Alice Munro The Most Over Rated Author ~ With A Tainted Legacy Of Censorship Porn & Child Abuse

July 11, 2024  | Valerie Hayes  | Feature Articles, Health & Wellness, My Story, Thoughts & Ideas, Valerie Hayes, View All Articles & Photos

For those who take issue with speaking ill of the dead – don’t worry, I realized this author was over rated, long before she was dead. Long before I delved into the details of her rather unsavoury background, and family betrayal. 

Bear with me as I switch from past to present tense. I know her writing still exists, therefore it is. But she no longer exists, and for me, her writing is in past tense, therefore it was.

I will never pick it up again, except to do research, and try to expand our literary assessments, as opposed to being told what is good, when it is not good. The issue of addressing child sexual abuse, preventing it, and validating the testimonies of the victims, is far more important than the legacy of a deceased author. I never could understand why Alice Munro was promoted to such an extent. 

For years, I would read the gushing reviews, and then try to read something she wrote. I would think to myself, this sounds like a trashy Harlequin romance or worse. What on earth do people see in this? In my opinion the sexism, and stereotyping of girls and women, was superficial, trite, and at times appalling.

I have made a point of reading famous authors to include Hemingway, Steinbeck, Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Jean Paul Sartre, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tolstoy, and Voltaire as some examples. I even delved into Schopenhauer at one point, but struggled with it due to the oppressive pessimism.

But nevertheless, I can understand why many authors are notable, and deserving of accolades. Even so, all art is subjective, so like beauty, the merit is in the eye of the beholder. 

Alice Munro never once struck me as being a genius writer. Not even close. Her material was fictional, and narrowly limited in range and scope. It was repetitious ad nauseam, yet so many emanated how she was realistically showing the depth of the human condition. Hardly. If so, they were drawing from a shallow well. 

Now that her daughter has come forward, it makes so much more sense to me why I found her work to be stomach turning. Reading between the lines, there was definitely something grotesque beneath the surface of all the slick linguistics.

The Globe & Mail wrote an article about her fight with censorship in the seventies. The article goes on to say  that in 1976, the principal of Kenner Collegiate Vocational Institute in Peterborough, Ontario brought forth concerns about Alice Munro’s “The Lives Of Girls And Women” being taught in schools.

He had overheard a student claim it was pornographic. The central issue is that the story explicitly describes a man masturbating in front of a young girl.

In hindsight as we review the rearing of the ugly head of child molestation, and pornography in schools, we now know that Alice Munro’s husband molested her nine year old daughter, during the same time frame Alice Munro so vehemently defended her tacky material. 

Her daughter was molested in the 1970s, in the same proximity of time the story “The Lives Of Girls And Women” was written. She wrote the short story in 1971, and went to great lengths to defend it in 1976 and 1977, which is when her daughter was molested.

The molestation did not stop after a single incident, because her daughter was exposed to the pedophile for years without protection. He molested her mind, in addition to molesting her body.

As far as Alice Munro defending her so-called literary stance on the topic, since when is it okay for a man to masturbate in front of a child? Since when is it okay to defend and protect the pedophile, instead of the child?

Throughout all of the letter writing, petitions, and attempts to have the material removed from the school curriculum, she never once backed down. She was proud of what she had written. She never expressed any doubts about why it might be viewed as inappropriate. She made jokes about being pornographic, making light of a very serious matter. 

Her daughter on the other hand, struggled in a bleak, and lonely isolation for years, suffering from migraines, bulimia, shame, marginalization, and compound PTSD.

She finally told her mother about what her step-father had done to her. After that, the step-father wrote letters, trying to justify himself, and blame the victim, which helped to convict him after she finally went to the police. He said she was happy to go along with it, calling her a seductress, and a Little Lolita. How gross. 

Alice Munro viewed her nine year old daughter as competition for his sexual interest, and was only concerned about how the molestation affected her life. 

Alice Munro ultimately sided with her husband, and the relationship with her daughter was eventually terminated.

