Too Much Happiness
by Alice Munro
McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
2009
ISBN: 978-0-7710-6529-3
303 pages
Hardcover
Fiction/Short Stories
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I was first introduced to Alice Munro (B. 1931) when her short story “Thanks for the Ride” appeared in a 1977 collection entitled Modern Stories in English. Her story not only stood side by side with the likes of Fitzgerald and Faulkner, Greene and Hemingway and even D.H Lawrence, it stood out as one of the best in the collection.
The characters in Munro’s story were all bound within specific roles or stereotypes. Some accepted who they were; others railed against reality: none seemed happy about where life had placed them. In fact, the way these characters dealt with how they had been defined made for some interesting reading.
Fast forward 32 years to Munro’s new collection of short stories entitled Too Much Happiness. Munro is still dealing with the idea of women (and sometimes men) fighting against roles in which they have been cast or in which they have created themselves. But with the maturing of her talent and the honing of her skills, the author now has the ability to show us internal and external battles of extreme subtlety or of great clarity and power. Nothing is avoided. No stone will be left unturned. Too Much Happiness is a mirror we should all peer into at least once.
Dimensions
What would you do if everything you were was wrapped up in the dynamics of your family, and that whole, which was you, was taken away by the most horrifying means possible? How would you begin to find yourself again, or, perhaps, create a new you? Could you even manage to find something to live for? In what dimension would the terrible realities of your past life congeal with the now and mark a new beginning in such a way that you could look back and say “It was here that I began to live again.”
In “Dimensions,” Alice Munro takes us inside the head of a woman who has been broken in every way but who refuses to give up her right to continue to live and to choose how she does that. A visceral piece, “Dimensions” is a wonderful example of talent in the hands of a master craftsperson. This story resonates with me in a way I recognize as being unique, and while it also reminds me of the short piece I mentioned earlier, “Thanks for the Ride,” there is so much more power and clarity. The piece is terrific!
Fiction
“Fiction” is a story much harder to define. Truthfully, I’m not sure I got it. I lay awake in the wee hours of this morning trying to put my finger on what it was that I was missing.
It appears “Fiction” hinges on a short story written by the now adult daughter (Christie) of the woman who stole the main character’s (Joyce) first husband. In reading the story, Joyce finds herself painted as a distant, if not uncaring, teacher who uses a child’s love for her own purposes. Christie relates how her Thursday music lessons were hell or heaven based on how her performance was received; there was no recognition by Joyce of the child’s obvious affection. Worse are the sporadic questions about the child’s life with Joyce’s former husband. Christie, as a child, did not recognize what was taking place, but Christie the adult sees quite clearly. This is all explained in Christie’s short story, but what starts out as disillusionment and heartbreak is turned inside out by the author as she reflects with amazement that a wonderful love could come from a situation of such unhappiness. Christie has broken free of the emotional role Joyce had helped to cast, and while Joyce recognizes this and tries to make some sort of amends (or, perhaps, a breakthrough of her own), Christie not only doesn’t recognize her, Joyce is too afraid to step out of the idea of who she is to make the contact she desires.
Once again, we have Munro playing on the theme of the roles women are often forced to play (Or are they? she questions) and how they deal with them internally and externally.
Complicated but interesting.
Wenlock Edge
This is a horrifying little story about a bright, female college student who is saddled with a strange room-mate. Fascinated by the story of the room-mate’s unusual life, the student somehow allows herself to be invited to the home of an elderly man (who is an acquaintance of the room-mate) for dinner. Upon arrival, however, the girl is told to do something shocking. Is it the surprise or something fundamental in her make-up that results in her acquiescence? I believe the story answers this question in a powerful and unsettling way, providing the reader with more proof that Alice Munro writes with a sharp pen.
Deep-Holes
I believe the title of this story is a metaphor.
It begins with a young boy literally falling into a hole, then, as he recovers from his injuries, his mother unwittingly shows him how the world contains many holes (islands most people don’t even know exist). Later, dropping out of University, the young man applies this idea to careers, opting to work and live in the holes between people who have become the suits or skins they must wear for the work they do. And finally, many years later, having shed everything, including his own personality, he spends his days on the street or in his squatter commune being in the moment for others who need him.
The irony here is that while the boy turned his back on those family members who already loved and needed him, and while he also denies the contributions he could have made through his intellect, at perhaps the final crossroad with his family (his mother), he shows a hypocritical willingness to accept some of his father’s legacy (money) to help others, while still ignoring his own mother’s simple need to have him in her life. The hole he’s fallen into this time is so deep she would have to step out of her own skin to rescue him. In the end, the only hope she’s left with is that she might, over time, find a hole/island/skin in which she can experience her own clear-sighted contentment.
Free Radicals
A free radical is an atom or group of atoms that has at least one unpaired electron and is therefore unstable and highly reactive.
Nita, is 62 years old, newly widowed and putting everything she has into the mental challenge of redefining herself—from a happily married, terminally ill cancer victim to… what? It wouldn’t be a stretch to define her as a free radical.
