Alice Munro has become known as one of the most influential short story writers in recent history. Just last year, Munro won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature. Munro is a “true master of the form,” according to Salman Rushdie and has, “mastered the contemporary short story” according to the New York Times.
Growing up in Canada, Munro’s roots have influenced her pieces, adding backdrops of Lake Huron and small town living, so much so that these places breathe off the page and feel like a character themselves. Themes of Munro’s work are entangled with the ideas of men and women’s lives, passages of time, and relationships between generations. They explore the raw and real nature of being a human, and what that means when relating to other humans.
In “Train” the protagonist, Jackson, struggles with the idea of intimacy throughout his life. Munro uses the movement of the train as a subtle comparison to his movement throughout life, his transience.
In his life Jackson comes across Belle, an older farmer. Later in time, Belle becomes ill with cancer and Jackson, who can’t seem to grasp the ideas of Belles fathers’ death, runs away. How has Jackson's experiences in the past with WWII and his relationship with Ileane in high school shaped the darker sexual undertones of this story? Which other dark themes worked in layers throughout this story as well as “Walker Brothers Cowboy,” “Friend of My Youth,” “Save the Reaper?” How does Munro use all aspects of setting to characterize place as well as people?
Munro is a literary giant because of her mastery of interweaving themes, plot lines, and characters with a sense of visceral place. Her writing simultaneously encapsulates the repugnance of a personal history sparked by the feeling a dirty girl's hand on your thighs as well as the crispness of a sheer dress with, "sociable and youthful." As you think about her stories, consider their complications and how this relates to the human condition. Then think about how stylistically you can apply this to your own writing.
Post by Caroline Knight, Gaby Syman, K.C. Schweitzer, and Julia Fox.
“Train” surprised me. It didn’t flow in quite the same way as most of the short stories that we read. I wasn’t sure what to make of it at first when Jackson left Belle at the hospital and didn’t come back. Though I can see how the first section of the story with Belle ties in with the revelation of abuse at the end of it, it still felt somewhat like two separate stories to me. Maybe that’s because so much time was spent on Belle and so little of that was brought into the rest of the piece. It’s still my favorite of Munro’s stories, maybe because I felt like these surprises and changes from the norm worked really well. I was totally invested in following Jackson and trying to understand him, even when my attempts felt a little futile. I didn’t expect to learn as much about Jackson by the end as I did, but I’m glad for that because it helped me to sympathize with him for leaving Belle. Because the story sometimes felt distanced, it could have been surreal if it weren’t for the fact that Munro used such grounded and sometimes gritty details. That definitely saved the story for me.
ReplyDeleteI like how Munro addresses sexuality in this piece, especially since it added so much depth to a story that could have just been about “a wandering man” that has been addressed time and again. She got at the heart of his pain, but not in an expected way. There were a few lines that made me wonder if Jackson was meant to be gay, but I think it far more likely that he was simply always affected by his abuse. The line, “She was a certain kind of woman, he a certain kind of man” can be taken on its own to mean something, but with full context it also seems a reference to the fact that both characters were abused.
Jackson’s issues with intimacy are especially prevalent in moments like when he flinches as Belle pays him a compliment. It seems that whenever she treats him with kindness, he does some variation of a flinch as though it physically pains him. That is really common with characters who have seen war which makes him even more believable of a character. I found that I really believed in these characters, even Margaret Rose who seems to help shape Belle’s character. I thought that using an animal as a character was really interesting and what I really enjoyed is that it didn’t distract the reader from Belle or Jackson. I think that it is important to use animals as a way of helping to shape other characters because we aren’t inside of the animal’s head and so can’t prove if they are believable as a main character. I really enjoyed how the characters interacted and seeing Jackson try to overcome those intimacy issues. I think that that is difficult to do at times and I thought that it was pulled off really well.
ReplyDeleteOne of the first things I noticed within the story "Train" was the voice the narrator used throughout it. It seemed to me that it was very similar to the thought process someone might have in their own head with short little sentences as if they were thoughts. I think this process worked very well for the story as it allowed us to get a better sense of the characters through their interactions with themselves and how they viewed certain things like the difference between a farmer and a plumber.