After she was made aware of her daughter’s sexual abuse, she never skipped a beat. She even had the gall to claim her husband had “many relationships” with young girls. In some cases of child molestation, family members have no clue. But in this case, it does appear that Alice Munro could have been an accessory to the crimes of her husband.

She seems to have viewed child molestation as a normal part of human sexuality. There is no other explanation for the cover up of the molestation of her own child. Nor is there any other explanation for her fierce defence of material she wrote describing a man masturbating in front of a girl.  

When you consider her extensive writing about women, and the lives of women, she never once had a shred of empathy for her own daughter. How does such a callous attitude equate to understanding what girls and women actually experience? 

Of course, as we all know by now, a pedophile will often have countless victims. It appears that from Alice Munro’s perspective, this was simply an expected part of the “Lives of Girls And Women”.

The big question one might ask is – why was she promoted so much? Not on merit, but on subject matter? And people wonder why there is a concern over the whole concept of pedophiles and grooming becoming a part of school curriculums?

In her backlash toward those who tried to censor her sexually explicit material in schools, she had the gall to claim there were many verses in the Bible that could be considered pornographic, if taken out of context.

Such a ludicrous claim does meet the definition of blasphemy. There is no basis for it whatsoever, nor could she support such a preposterous claim with a single example.

The only reason she would have come up with such an off base argument, is because she had no defence, and had the insolence and rebellion within her character to handle a challenge in such a manner. It shows far more about her character, and the indefensibility of her own hidden life, and lack of values.

Even though most of her writing is about the lives of girls and women, she did not do any of us any favours.

Few people dare to criticize Alice Munro, but I am not in any self-aggrandized literary circles, and I do not hesitate to lay bare, what she so cleverly tried to convey, and to conceal.

If anything, she was a master of deception, and supercilious self projections. On top of it all, her writing is banal and depressing. She spoke for no one but herself. 

Of course anyone opposed to such lewdness as she conveyed, is labelled as a fundamentalist Christian.

But there are countless people who recognize there is an issue with what is being promoted in schools, specifically around improper sexual material. This unacceptable grooming includes stories like the one written by Alice Munro. Targeting the youth with explicit sexual propaganda, has been going on a very long time. 

In response to some of the letter writing campaigns against Alice Munro’s description of a man masturbating in front of a young girl, she chose to fight back, making the absurd claim “If we don’t write about sex, it will disappear.”

I always did think she was bromidic and banal – but that one is a doozy.

Another sketchy aspect of her writing is that she would use the essence of stories written by Charles Dickens in “A Child’s History Of England”, and then reframed those stories to give them a happy ending. It borders on plagiarism, and certainly does not support the accolades she received as a creative genius who wrote original material.

When the children in Dickens stories were beheaded in the end, Alice Munro glibly stated “I changed the ending, so that wouldn’t happen.”

I realize the issue of censorship is a murky subject, and many books that have been censored did not appear to have valid reasons.

Six of the books written by Dr. Seuss have been censored. At One time the book about a horse called “Black Beauty” was censored. Two of George Orwell’s books “Animal Farm” and “1984” were censored. The list goes on to include “To Kill A Mockingbird” and Margaret Atwood’s “Handmaid’s Tale”.

In some cases the reasons seem ludicrous. Personally I do not think the topic of sexuality or sex scenes is a valid reason to censor a book.

But if the topic involves, or points toward the sexual abuse of a child, or child pornography in any way – then yes it should be at the very top of the chop list.

It has been years since I read “The Handmaid’s Tale” and other than thinking it was an awful book, like most of Atwood’s books are, I did not think it should be censored. In my opinion, Margaret Atwood is another highly over rated author. 

Years ago, I went to the Vancouver writer’s festival, and listened to Margaret Atwood read something she wrote, that was pornographic, and disturbing. It was like ‘Uggh how awful to use her fame to subject us to such garbage”. 

