Say It Isn't So, Alice

I gasped out loud when I read this morning that Alice Munro may be giving up the writing life. Apparently she has cited her "advancing age" and is quitting in the "interest of a manageable life." This shocked me. Alice Munro is one of the writers I love and admire most, whose work I study, to try and absorb just a fraction of what she is able to do.

I guess I had assumed that writers just ... wrote until they died. And maybe some of their last works would eventually be published, and others wouldn't. I didn't imagine making this decision to just... stop. And what it this about a manageable life? Writers aren't supposed to have manageable lives, are they? But I suppose (sigh) at seventy-five, this is her due.

Her final story collection will be released in the fall. I intend to read it very, very slowly, and then go back to the beginning and start all over again. The wonderful thing about her work is that you can read a story twenty times and each time it will reveal something new and surprising. I'm just mourning the fact that it is all coming to a definitive end.