ReplyDeleteThrough these little interactions the reader is granted some information to these characters thought developments in the way they perceive the details in their life. By allowing the reader to see these details, the story deepens to a degree that it might not have otherwise without this certain style of writing and prose.
As unusual as the flow of "Train" was, I liked it. I like stories that have unusual flow patterns. I felt like it went backwards in terms of a linear plot line, because in those, the characters go from younger to older. I liked this way of doing it, because like Audrey said, I didn't expect to get a lot of backstory about Jackson either.
ReplyDeleteMunro's sense of where these characters, where was probably what helped me connect to her characters the most, because in "Train" when Jackson goes to the town, and Munro describes what's there, I knew immediately what she was talking about, because even though I've never been to a place in Canada other than Montreal, and aside from the Mennonites, the town sounded very much like the mess of small New England towns I grew up surrounded by. The gritty details were, strangely, often the details that I thought were the most beautiful. They made the place seem more real to me, because no town in the countryside is perfect, and they all have their own grittiness to them, that isn't necessarily visible unless you explore the community.
I felt like these characters almost had to be in these small communities or else they would've been different people. The stories couldn't tell the same story without these settings, so I feel like the setting is a character unto itself, because it's so ingrained in their stories, and ultimately makes these characters who they are.
I wasn't particularly fond of "Train." To me, it feels like the author tries to weave too many things into the story, but doesn't seem to spend time weaving them together or developing any of them. For example, Jackson isn't really given much in the way of defining characteristics until towards the back end of the story. He doesn't even really talk much; most of it is just Bella talking and even then, it just seems to be everyday sort of talk that doesn't do much to advance the plot of the story. Perhaps this was meant as a sort of establishment for future conflict in the story, but it just feels too long and drawn out to my liking. It doesn't help that the passage of time isn't clear. The author doesn't go into detail regarding that fact, and while there are plenty of things that can be simply implied or ignored, time is not one of them. It also doesn't really help that the reader isn't given much insight into what life is like out in the country. Perhaps there are choirs to be done, and maybe that helps to set up the scene, but I feel as though more is needed. For instance, how does Jackson and his new environment interact with each other? I liked how Jackson went to have dinner at a neighbor's house, and while the daughters were all eyeing him, so were their fathers. That's the kind of details that I would have liked to see more of; something that makes the place feel real. Something that makes it feel human.
ReplyDeleteI think this is the reason that I preferred some of her other work of this story, notably "Walker Brothers Cowboy." I get not only a sense of the community, but also of the family of the protagonist. The cheery salesman father. The proud sewing mother. The slightly bratty brother. I get these characters and I can see how they interact with the world around them. Further, the story had more in the way of (in lack of a better word) interesting parts. In Trains, it's mostly just blurry melodrama with a side of house chores. With Cowboys, the father almost gets a pot full of urine dropped on his head.
Ultimately, I think this focus on characters and pace is key in order for me personally to enjoy them. Partly because some of the syntax styles she uses (frequent use of parenthesis, repeating or adding extra words) only makes the piece seem longer and more unwieldy if not framed properly. Much of its use in Trains is based on setting while in Cowboy it is used more for conversation and character.
I have to say right away that Munro is my favorite author that we've read for this class so far, and it mostly comes down to her language. She often describes very mundane items, and even some incidents that feel mundane, but she demonstrates that these mundane things can be artful without relying on affectations like some others we've read. Her pacing is very slow, I think, and it's difficult to quickly write a plot, or to find, as Jim says, "characteristics" of characters except as a result of the countless interactions they have with their world - every moment, regardless of the timeline, comes together to define character (if it's as easy as that). I also noticed that, going from the 3x33 book to BASS, the stories got steadily longer, but that never really distracted me, nor did the slow pacing in general, because the language kept it moving while at the same time allowing me, if I wanted, to stop and think on, say, a subtly alliterative phrase or the look of two or three words together.
