4/12/24
Modern Fiction: Lecture 15 - Alice Munro and Raymond Carver
● Omniscience = an all-knowing kind of narrator very commonly found in works of
fiction written as third person narratives. The omniscient narrator has full knowledge
of the story’s events and of the motives and unspoken thoughts of the various
characters. He or she will also be capable of describing events happening
simultaneously in different places - a capacity not normally available to the limited
point of view of first person narratives.
● Metafiction = Fiction about fiction; or more especially a kind of fiction that openly
comments on its own fictional status.
● Raymond Williams: ‘That potent and benign at hand… clears the air so that people
can see and acknowledge each other; that hand is the hand of the novelist; it is
Dickens seeing himself’.
Alice Munro, ‘Open Secrets’
● ‘What could you put in a box like that before you wrapped it up and sent it far away?
A bead, a feather, a potent pill? Or a note, folded up tight, to about the size of a
spitball’. Metatextual, self-description of her work. Language becomes
metaphoric. In place of the synoptic self-confidence of ‘Mrs Dalloway’, kind of
modesty which is cultivated and avoids the bombast of Woolf and Dickens.
Contains a sacred or secret part.
● A Real Life = ‘The house was not sold or rented. It was not torn down, either, and its
construction was so sound that it did not readily give way. It was capable of standing
for years and years and presenting plausible appearance. A tree of cracks can
branch out among the bricks, but the wall does not fall down. Window sashes settle
at an angle, but the window does not fall out. The doors were locked, but it was
probable that children got it, to write things on the walls’. Reminiscent of Cushner.
Added dimension of a house/room being described for the stories being told.
‘Walls’ could be likened to the blank pages and gaps and abrupt transitions in
the short story structure throughout the novel. Creates abrupt interruptions.
Shadow of omniscience - the controlling hand of the omniscient narrator.
● Carried Away = ‘You could look up from your life of the moment and feel the world
crackling beyond the walls’. References to walls throughout her work.
● Jeremy Hawthorn, ‘Studying the Novel’: ‘Characteristic of the modern novel… is
its exploration of both the subjective and the social, both the private and the
collective. It is this combination of the broadest social and historical sweep with the
most acute and penetrating visions of the hidden, private life, and their
interconnections, that is characteristic of the modern novel and at the heart of its
owner and continuing life. Paradoxically, although the novel is both written and read
in private, it relies upon a highly organized society and industry to produce and
circulate it’.
● Alex Keegan, ‘Alice Munro: The Short Answer’: ‘One remarkable feature of her
work is how she appears to break some of the cardinal rules of short-story writing,
how she can appear to be "loose" and drop in what look like irrelevancies,
Modern Fiction: Lecture 15 - Alice Munro and Raymond Carver
● Omniscience = an all-knowing kind of narrator very commonly found in works of
fiction written as third person narratives. The omniscient narrator has full knowledge
of the story’s events and of the motives and unspoken thoughts of the various
characters. He or she will also be capable of describing events happening
simultaneously in different places - a capacity not normally available to the limited
point of view of first person narratives.
● Metafiction = Fiction about fiction; or more especially a kind of fiction that openly
comments on its own fictional status.
● Raymond Williams: ‘That potent and benign at hand… clears the air so that people
can see and acknowledge each other; that hand is the hand of the novelist; it is
Dickens seeing himself’.
Alice Munro, ‘Open Secrets’
● ‘What could you put in a box like that before you wrapped it up and sent it far away?
A bead, a feather, a potent pill? Or a note, folded up tight, to about the size of a
spitball’. Metatextual, self-description of her work. Language becomes
metaphoric. In place of the synoptic self-confidence of ‘Mrs Dalloway’, kind of
modesty which is cultivated and avoids the bombast of Woolf and Dickens.
Contains a sacred or secret part.
● A Real Life = ‘The house was not sold or rented. It was not torn down, either, and its
construction was so sound that it did not readily give way. It was capable of standing
for years and years and presenting plausible appearance. A tree of cracks can
branch out among the bricks, but the wall does not fall down. Window sashes settle
at an angle, but the window does not fall out. The doors were locked, but it was
probable that children got it, to write things on the walls’. Reminiscent of Cushner.
Added dimension of a house/room being described for the stories being told.
‘Walls’ could be likened to the blank pages and gaps and abrupt transitions in
the short story structure throughout the novel. Creates abrupt interruptions.
Shadow of omniscience - the controlling hand of the omniscient narrator.
● Carried Away = ‘You could look up from your life of the moment and feel the world
crackling beyond the walls’. References to walls throughout her work.
● Jeremy Hawthorn, ‘Studying the Novel’: ‘Characteristic of the modern novel… is
its exploration of both the subjective and the social, both the private and the
collective. It is this combination of the broadest social and historical sweep with the
most acute and penetrating visions of the hidden, private life, and their
interconnections, that is characteristic of the modern novel and at the heart of its
owner and continuing life. Paradoxically, although the novel is both written and read
in private, it relies upon a highly organized society and industry to produce and
circulate it’.
● Alex Keegan, ‘Alice Munro: The Short Answer’: ‘One remarkable feature of her
work is how she appears to break some of the cardinal rules of short-story writing,
how she can appear to be "loose" and drop in what look like irrelevancies,
