Hiding Brushstrokes
How does Alice Munro conceal the propulsion of her stories?
Naples, Italy 2016
The ‘nosebleed’ novel—a useful term fashioned by Martin Amis—has been planted as a bookend in living rooms for nearly one hundred years. These are the tomes, usually coming in at a respectable thousand pages, written in four languages, with perhaps a flashback or two in Sumerian. The authors have majestic, stately names; invariably, the bindings on these books remain pristine. Just flipping through the pages requires several encyclopedias, an atlas, and a steady emotional state. Nabokov labeling Finnegans Wake “a cold pudding of a book” comes to mind. Sometimes owned, occasionally discussed, but rarely read.
At its pinnacle, the nosebleed novel has its use: pushing the language ahead, surpassing what’s been done, and even offering a beacon for all those lazy, readable novels, providing a path for other writers.
In its endless quest for newness, however, there’s a cavalier, almost disdainful, feeling within the lines. You sense how the writer’s chin has lifted far above the level of their nose. There’s nothing wrong with being the smartest kid in class, but is it necessary to mention that on every page?
As a point of departure from that approach, consider this excerpt from “The Shining Houses,” a short story by Alice Munro:
Today, since it was Saturday, all the men were out working around their houses. They were digging drainage ditches and making rockeries and clearing off and burning torn branches and brush. They worked with competitive violence and energy, all this being new to them; they were not men who made their livings by physical work. All day Saturday and Sunday they worked like this, so that in a year or two there should be green terraces, rock walls, shapely flower beds and ornamental shrubs. The earth must be heavy to dig now; it had been raining last night and this morning. But the day was brightening; the clouds had broken, revealing a long thin triangle of sky, its blue still cold and delicate, a winter colour. Behind the houses on one side of the road were pine trees, their ponderous symmetry not much stirred by any wind. These were to be cut down any day now, to make room for a shopping center, which had been promised when the houses were sold.
With just a few well placed words, you have the atmosphere of an entire weekend. Other phrases—“competitive violence and energy” and “all this being new to them”—give hints about the neighbors. Munro paints the canvas yet hides her brushstrokes.
Did you notice how the economic and social level of an entire street is revealed? Even how the neighbors strive and think and behave and vote is suggested. You have the trajectory for the street: what it looked like over the decades, what it looks like now, how it will look tomorrow.
What’s most impressive and most important, however, is what’s most disguised. Although the paragraph appears to be authored by some neutral narrator, some distant omniscient figure, there’s an implicit sense conveyed, which the reader absorbs but doesn’t consciously notice: you’re inside the character’s head, not seeing the scene from an objective point, but learning to watch with that character’s eyes. Munro has made you a homeowner in the neighborhood.
Here’s a simple and clearly expressed statement: “The earth must be heavy to dig now.” What’s painted from those words is obvious to all readers. But the simple use of a modal verb—“the earth must be”—gives the statement some flavor. If the earth is heavy, Alice Munro, as the writer, certainly knows that fact. A verb of possibility, or of doubt, inserts the statement into the character’s head.
Characters rarely state truths in Munro stories; they have suspicions, inclinations, loosely held beliefs. Sentences begin with “probably this means” or “it had never occurred to me”; there’s enough doubt and questioning and distrust of what’s happening to make the characters seem, well, human.
When a story feels lifelike, when there’s almost a fierce recognition of a character’s pain or pleasure or predicament, it’s from these subtle moves. Munro isn’t rushed. She’s not showing off. She doesn’t need to. By going in the opposite direction of the avant-garde tome, sentiments that usually take an entire novel come in a single paragraph.
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