ReplyDeleteRegarding "Train," I don't know if I liked it as much as "Friend of my Youth" or "Save the Reaper" (which is probably my favorite in spite of how similar it is to Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" - though Munro is much kinder to her main characters), but I was nevertheless taken with a number of things that weren't necessarily the main plot points. First of all, the brief switch to Margaret Rose's perspective was interesting to me because I generally like the idea of using animals as characters and seeing an author try to make a kind of sense with that. Whenever I see something like that it makes me want to reread Watership Down. I also thought it was interesting that she dropped a Henry James reference into the story ("He wrote about all sorts of things that happened, mentioning Belle's mother occasionally but calling her Princess Casimassima, out of some book" (pp. 150)), but I'm struggling to find the relation between the plot of PC and "Train," since the former is apparently one of the more violent James novels, dealing with a terrorist/assassination plot. So I think that that was a neat reference, and perhaps one that would incline me to reread this (and the others) at some point.
The intro mentioned how much Chekhov influenced Munro and I couldn't help but make parallels between the two as reading since the influence is really clear. I remember in high school when we read one of Chekhov's short stories the class complained about how the story had little plot and my peers basically said they found him boring. Our teacher explained to us that Chekhov is completely character driven and has little to no plot in his stories. I don't mind it when a story has little to no plot, but it has to have a hook of some sort to pull the reader in and Munro didn't quite pull me in the way other short story writers do. I felt like the stories were very similar to each other (the characters deal with intimacy issues such as pregnancies or sex) and I think I would have liked these stories a lot more if they dealt with different issues. Reading all four stories in a row just made it seem like I was reading the same long story without plot or structure with only the names changing.
ReplyDeleteI viewed these stories as a somewhat modern interpretation of Americana. Some Americana tends to be lighthearted but these stories have grit and modern issues making it come off as more contemporary than most stories of the Americana category. I don't think its gritty enough to be "kitchen sink realism" or anything similar to that but it has a punch that modernizes the stories even though the problems that the characters face are nothing new to the world.
I wonder what a Munro story would look like with less of a Chekhovian influence. I'd be fairly interested to see that, but I guess several current day writers fall under that category of writing (contemporary American family problems with a little plot to structure it) and I know that I've read numerous stories like that, but I think she'd do something different with it. I don't know but I do know that these stories were similar to one another with clear Chekhovian echoes.
I love the way that Munro so fully places herself in her own niche. Through her stories, it has become clear that Munro is an appreciator of transgression. Even as she begins the story in one context — a game of aliens, the tracks of train — she progresses into deeper scenarios that somehow circle around these initial concepts while remaining wholly separate. I liked the way that Jim described it as “weaving,” though I feel as if it had the effect of allowing me to feel connected to the story rather than distanced. Munro somehow allows for this level of shock value even as she deals with subjects that are, in many instances, fully mundane. Part of this arises for me out of this sense of weaving. In “Train” I saw the beginning as more than anything a reflection on Belle and her life. Jackson existed to me somewhere on the peripheral of it. His character was complex with a backstory without being deep, and that allowed me all of the time in the world to look at Belle and see her through Jackson’s eyes as he slowly accustomed himself to her life, offering changes and giving the reader hints of his deeper judgements as he fixed up her home.
ReplyDeleteIt was a moment of revelation for me when the story developed to the place where Jackson left Belle at the hospital to move in to the rental building. This moment created a shift where it became completely evident that this story was not about Belle, and really, never had been about her, but rather Jackson and his issues with intimacy and settling down. He felt deep for me in that moment; somewhat wounded, but also slightly shallow and uncaring. I didn’t like him after that, and it is a testament to Munro’s writing that these negative feelings did nothing but make me excited.
