Open Secrets, Indeed

Dear M.,
I haven’t read Open Secrets, but am puttering through The Lives of Girls and Women.  I picked it up specifically because it is The Munro’s only novel, and I want to see why she never returned to the form.
The NPR interview with Lorrie Moore sounds horrid, but worth the quote about Iraq.  That moment [...]

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Open Secrets

Dear CF,
Did you catch Michael Krasny’s interview of Lorrie Moore on NPR? He’s a fool, and she suffered him. Having seen Moore eviscerate fans, I was unprepared for this warmer, more pliant Moore whom Krasny repeatedly and unctuously described as having a gorgeous voice. When she said her latest novel was about how we got [...]

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Gold Saint: The Munro

Dearest Millicent,
As we have our odd saints, I offer a new category, a kind of hall of admiration and esteem, tentatively labeled Gold Saints.  The first great beacon? Alice Munro.  You know why.  Why even start the long list of sighs and pangs the great woman bestows in us? Well, today she delighted me in [...]

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Wedunlocking the Never-Ending Story

Dearest CF,
That’s an extraordinary passage. It hits home. I want to add, parenthetically, that I agree with your parallels to Alice Munro, and I’m surprised she hasn’t traversed that territory more than she has. She comes close, I think. But the type of wife that comes closest–dulled by habit and nearly (though not quite) unaware [...]

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