When Nita becomes the victim of a home invasion (one might also define the criminal as a free radical), the unstable and highly reactive state in which she currently exists allows her to not only redefine herself in order to avoid being killed, she actually becomes someone else.
When the ordeal is over, the woman is finally able to realize how much she misses her husband, which is, of course, the first step toward the new definition of herself that she was looking for.
An interesting, entertaining tale which received the perfect title.
Face
A boy who is born with a port-wine birthmark covering most of the left side of his face is shunned by his father, over-protected by his mother and loved by the daughter of his father’s mistress. The first two situations contrive to destroy the relationship the boy has with the girl in such a simple, foolish and permanent manner that the boy doesn’t realize her’s was the only true friendship of his life, one where his birthmark was celebrated rather than avoided.
It is not until late in his life that a strange meeting (most likely with the girl) partially awakens the man to his great loss and prompts him to retain his childhood home in homage to what happened there. Does this event change him in some fundamental way? No. Is he happier? No. In this one thing only, the man manages to step beyond the constraints of who he is to save something of what he once was and once had.
Some Women
In a tale set just after WWII in Southern Ontario, four women are satellites in orbit around a man who has leukemia. In those days, a leukemia victim went to bed and stayed there until he or she died. There were no other options.
The narrator begins the story by remembering her first job, at age 13. She is to cater to young Mr. Crozier (the leukemia victim) while his wife works as a teacher 2 days per week. Part of the girl’s routine is to avoid Old Mrs. Crozier who, at first, seems to be determinedly nasty. The third influence within the small universe that is the grand old Crozier House is a masseuse named Roxanne. She, for whatever reason, amuses Old Mrs. Crozier. Hired to administer to the old woman, Roxanne also manages to insert herself into the regular care of young Mr. Crozier. Then, of course, there’s young Mrs. Crozier who exists on a plain above them all—at least in her mind.
The story is an interesting look at the roles all these women play, as seen from the point of view of the teenager as an old woman herself, especially when the dynamics begun because of young Mr. Crozier’s situation cease to be about him and more about a power struggle between the three older women.
Much too subtle to for me to try to explain further, one must experience this story for themselves.
Child’s Play
Alice Munro upset me with this story. It concerns the thoughts and actions (again) of an older woman reflecting on her experience with a neighbouring child who endlessly tried to be her friend. The problem is that the girl is “special” and frightens the narrator. The childhood part of the story takes place at a time when people with a mental disability are not described in today’s politically correct ways, nor are they regularly integrated with people of their own age.
One might explain away the happenings in the story by saying that children of the time just didn’t know better, that they hadn’t been exposed to such people or taught how to build relationships with them. Yet, if the reader pays attention to the narrator’s choice of words, a picture forms of an adult who has not fundamentally changed with the times. She definitely hasn’t accepted responsibility for her horrific actions, and it turned my stomach.
Wood
Roy, an upholsterer and refinisher of furniture, has developed a love of cutting firewood. His awareness of each type of tree and its characteristics and possible idiosyncracies are his secret pleasure. He doesn’t think anyone else will understand. And now, with his wife slipping away into some sort of vague illness, Roy can devote more time than ever to his pastime.
See if you can figure Roy out. I know guys just like him. And, I wonder, what is Alice Munro trying to say about this fellow? Is it something as simple as a man who is otherwise content with his life stumbling onto a thing so ordinary yet life-changing that he can’t speak of it, or is it, like the men I mentioned, who don’t speak of their love for wood (or other natural materials) because discussing something that for these uncomplicated men comes so close to religion would surely diminish the thing (and also embarrass them).
Too Much Happiness
Sophia Kovalevsky is a real person who lived in the late 1800′s. She was a brilliant mathematician and the first woman University professor in her field in Europe (Stockholm).
A Russian by birth, Sophia appears to have travelled extensively throughout Europe.
Alice Munro’s story about Sophia takes place near the end of the remarkable woman’s life and is full of reflection. By writing the story in this manner, Munro is able to exhibit her tendency to write about the various roles women have been expected to play in our culture and how they deal with what I would call “psychological imprisonment” in a very clear and somewhat poignant manner. In a way, the novella “Too Much Happiness” is the best example of Munro’s work in the collection. I see two reasons for this… First, the author is somewhat constricted by the facts of Kovalevsky’s life, leaving her one main avenue in which to promote her theme: Sophia’s thoughts and words. Second, the extra length of the work allows the reader to experience the different walls (internal and external) Kovalevsky runs into or is confined by.
The piece is really quite interesting from an historical perspective, as well as in a literary way.
Summary
In 2005, Time Magazine included Alice Munro on a list of the world’s one hundred most influential people. Read a few of Munro’s books, and it becomes easy to understand the choice. An individual would have to be awfully close minded or, perhaps, half asleep to emerge from a collection like Too Much Happiness unchanged.
Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye 2010