What I take away from Munro is her sense of the world. She does not attempt to limit herself to speaking only to the experiences of one individual, one couple, one situation. She rather employs her mastery of language, description and detail to give the reader the feeling of watching an entire life experience. While her abundance of characters can feel overwhelming in the beginning, especially in “Save the Reaper,” this does not detract from the fact that she clearly understands her world, and, more importantly, the delicate and constantly undulating threads of connection that exist between people and their experiences. In the life of a man secretly running from attachments, it makes sense to me that his character is meant to develop slowly and leisurely. What Munro is offering is a look into Jackson’s mental processes. Perhaps the writing would have felt more clean and fluid had Jackson been developed more fully early on, but I think it wouldn’t have been true to his character. This is a man that reflects on attachments only when the thoughts are forced on him, by an obituary or a voice around the corner. In many ways, I find that it makes him unlikeable, and young-feeling, and altogether immature. But I think that’s Munro’s point, the way that this man treads through life, developing deep roots with people that see him more than he sees them.
In Train, Alice Munro takes the puzzle pieces of Jackson’s life. She slowly unravels why he jumped off the train in the opening scene, building his character as he comes across various life changing events, so he can in a way come full circle. I wouldn’t say Munro reveals every aspect of Jackson, but rather the lack of detail throughout the story keeps the reader going. Munro’s focus is not on a snapshot of someone’s life. She builds a character over time, showing not some great occurrence or phenomenon, but the way people are connected and choose to be connected to others and the world around them. Train shows Jackson’s long avoidance and how he builds relationships with Belle and Ileane, only to see them as connections he can’t hold onto.
ReplyDeleteMunro’s use of structure and organization is not linear, but rather the sections of Trains speak to and build off of each other. With the way Munro jumps from one scene to the next, the reader is forced to pay close attention as she reveals her characters one piece at a time. This jarring and nonlinear perspective that Munro creates shows how life is not so simple. You cannot tie a character’s life into a bow and present it to the reader. Munro’s structure mimic’s the chaos, but also the small organization of life. She weaves the past and the present together, showing how the two play off of one another. Going along with the sense of chaos in life, Munro captures multiple characters in depth. She considers each main character’s full life story, which allows for a better understanding of how the characters connect. The characters do not just happen upon each other. Munro provides a purpose for Belle and for Ileane within Jackson’s life story. She not only uses them to characterize Jackson, but she offers the reader a look at their stories as well. Though the multiple storylines caused for a closer reading, the reader can gain a stronger and more real understanding of how the characters function and interact with each other. Without Belle and a part of her story, we would not understand Ileane and Jackson’s relationship as well.
Thinking of Munro’s other stories, I can see her focus on characters and not how they change, but how they can stay the same through time. The events in their lives do not always change them, but rather reinforce who they already are. Munro’s approach feels very distant, as if the reader is looking in not on some snippet, but on many connecting events in a character’s life. And when I say distant, I do not mean Munro keeps us removed from the characters. Munro draws us in with the smaller glimpses of a character that grow to the larger picture. As I said to begin this post, Munro has the whole story figured out, placing one piece of the puzzle down at a time to reveal the over all image.
When I first started reading “Train” I thought it was going to be this long drawn out story. I was confused slightly by the way that Munro described things and I often commented that although it felt like good description I couldn’t picture the scene in my mind. The beginning reminded me of a short story by Flannery O’Connor that I started reading once, where I had this feeling like something important was going to happen but it was going to take a very long and winding road to get there. Which in the case of “Train” is exactly what happened (in my opinion anyway).
ReplyDeleteThis story have a very unique way of telling the story. At first it focuses on this soldier who had jumped off the train, but then goes on to focus on Belle and the house that she lives in. But then the story jumps back and forth between talking conversationally about the past with her mother and father, and then when talking about Jackson’s past, it seems to actually delve back into rather than it just being talked about. Thinking about the way the story is presented to us without having read it would make it seem like a very bad idea and that the stories would get too confusing, but the way that Munro structured it in/with the context of the story still keeps up with the overall flow to the story. I don’t think that the structure of this story is something that the author intended, but I think it works great in the context of the story.
The intimacy issue that other people have brought up about Jackson, seems like something that is definitely within in conscious. I know that might sound weird but we are lead to believe that Jackson gets off the train because he think that Ileane won’t be waiting for him. And also the fact that his little sex adventure with her before he left was a disaster. I don’t think that it is a flaw in his character as much as it is a flaw in human beings. His mother was killed in a car accident and he hated his stepmother. It doesn’t seem like he has intimacy issues with everyone but it is prevalent in women. He seems to think that they just don’t want him, but in Belle’s case, she seems to want him to be there, but she makes him uncomfortable for some reason (mainly the story about when he was washing herself and her father walked in). But it might be that he leaves all these people because it’s easier for him to leave himself rather than them abandoning him.
