleaded guilty. Because he was 80 years old, he was charged with indecent assault and served probation for two years. Munro remained married to him for the entirety of his life, until he died in 2013.
Apart from seeking retribution, Skinner’s intention in filing charges was to make the information public. In her essay, she writes that “I also wanted this story, my story, to become part of the stories people tell about my mother. “ Skinner wanted the public to finally see her mother as she actually was: a writer of inimitable talent and contribution - who also willfully chose to lose her daughter, rather than her daughter’s abuser.
My heart broke for Skinner as I read her essay. And it’s broken many times over since then, as more firsthand accounts reveal that Munro’s unforgivable response to her daughter’s abuse was an open secret. Skinner’s stepmother told the Toronto Star that “everybody knew,” having been asked by a journalist at an event directly about the rumors. When The Wall Street Journal asked Munro’s biographer Robert Thacker why he’d omitted to include the story of her daughter’s estrangement in his book, Thacker said that: “My focus was elsewhere, it wasn’t on her family life … What I was really focused on was the texts and her evolution as a writer.” During her lifetime, Munro’s powerful literary voice silenced her daughter story.
Skinner’s story is yet another example of a world with misplaced values. The idea that a well-written story matters than a little girl’s terror is obviously and irrefutably wrong. Yet the arts carry a sordid history of survivors being silenced to elevate creators. Skinner’s decision to tell her story is an act of bravery - and braver still when we consider the harassment that Dylan Farrow, Rose McGowan, Cassie Ventura, and many others endured in the wake of their abuse allegations.
If I could shoot a flare into the night sky, it would be this: Munro’s power ultimately was no match for her daughter’s.
When Skinner stood up for herself, demanding retribution and acknoledgment, she showed other survivors that it can be done. No matter how many years have elasped, no matter how powerful the perpetrators, it can be done. Skinner demonstrates that there is freedom on the other side of silence.
Since the publication of Skinner’s essay, many have parsed Munro’s body of work with new eyes. Perhaps the layers hidden within her sparse prose, her "endless complexity,” will make more sense in light of Skinner’s revelation. Perhaps artistry obscures too much sometimes. Perhaps Munro could be more courageous on the page than in life. Perhaps a life spent juggling various points of view hid the one that mattered most.
Because some things are simple. Child sexual abuse is wrong. Parents should believe, protect, and stand with their children. Abusers should be prosecuted and prevented from doing more harm. Every individual’s story matters. Families should support survivors as they rebuild their lives and heal. Even when it’s hard, the right thing to do is simple. But it requires action, rather than words.
In her essay, Skinner wrote that “I never wanted to see another interview, biography or event that didn’t wrestle with reality of what happened to me, and with the fact that my mother, confronted with the truth of what had happened, chose to stay with, and protect, my abuser.”
For the rest of her life, she won’t.
