Customer Reviews

Dance of the Happy Shades

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I hadnt read much Alice Munro before but I was very impressed with this collection of stories. There's a wonderful understatement about the entire collection, but each story resonates with its own life and people. I loved the melancholy and moody landscapes, the other-worlds of women and children mainly on farms and villages.

I think good stories create their own unique life; after all, why else would we care about characters who we meet and get to know so briefly? But we DO care about the characters; somehow they matter and though nothing is resolved sometimes, somehow everything has changed. The ordinary transformed.

If you haven't read Alice Munro before, you're in luck! you have some ten volumes of the best writing in English to select from! This collection includes some of Munro's earliest stories, at least as early as 1968, and one of her best known, "The Red Dress". It's a good starting place. If you've already read Munro's later story-suites, such as Runaway, then you'll be intrigued to find a less distinctive but equally crafty word-artist in Happy Shades. The stories in this collection are less interpenetrating, less like a novel in the form of a suite, than in other collections, but that's not a flaw, just a difference. One story (I won't declare which) ranks in my mind as a classic equal to any in English. If a short-story writer is ever to win the Nobel Prize, in my opinion it should be Alice Munro.

If I could write a letter to Ms Munro, it would simply say...thank you for sharing your gift, and then probably, quit reading your fan mail and write some more short stories! Munro's gift is to make the simplest tale accessible to every reader, and whatever twists and turns she may take you on, your brain in sheer delight will exclaim..."of course!" She is capable of making the most isolated 1930's farm come alive to modern urban condo dwellers. Like a Rosetta stone of feeling and emotion, she allows the readers to inhabit the characters fully, regardless of gender or personality or circumstance. This collection is further evidence and testament to that gift, and of that genius. Write on, Ms Munro, write on!

This book came out in 1968 and contained 15 short stories. It was the first of the 12 or so collections of short works Munro has published to date.

The stories here were set in farmlands or small towns, presumably in Ontario's back country. The collection showed a range of narrative voices: in the first person by girls, although it was clear the narrators were adults and recalling events from childhood; by adult women, married or unmarried; and even a teenage boy. And in the third person, either omniscient or following the viewpoint of a woman or girl. Eleven of the pieces were written in the first person, and for me these were where the author's work was most memorable, particularly when she was speaking through the girls, recalling the past.

Examples included "Boys and Girls," in which the narrator recalled, amid a description of her farming childhood, a growing awareness of differences in the expectations for each sex; sensitivity was allowed only for girls, and not necessarily approved even then. And "Walker Brothers Cowboy," in which the narrator recalled a visit with her traveling salesman father to the father's old flame, with much emotion apparent but left unexpressed. For me, these were the standouts. Other stories covered a narrator's attending a school dance, a piano recital, and the first experience with alcohol.

What I enjoyed most in the pieces was the sensitivity to the passing of time; the strong moral sense, understated but present, as in the title story; attention to the complexities of family ties and girls' experience; a sharp ear for the way people speak; and a strong feeling for small-town life, which wouldn't be out of place in the American South. Where people knew everyone else's business, and a highlight for children was to visit the local pond or play in the cemetery. Even down to the "soft-drink bottling plant, some new ranch-style houses and a Tastee-Freez." Where men spoke as little as possible, when they weren't raising hell or playing practical jokes on each other, and women shared their emotional lives mainly with other women. One thing that felt left out was any reference to church as the center of the older women's social lives.

It was remarkable in these stories how remote the world of the women -- the main focus -- was from that of the men; after early childhood, their paths didn't often appear to intersect. Some of the stories contained families where the fathers or husbands were absent. On the other hand, mothers were frequently distant, sick and troublesome, while fathers were humorous, good with people and admired.

Besides the fathers in some of the stories, few indeed of the male characters were prominent or likeable. In some of the longer stories, the narrator's memories and descriptions seemed to go on and on; it was more of an effort to finish the last few. But even the least interesting of these often contained something striking.

The stories in the present collection were written between the mid-/late 1950s and 1968. In the pieces, there were occasional flashes forward and backward, but they were brief and the stories were mostly linear. Compared to works published later in the author's career, there was an absence of multiple story lines or extended jumps back and forth in time. Nor was there any questioning of a narrator's early memories, or mixing of third- and first-person narratives. Or anything focused on a narrator's partner and children, or set outside the back country or before the author's lifetime. Yet with a few exceptions, it was the stories in this early volume -- much less elaborate than the author's stories in later collections -- that were the most moving for this reader.

The author's amazing ability to create depth and meaning in original ways is on full display here. Stories are usually presented with events in non-sequential order, making use of juxtaposition and an attention to specifics down to the level of each word.

The last time I was in a university creative writing workshop, I wrote this story called "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere". It was this twelve page philosophical ramble about a guy pumping gas and thinking about his friend Julius (his only friend, who he hates), his girlfriend Victoria (his dream girl, who he also doesn't like very much), and his hometown (where he still lives, and, you guessed it, doesn't much care for). At the end, he gets a four-leaf clover from an old man he's been observing the whole story, and goes through a big self-indulgent rant on hope. I won't spoil the end for anyone (it's not important in this context anyway), but there's a certain duality there I didn't nail on the first draft. Everyone in the workshop said they had a hard time getting through it, though they all said it was insanely well-written and they could see the talent that went into it. In workshop language, that means "You f***ed up, and while we don't know how because you're just good enough to make it seem like you didn't f*** up even though you obviously did because we aren't digging the story, you still f***ed up. We have no constructive comments."

