Tag: fiction

A Men’s Book Club Discusses Alice Munro

October 22, 2024

The title suggests that men and women have differing perspectives on Alice Munro’s work. Can that be verified? I do not know. But our book club had a lively discussion about Munro’s book entitled Dear Life, a short story collection published in 2012.

Surprisingly, our members read some stories, but not all of them. They found the stories dark and stopped reading to avoid being depressed. One found the lack of “redemption” in the stories disappointing. But does life always have a happy ending? Many people have challenging lives and fail to reach a satisfying old age. There could be health, financial, and family issues that are never resolved. The shock value of missing an ending to the stories made me think of what could have been should the author have completed it. And that I found exciting, and I dreamt up options for finishing the stories.

Although most of us considered the subjects dark, we all agreed that the writing was extremely smooth, and the characters in the story came to life. Descriptions of small towns, the location of many of the stories, also came to life with such force that one of us thought she described the city where he grew up. I admired the ease with which Munro described her characters in a few pages in such detail that I thought I thoroughly understood the person and her motivation in life.

Most of Munro’s characters are women residing in small Ontario towns during the 1950s and 1960s. These women did not usually attend university, and the smart ones hid their intelligence; it was not fashionable for women to be clever in those days.

Her characterizations reminded me of my parents: my mother stayed home and occupied herself with housekeeping while my father was the breadwinner. My mother was the sole exception among her siblings, who all attended university. One of Munro’s stories is an exact copy of one aspect of my parents’ life: the wife prepares dinners for her husband, a doctor, just like my father, who expects dinner on the table when he returns home from work.

Munro’s description of women’s societal role and status started a conversation about their role today, with the understanding that women now surpass men at university graduation. It’s common for wives to be the breadwinners while their husbands take on household responsibilities. This has been a significant change over the past fifty years. Thinking of this trend, some of us questioned to what extent Munro’s stories would be relevant today. I thought that they would. Confirming my view, the Nobel Committee recognized Munro’s universal writings and awarded her the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013.

But after her death this year, Munro’s reputation suffered with the widespread publication that her husband sexually abused their daughter. Many followers of Munro expressed moral outrage about Munro being aware of the situation and not doing anything about it. Doubts were raised about her genius, and discussions ensued about the quality of her books after her questionable behavior was uncovered. Interestingly, despite anecdotal evidence of changing opinions about Munro, our book club did not dwell on this subject. Maybe this is one difference between men and women when considering Munro’s work. Three out of eight of us resonated with the book, while one person didn’t find it appealing. Most agreed that the stories were dark and depressing but beautifully written.

The Men’s Book Club

March 19, 2024

One suggested forming a book club at our monthly luncheon of retired friends. It could have been the spicy food at the Indian restaurant that triggered our brain cells to ponder that our wives belong to book clubs while we do not. We discussed that women have many social networks while men do not. Some argued that men traditionally went to work while women raised children at home, needing social networks to survive, indicating our age more than the current reality. Be it as it may, we decided to form a book club.

We did a quick internet survey on where and when we would meet. The majority agreed to meet at lunchtime; we do not want to compete with rush hour traffic. The options considered for a meeting place were a restaurant that would cost money and force us to share space with loud customers. Or a coffee house like Starbucks, where we may not be welcome to occupy many chairs for hours while buying a single cup of coffee.

As a result, we chose to meet at someone’s house who would also provide a light lunch. Nine people showed up at the first meeting; the original lunch group expanded with friends we thought would be interested. We all proposed a book for our review and picked one for our first meeting. The one suggesting the book would moderate what we envisioned, a free-for-all discussion.

Although I joined the group, I had some misgivings about its future. Monthly meetings are good for socializing, but should we also be voracious readers? I used to read books in my youth and loved thrillers (Agatha Christie, Ken Follett, John Grisham) and westerns (Zane Grey, Louis L’amour, Charles May), but now I read primarily political news and no books. I gathered from talking with my friends that they are not bookworms except a couple who read a book weekly. But I thought, let’s give it a try.

Our recent meeting focused on John Le Carre’s book The Looking Glass War. It is a Cold War story, a spy novel set mainly in the United Kingdom during the 1960s.

Although the discussion flowed, people were cautious in expressing their views, perhaps because of their science, engineering, and finance backgrounds. Some thought the plot was complex without explaining why, while others believed there was too much detail describing a crystal radio with Morse code transmission. Someone else questioned why the author did not conclude the situation, leaving the readers to figure out what happened. Still others characterized the book as British history. With no explanation, someone said he did not like the book. We did not pursue any of these comments; perhaps the group must jell to be mature enough to dive into more detailed discussions without antagonizing each other.

I told them I enjoyed how the first chapter got my attention and hooked me into reading the book in one sitting. And how the plot builds up into a crescendo of excitement towards the end, the chapters becoming shorter and shorter as the actions become more and more dangerous.

Placing an English agent over the Iron Curtain in East Germany is vital to the plot. I thought of my experience with the Cold War, living in Hungary then, and the Iron Curtain’s impact on me. Living near the Iron Curtain, I knew it was a no man’s land, cleared of vegetation and mined, with dogs roaming between the two electrified fences patrolled by soldiers and lighted at night by watchtowers. As a medical doctor, my father patched up many people trying to escape across the Iron Curtain, caught by the dogs, the soldiers, or the electrified wire fence trying to escape using wire-cutters.

Reading about the crystal radio set reminded me of my childhood experience building one. I remember the excitement I felt getting radio signals from the West on my crystal radio; in Hungary, the only reception one had was Hungarian propaganda broadcast on the “people’s” radio with one channel during the Cold War.

After the meeting, I wondered: Did I enjoy the book more than the others? Was it perhaps my experiences that connected in many ways with the story while the others had no similar experiences? That thought made me think that knowing the context of a story makes one more knowledgeable and appreciative of a story than others with no such experiences.

I look forward to our next meeting to see if my theory holds.