Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Aunt Alfrida

From a review in Atlantic Monthly:

There is a long line of idolized women in Munro's stories, usually independent and childless, living emotionally extravagant, artistic lives, admired by shyer, more cautious, and often younger women. The very real suffering and squalor endured by these idols is sometimes glimpsed in flashes, with the troubling suggestion that their more colorful ways may not all have been a matter of choice. But usually the younger woman is too much in the thick of her own life to pause long to consider the implications of these hardships for herself or her future.

"Family Furnishings" is apparently at least partially autobiographical. What did you think of the narrator's reactions to Alfrida as an adult? Did you find her callous for using Alfrida's private recollections as material for her writing, or for being annoyed when she found out Alfrida had been upset by it?
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4 comments:

Ben said...

Alfrida seems like the sort of person who might not be annoyed at her life being the subject of a book. It surprises me that she was.

I certainly don’t fault the narrator for using the story. Writers have to get their ideas from somewhere.

2:12 PM, June 06, 2007
kc said...

I think the use of autobiographical material is probably a constant source of stress to writers, especially a great writer like Munro, who, with a few words, can pin someone down like an insect in a display case.

I think there was a sense that Alfrida knew she had lost the girl's affection, that she once was the zany fun-loving aunt and now she's seen as something rather shabby and narrow. It was sort of a fall from grace for her.

I think we are supposed to understand the narrator as being at least a little arrogant, but the natural arrogance of youth, of someone finding that she has a talent and maybe not using that talent so judiciously at first — having the empathy that allows you to be a great writer, but not quite the empathy yet that allows you to be a great human being.

Munro seems to wrangle with the pleasures and difficulties of writing — or shaping experience into an intelligible whole — either explicitly or more slyly in many of her stories.

Have you guys had an experience where you admired someone as a kid and then when you grew up you gained different insights and they weren't so appealing anymore?

3:05 PM, June 06, 2007
Erin said...

I think we are supposed to understand the narrator as being at least a little arrogant, but the natural arrogance of youth, of someone finding that she has a talent and maybe not using that talent so judiciously at first — having the empathy that allows you to be a great writer, but not quite the empathy yet that allows you to be a great human being.

Oh, I think you've really nailed it here.

I don't think I really had that experience. Did you?

3:18 PM, June 06, 2007
cl said...

I like what kc says about the narrator not using that talent so judiciously at first. While her failure to connect with Alfrida as adults is in part due to the snobbery she picks up from her fiance and "the city," she also wasn't received very graciously by Alfrida. I know I had bought into Alfrida as that inspiring, independent, single role model and to see her bitter and jealous around the family's newest writer was a disappointment. She almost challenged the narrator that she couldn't amount to much, and that goad may have eased the narrator's conscience.

10:13 AM, June 14, 2007

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