Immediately after Atwood’s zinger, a very strange guy got up supposedly to read a poem. Instead of reading anything, he started howling, growling, and making other guttural animal sounds.

The combination of Atwood’s reading, followed by the animalistic howling – I was done. I left early. It was a surreal experience, like floating around in the twilight zone, and encountering strange beings from another universe. 

In the days and weeks following, I felt like all the interest, and zeal I had for the literary world had been bouncing around aimlessly, like a balloon full of hot air.

The experience of being in some kind of fake literary circle, was like a nauseating ride at an amusement park. A mind bender, except nothing about it was amusing.

It shattered my robust veneration for lyric poetry, and made it seem pointless. I was dragged down, deflated, and disgusted. What a bummer it was.

It was the opposite of what I expected it to be. There was nothing sophisticated, cultivated or refined about it. Instead it was crude and vulgar. It was hard to believe it was even viewed as art. Listening to some of it, was spine-chilling. 

If an author is so gushed over, called a genius, and described as being great, many people who are tone deaf, and lack critical thinking, will automatically buy into it just to appear sophisticated and well read.

It’s kind of like certain paintings. Someone can splash a can of paint on a canvas, and if it is promoted enough, people will stand in awe and stare at it in an art museum. They may even pay two million dollars for it at an auction.

We need to learn to recognize audacious propaganda – sugar-coated, and dripping with slanted promotions, underhanded motives, and other such semantic trickery. Read the lines, and then read between the lines.

When you think about it, the government backs certain writers in much the same way they support  and finance the media. They lay out the parameters for the narrative, and then promote those who align with it. 

They support and champion the ideas of their choice, and encourage the infiltration of those ideas into our minds, and the minds of children in the schools. They are stealthily breaking down boundaries, one word at a time. 

It helps to explain why the CBC, and other media outlets describe certain mundane, or even borderline vulgar writers, in such grandiose terms. They give them non-stop free advertising, and use their own oblique verbiage, to paint them as some kind of gods or goddesses. In reality, it is just more government brainwashing. 

Since the revelation about the sexual abuse inflicted upon the daughter of Alice Munro, the National Post came out with an article on July 10, 2024 written by Allan Stratton titled “In Defence Of Alice Munro’s Legacy”.

He somehow managed to blame shift the disgust people feel, onto those who are actually questioning the validity of her legacy. How dare we? How dare he – write such an article when millions of children have been traumatized by child sexual abuse. 

Maybe it seems insensitive, but my first thought was – this guy is actually trying to resurrect a dead word mule. At least let the reader be the judge of her works, instead of repeatedly telling us how great she was. In my estimation, she was a word mule – peddling a load of crap

It is invariably framed, as if the reader has no capacity for comprehension of the written word. Talk about arrogance and manipulation, just to whitewash it all, to keep that sullied legacy alive. 

In some people’s eyes, her legacy has died. We do not have to view her as a great writer. Nor do we have to defend her so-called legacy, or keep it alive. Covid taught us a lot about the media. Skepticism is no longer for the hard core cynics. 

Would any of them have the courage to come out in defence of the child? Not likely. Yet so much of the fall out from child sexual abuse goes on for generations. Countless little girls who were molested end up in prostitution, or being re-victimized in relationships. It takes years to overcome it, and many never do overcome it. 

Alice Munro’s daughter initially came forward because she had children to protect. At least give her some credit. She is still battling those demons from the past. Alice Munro is not. Nor was Alice Munro ever a victim. 

In spite of all the accolades she received as a writer, she never wrote a single novel. She seemed to have lamented this fact many times throughout her writing career. But she still did not manage the task of writing a novel. 

It takes far more organizational ability, and a lot more work, and brain power to write a novel, than it does to write articles or short stories.

There is so much more planning involved. You have to create an outline, set a pace, establish a flow, the overall composition, create an amalgamation of complex ideas, establish consistency, and make the ideas blend, and connect from the beginning to the end.

