Alice Munro. The Moons of Jupiter (1982) Munro’s short stories could be called micro-novels. She gives us not only a whole character but a whole life. How does she do it? It looks like magic. It is magic, if by “magic” we mean the control of our attention so that we see what the magician wants us to see. The magician (to paraphrase Teller) takes advantage of our ability to process data swiftly and efficiently by leaving out unnecessary details or small changes in stimuli. We see what we expect to see. We see what the brain insists must be there, even when we know it’s not. Hence the illusion, and the pleasurable surprise at our inability to see it any other way. Fiction uses the same technique, whatever the medium. We know only what the author decides we should know.
Munro does this very well. She drops a detail here and an aside there, and we pick up on these cues to fill in the gaps that the short-story form inevitably leaves. The result is that we see the story exactly as Munro wants us to see it. And what does she want us to see? That people are damaged by others and by themselves, but somehow manage to survive, and sometimes to thrive. She’s ruthless in showing us how stupid, thoughtless, and malevolent decisions prevent the happiness that we seek, and how some unexpected felicity creates those moments of joy that keep us hoping for the best. She presents people as they are, and as they see themselves, and how the tension between those realities bends their paths in unexpected but inevitable directions.
I always enjoy reading one of her collections, but on some level they leave me exhausted. Recommended. ****
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