What really bothered me, though, was my professor not really being worth a damn when I asked her what I should do upon revision. She flat out told me that she can't help me until I read "Walker Brothers Cowboy" by Alice Munro. That was the end of it.

So, I read "Walker Brothers Cowboy" and understood why I needed to read it. The story was a lot like what I was trying to do: not necessarily minimalistic, but low on action and very cerebral. My entire story takes place in a guy's head while he pumps gas. To keep a story like that grounded over the course of a dozen pages is no small feat, but "Walker Brothers Cowboy" made me realize that it can be done and that I need different types of lucidity within a story. I need both the kind that is super-aware and introspective and the kind that observes for the sake of the reader, and neither can trip over the other. Essentially, there needs to be a voice for the character and a voice for the author, and they have to add up to the voice of the story. Little things like a line drawn on the dusty fender of a car by the finger of a woman torn and the open arms connected to the heavy, heaving chest of a woman who's both danced with and away some sort of demon are the things in a story that aren't stabs, but, rather, twists of the knife. She hooks us in, somehow, and then goes for the kill as subtly as possible.

Which means that Munro is a sneaky broad. When I go back to look at what I'd take out or put in to one of her stories, there's barely anything at all I'd change if there's anything I'd change at all. She's the master of the moment in the same way (not necessarily the same style) Carver and Hemingway are masters of the moment: they write beautifully about the unraveling point in a series of days and moments similar to the one you read about, but different enough that we get the idea that the characters' lives are changed forever. Munro just happens to do it with a lot more description and long-windedness than those dudes. Instead of the short, declarative sentence, she opts for the snapshot, mini-story paragraphs. Her version of "This fish is bigger than us all" or "In the kitchen, he poured another drink and looked at the bedroom suite in his front yard" could take half a page and be just as concise.

So if there's nothing I'd change in her stories, why don't I like her as much as I should? I think that there are some killer stories in this collection. "Walker Brothers Cowboy" is probably the best, and "Dance of the Happy Shades" is almost as good (especially reading it as a musician). "The Office" is funny and frustrating in a Larry David sort of way. "A Trip To the Coast" has one of the best endings I've ever read, and "The Peace of Utrecht" is solid the whole way through. In fact, they're all solid. So why don't I obsess over her like I do other writers?

I don't think it's for the same reasons I'm not as big of a Flannery O'Connor fan as I know I should be (she's amazing, but she pretty much only writes two stories: the one about the racist and the one about that crazy old southerner), but it could be. These are all tales of small town folks with newly broken, soon to be broken, or perpetual broken hearts, discontent and wondering what's outside the little ol' village of Jubilee (population unknown).

Which makes this even more perplexing. My own work hyperfocuses on the small town, Midwestern people that would fit in perfect next to Munro's characters. And even if she was writing the same story over and over, it's not like I have a problem with that. All my favorite authors do it. Carver: I'm drunk and stuck in the middle of a slightly absurd situation. And I'm not in love anymore. Kerouac: I'm drunk and in the middle of . . . somewhere. And I'm not in love anymore. Hornby: I'm British and witty and stuck in the middle of some dumbass, whiteboy, middle class, problem. And I don't know what love is anymore. I can deal with material repeating itself, but there's something about Munro's work that doesn't quite draw me in.

In all fairness, this book took me quite a long time to read, as I tackled it in pieces over the course of a few months. Rarely was I stuck to the page, and that may have broken up my attention into an unsuitable amount necessary to truly fall into an Alice Munro story. And I think that's the problem: perhaps she's too subtle and I'm too dumb. I champion the smooth move over the grand sweep pretty much any time in a story, but with Munro I almost fear that she moves too stealthily. She isn't tricking the reader, and she isn't difficult to read, but I think to get the full effect of the stories, a person needs to be just as observant of and tangled up in the characters as Munro is when she's writing about them. It's just like the hypnotist implies in "A Trip To the Coast": hypnotism won't work unless you are willing to let it.

So maybe I shouldn't have expected the stories to pull me in. This is writing that is full of symbolism and rich metaphors and all that other stuff English professors get a huge boner over. This isn't pop lit. As much as I enjoy Helen Fielding and Nick Hornby and Melissa Bank and David Sedaris, it was wrong of me to go into Dance of the Happy Shades expecting to be drawn in by the literary equivalent of a pop song's hook. Not that I went in expecting that, in all fairness to myself, but I still think there should be some sort of glaze over the story, a lil' bit of sugar to make it all go down (unless of course she going for the complete blank presentation of emotion, which she isn't).

Regardless, I did enjoy the stories a lot more when I got to actually sit down and soak them up with no distractions. I thought the prose gets lost within itself sometimes, almost wound too tightly. I'd love to go back and read this collection again, and I'll certainly be checking out a few more of her books (Lives of Girls and Women is supposed to be the ultimate). Until then, however, I'll have to settle for what I could take from her stories now: a confident, flowing voice telling tales of real, small town people in a beautiful, if not always compressible, way (blame to be placed later).