You have at least a hundred thousand words to keep track of. You need to create the direction, map the journey, and know where you are taking it. Or it will become hopelessly jumbled. 

Whereas a short story has an average of about three thousand words. You can easily go back to the beginning, or the middle. You are not trying to hold a hundred thousand threads together to keep them from unravelling. Short stories and articles are sort of like dabbling. 

Poetry is different though. Even though it is shortest of all literary forms, expressing concepts in a nutshell requires a fervid imagination.

It may be short, but in my opinion, it is the most piercing. During times when I wrote a lot of poetry, I became totally burnt out, sometimes for several days, or a week. For some reason, it can be exhausting to the core. 

Emily Dickinson and many other famous poets described it as “the white heat of creation”. She viewed it as such because of the fiery and intrinsic intensity, as well as the fact it is limitless. She noted, there are impossible possibilities – a symbol of infinitude. 

In spite of the fact Alice Munro never managed to write a single novel, and as far as I know did not write any poetry – she was praised and elevated to be some kind of prosaic saint. It is not to say the short story does not have merit. All writing styles and genres can have merit. No doubt some of her short stories do have the qualities of an exceptional writer. There are people who like her material. Fair enough. 

My question is, whether or not her writing actually warranted as much praise as she got. Personally, I don’t think so. However, I will admit my point of view is blunted, because I have not read all of her material, and what I did read, did not impress me. Thankfully I never had to glorify her, in order to pass a course.  

As far as my own meagre experience, I have written a novel, which is unpublished due to some sensitive material. I have written hundreds of poems, and non-fiction articles, some of which can be read in this blog. 

So I do have some understanding of the writing process, and what is involved. I do not have a professional editor, and although perhaps I should, I am not vying for any status as a writer, other than what the reader can gain from it. A few typos, and some errant aspects of grammar, tense, etc. do not take away the main points. 

When you do hire a University educated editor, as I once did, you may not get unbiased proofing to tidy up the grammar etc. I expected an editor to be helpful. 

Given the amount of indoctrination at the University level, you are more likely to get an arrogant woke wannabe writer, who begins to challenge all of your thought processes. Like they are the schoolmaster, and you are the wayward child. 

For the most part they do teach writing, and freelance as editors to earn extra cash. Therefore, they may not view anyone as a mature writer.

In spite of my many flaws, I have been writing for decades. If I decide to hire an editor, I am not a child sitting in a classroom, about to get scolded for what I am thinking. Thought reform is not on my agenda. I have already been subjected to it, so I know it when I see it. 

The editor I temporarily hired, is not someone I would ever rehire, or recommend to any other writer. Although I did gain some understanding of themes, motifs etc. in writing, it was a pain dealing with her.

She clearly had more respect for the editor, as opposed to having respect for the writer. She had very little of her own written content, which spoke volumes. I wondered how she could be so critical, in spite of the fact she was not a writer. It was like wrestling with the wind. There was never anything to grasp hold of, so it could be applied in a practical sense. 

I prefer to write what I want to write, the way I choose to write it. It is the one freedom we have. Language is a wonderful avenue to exercise that freedom. Certain powers want to stifle people who write outside the box, see limitless possibilities, and are not afraid to challenge the status quo. Those are all key motivators, for those of us with a spine. 

There are certain values, and topics I prefer to write about. I don’t promote any kind of child pornography. I abhor it. I don’t promote genocide, including MAID. I am dead set against it. Other than poetry, I prefer to write non-fiction. 

I also know full well I would never in a million years get an award for what I write, and frankly, I don’t care. I hope to reach ordinary people, who are fully capable of deciding what they want to read, and what they think is interesting.

I don’t need CBC to blather on about what I write, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, I would be the last person they would gush over, even if I wrote a hundred novels.

Also, the greatest works of art tend to come from those who have experienced heartfelt, profound emotional pain, oppression, subjugation, and deep seated adversity.

