MANDIRA PATTNAIK

If you are a writer and not living under a rock, something or the other about the Alice Munro controversy has since reached you. Do you really care about the ‘personal’ being mixed with the ‘public life’ of a writer? Or if the creative choices are guided and informed by private relationships? Or is writing, especially fiction, completely untouched by how the writer has lived their life? These are questions that bubbled up as the controversy erupted and continues to dominate public discourse as we speak. It started with revelations by the daughter of the Nobel prize winner acclaimed short story writer Alice Munro, Andrea Robin Skinner. Skinner alleged that her stepfather sexually abused her as a child, and that her mother stayed with him even after he admitted to the abuse. The incidents happened in 1976 when she was nine years old and Gerald Fremlin (her stepfather) was in his 50s. Without a reading of the article (which was under a PayWall that many didn’t bother to pay for or circumvent–a mistake that many including Joyce Carol Oates committed), it would seem odd that Skinner should come out with the revelations after Munro’s death (Munro died last month at the age of 92), as though to seek publicity or malign Munro’s reputation. But a reading of the article, which was later covered as a news item by publications across the world, including The Guardian and The Indian Express, it became amply clear that Skinner had in fact gone to the police in 2005 and Fremlin had been charged when Skinner’s accusations had proved true, but Munro continued to take Fremlin’s side (instead of her own daughter’s) until Fremlin’s death in 2013 and even thereafter, which was highly condemnable. “The silence continued” even after Fremlin’s death, Skinner wrote, because of her mother’s fame. (The Guardian)

WHAT’S THERE FOR OTHER WRITERS?

One of the first reactions from the literary world came from author Julie Mannell, who write on Twitter: I grew up in the area of rural Ontario beside Alice Munro-land. Ignoring your daughter’s abuse for the sake of your marriage is common place & has been so for generations. I lived it & write about it & this is the reason so many of my best girlfriends are dying in their 30s.

Many seemed to support this, at least as evident from the comments below this tweet, going on to blame “settler colonial society” and “criminal laws”.

What really blew the matter was this tweet by Joyce Carol Oates. JCO saying “Munro may have confronted something like this dilemma: a “good” woman seemingly oblivious of a common law husband sexually abusing a child.” really infuriated the literary community.

Meg Pillow called JCO out for not reading the article and making a side comment. Meg Pillow then deleted that tweet as JCO replied with a personal attack.

Anyway, the use (and abuse) of a personal situation in fiction, whether or not with or without the author’s complicity, expectedly fired up everyone’s imagination. JCO further wrote: “If you have read Munro’s fiction over the years, you will see how often terrible men are valorized, forgiven, enabled; there seems to be a sense of resignation.”

The fact that reality and fiction intermingle more generously and abundantly than we choose to believe, was like a light dawning upon many. According to another report, quoting Munro’s biographer Robert Thacker, said “he had long known of Fremlin’s abuse and that the consequences had been “devastating” on the whole family, adding that Munro had spoken with him about it knowing it would come out eventually.”

Rebecca Makkai, a Pulitzer finalist in 2019, said Munro’s work was formative for her, but she too had been sexually abused as a child, and Skinner’s admission had left her “deeply unnerved.” “I love her work so much that I don’t want to lose it, but am also horrified to see the meanings of many favourite (foundational, to me) stories shift under us.”

Author Joyce Maynard said in a Facebook post that Skinner’s words “carry the unmistakable ring of truth,” adding, “I will not cease to admire — and study — the work of Alice Munro. But I am reminding myself today. … There is art. And then there is the artist.”

ALL THESE HAVE REPURCUSSIONS. A writer has a family life where decisions are taken and objectivity is maintained according to the situation and one’s personal morals. And then there is the public image that must be maintained. Plus, one must be true to one’s art, and ensure that the creative work stays free-flowing, relatable and resonant. All these seem to get muddled as we discover the many layers of this controversy.

Let me know in the comments what you think –as a human and as a writer — about this latest point of discussion to take the community by storm.

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