When I read through these short stories, I saved "Train" for last. I usually read the one in Best American Short Stories first, before moving on to 3x33 but I'm glad I switched it around. I read some of her works last semester, and instantly admired both her language and careful sense of place. As Julia mentioned in her post she is extremely careful with her plot-lines, and that's one of the most admirable qualities of this story, and all of her stories. She skips between decades in some places and still is able to make her stories cohesive and flowing that there are hardly any flaws in the way she keeps them moving.
ReplyDeleteI was initially shocked when Jackson left Belle at the hospital, but once I thought about it I wasn’t shocked at all. He was a character who like the train couldn’t help but keep moving on. He always intended to leave Belle, but I agree with both Amy and Chelsea about what they said concerning his intimacy issues. However, Virginia said she would have liked if all of these stories did not deal in some way with intimacy issues and that reading the same long story again and again. When she said that the plot hadn’t changed, is where I found an issue. All of the stories seemed to be set in the same type of setting, but I feel as though they were each distinctly different than one another. They dealt with different issues and situations that I feel they are only comparable through similarities in characters and the way in which she uses language to connect the reader to both time and place.
This is what I want to take away from Munro and be able to utilize in my own writing. She has this powerful sense of creating characters that force the reader to believe that the story is taking place in a particular time. While I was reading “Walker Brothers Cowboy” the things the daughter noticed like un-scrubbed knee and the brightness of Nora’s dress, and in “Friend of My Youth” the way Ellie poked a hole in the milk and the Nurse’s fancy car and pudding packets. She is able to take such seemingly random details and wrap them together in a way that is so grounded and real. I truly admire the ways in which she plays with language and hope to be able to translate some of these techniques into my own writing.
Alice Munro blends the story of a few individuals in Train, Jackson, Belle, and Ileane. She drops us into the situation without revealing too much of the backstory. She allows us to see the setting and situation, as Jackson, a soldier returning from World War II, pursues his bag that fell onto a railroad track. Munro did not have Jackson be afraid to jump onto the tracks, just as he was unafraid to jump into new situations. He moved in with Belle instead of returning home. He chose to move in with a perfect stranger, and Munro shows us their live together and the unexpected harmony. Jackson and Belle have a good life together, they improve the house they live in, and they do not encroach on each other’s personal space. It is only when Jackson feels they are getting too close, when she tells him the story about her father and the real reason he may have died, does he leave. Jackson does not think too much about owning the house and farm after Belle dies, and when she does die he does not show much emotion. He lived with her for several years, but he did not show a lot of remorse or grief. We see his fear of commitment here with Belle as he ran away from her as soon she began to trust him with a deep secret, her father and sex, and then we learn how he came to meet her, his fear of committing to Ileane.
ReplyDeleteMunro reveals to her audience the history that Ileane and Jackson shared. They had attended high school together and Jackson also lived with her family for a short period. Jackson and Ileane began to fall in love, not that Jackson would have agreed with that. Jackson does not like discussing his emotions, but rather he flees from them. Munro created a character that was brave enough to fight a war, jump on a railroad track, live with strangers, but he is incapable of making a commitment to a woman. He says he does not like it when women get dressed up, but it was more the fact that she was dressing up for him that upset and scared Jackson. He runs away from them. Munro comments on the age difference between Belle and Jackson, but does not have either of them say anything because “She was a certain kind of woman, he was a certain kind of man” (153).
Munro uses beautiful language that allows the reader to connect to the story as she draws them in. She gives each character a voice, even the cow. Munro wrote “That was too much for Margaret Rose; she had to put on a display… Toss of the wicked little horns. Nothing much, but jerseys can always surprise you” (147). The language and dialogue is very open and honest. She engages her audience with her easy diction.