It is not based on academia, advanced degrees, or on who manages to garner the most puff pieces on CBC. We don’t have to spin our wheels in grandiloquent University circles, all of which have the same kind of indoctrinated dogmas as the media does. 

We do not have to be a round peg forced into a square hole. We have around 170,000 words to choose from, and can arrange them as we please.

They are free for the plucking. Most people who gravitate toward writing love language. We are fascinated by words, the meaning of words, and the fact they can carry a punch, a wallop, or a poke – all in a single paragraph. 

To put it simply – Creativity is judged by the number of people who are moved by it.

It does not get its value from a single editor. Nor can it be corralled, or penned in by a group of eighteen bombastic Swedes, who seem to think they are the supreme judges of subjective art.

Language arts is an incredibly vast, intricate, and malleable subject. No one has a corner on the written word, except for God himself. 

The next point of contention is about the Nobel Prize for literature itself. It is very controversial, biased, and highly subjective. How can eighteen Swedes possibly read all the written content, and make a decision who to place up on their pseudo-pedestal?

It is an idiosyncratic, arbitrary, prejudicial and supremely arrogant depiction of what is the best writing in the entire world. Did they actually read all of it. What makes them the be all, and end all – when it comes to judging the written works of millions of writers? 

Nothing could possibly qualify them for such a task. Therefore the entire concept should be called into question. Hopefully, it will eventually lose all credibility. 

It is a purely political position they take, and it has come to the point where the award is meaningless. It is used for advertising alone, like a glossy rendition of the star scribes.

Is it any wonder certain writer’s set their vanity aside, and saw through this fickle award. It was turned down by Erik Axel Karlfeldt in 1919, Boris Pasternak in 1958 (for Soviet Union political reasons), and Jean Paul Sartre in 1964. 

Ironically, countless very accomplished writers never even got nominated. For so many – the esteemed Cracker Jack award process, dropped them through the cracks of the cultured creatives. They were beneath them.

In addition, there was controversy surrounding Bob Dylan receiving the award in 2016. It took around five months for him to accept it, because many people did not believe a songwriter fit the profile for such an award.

Peter Handke was another controversial recipient of the award, because he was a proponent of advanced genocide apologetics.

Overall, the most disputable and contentious Nobel Prize awards have been first and foremost the one for literature, followed by peace, and economics.

To further entrench the absolutism and arbitrary nature of the Noble Prize – it is impossible to revoke such an award. They consider themselves to be the despotic judges of all human achievement. Set in stone.

Whereas certain other awards are not quite so laden with intractable hubris.

For example – The Order of Canada. Given that most awards are subject to political bias, selfish ambition, and sometimes outright fraud, this award can be revoked.

We recently saw this happen with Mary Turpel-Lafond, and Buffy Saint Marie. Both of them made false claims of being of Indigenous heritage, in order to advance their careers, and pretend they had faced undue hardship.

In actual fact, they made great monetary gains, and received multiple awards based on the lies they told. Both of them also received honorary doctorates from multiple Universities.

Buffy Saint Marie for some reason, is not on the Wikipedia list of those who had the award revoked. Apparently Mary Turpel-Lafond was dropped, or convinced to withdraw. 

The list of those who were officially dropped from the Order of Canada includes Alan Eagleson, after being jailed for fraud in 1998, David Ahenakew was removed in 2005 after being accused of promoting anti-Semitic hatred, and T. Sher Singh was removed after his law license was revoked for professional misconduct.

In addition, Steve Fonyo was removed due to multiple criminal convictions. Garth Drabinsky was dropped in 2012 after being convicted of fraud and forgery in Ontario. Perhaps most famously Conrad Black was also dropped from the prestigious group, after being convicted of fraud and obstruction of justice in the US.

Ranjit Chandra was removed in 2015 for committing research fraud. And finally Johnny Issaluk was removed due to allegations of sexual misconduct.

It appears several others gave voluntary resignations to include Mary Turpel-Lafond. So it appears there are both involuntary, and voluntary resignations, of which there are many.

