Canada woke up today to the news of her Nobel. I was alert for street parties while walking to work, but Toronto was strangely phlegmatic. They haven't replaced the Stephen King display at Indigo on Bay Street.
For a long time, I was inclined to think that Mavis Gallant was the greater writer, but in the last decade or so I have found the humanity of Munro's oeuvre overwhelming.
UPDATE: The Nobel Committee, which has not been very forward in honouring women, calls Munro a "master" of the contemporary short story. Our beloved Prime Minister echoes. The Guardian substitutes "doyenne."
UPDATE 2: Sasha Weiss in the New Yorker's Page Turner: "When it was announced this morning that Alice Munro had won the Nobel Prize in Literature, phone calls and e-mails from friends started streaming in. Some people were tearful. I suspect that these little explosions of joy are happening all over the world . . . I also suspect that this level of emotional response (more akin to receiving family news, like the birth of a child) doesn’t happen every year when the winner of the Nobel is declared."
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