The fact so many people fall from grace in our very secular world, does make it seem fair to have these awards revoked under certain circumstances.

So many people are up in arms about what they so enigmatically call cancel culture. In my opinion, the term itself should be cancelled. It is another pejorative term for those who question some of these awards, and backgrounds of those who are placed in such high esteem.

It is true – we are all fallible. We all have deep flaws, but that does not excuse child molestation, fraud, or any other crime.

To make an attempt to paint all people with broad brush strokes, and make flippant claims such as everyone does it – is skirting accountability. It is an attempt to give permission to the fraudsters, to take advantage of the systems that are supposed to be fair, and actually mean something.

There is no such thing as cancel culture. Nothing will cancel Alice Munro. No matter what is revealed about a person, even after their death – it does not cancel them. Although it may taint their work in the eyes of some people, it does not remove their body of work.

Vandals destroyed the statue of John A. MacDonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister, because they believe he was responsible for the residential schools.

To attribute deep-rooted and long standing societal harms to one individual, is a form of scapegoating. The issues leading to residential schools, are steeped in a cauldron of convoluted and complex history. It stems from the politics of many people, throughout many generations, to create the most downtrodden, and dense – burden of blame and blunders.

No one can cancel the history of John A. MacDonald in Canadian politics. Truthfully, the attempt to cancel historical figures is an assault on our culture, history and heritage.

Even Stalin and Hitler cannot be cancelled, because none of us can turn back the clock, or change what happened.

Just as it is with child sexual abuse, to deny it, is what re-victimizes people, and causes harmful patterns to be repeated.

We cannot cancel what happens. Nor can we change the biases of those who award the Nobel Prize for literature. Alice Munro was given the award. It will never be revoked.

Does it matter. No probably not. When I review some of the recipients of the Nobel Prize over the years, most of them are people I have never even heard of.

Such an award can be used for promotional reasons, and to many, it is the highest achievement one can get. But what does it really get for them? Certainly not a dose of humility. 

The more I read about it, and the more I think about it, most of the awards are meaningless in the overall scheme of things.

As far as censorship, I believe that anything promoting, or advancing child pornography should be censored, as well as ideologies that promote genocide, or violence against certain groups of people, or any people for that matter.

We live in a world steeped in deception and vanity, which is why I no longer see much value in awards. A degree of anonymity, and a willingness to admit wrongdoing, and turn away from it, is much more intrinsically valuable.  

I think if anything we all should sharpen our critical thinking skills, our discernment, and our ability to distinguish right from wrong. It does not mean we all need to be judgemental, but we do need to decide for ourselves what is true, and what has merit.

I believe most of the merit attributed to Alice Munro, is propaganda. I hope her daughter heals and finds peace. I hope any other victims will have the courage to come forward. And I hope people can see the sexist nature of the writings of Alice Munro.

And being of Swedish ancestry myself, I hope the Nobel Prize awarding Swedes eventually come off their high horses, and come to their senses.

The supremacy, pompousness, and audacity they have, to consider themselves the absolute judges of subjective art, as in all things written throughout the world – is almost laughable, or otherworldly perhaps. 

Like they are some kind of divine seers, transcending and nailing the epiphanies of what it is to be a human being; and decide whether each of those profound revelations, should be deemed to have substance.

Imagine the glut of all those fleeting, illusory, vague, vulgar, and gloomy concepts, shady as some of them are – and how they can be hailed, and nailed as heroes – just because they said so.  

It is quite the paradox, to structure a despotic coup of subjective art, by a handful of eccentrics. Who are those eighteen people in Sweden? Nobody really. What do we know about their ability to be judge and jury over the written word? Nothing at all.

In fact, it is so dubiously high-handed – it becomes as chaff in the wind.

Copyright Valerie J. Hayes and Quiet West (2024). Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author/owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Valerie J. Hayes and Quiet West with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.