Somehow We Make Room for the Words

On the Rachel Aviv piece on Alice Munro

Hi friends.

As we were all huffing and puffing over the course of the moving day, one of the movers said, “You must be smart, look how many books you have,” and I said, “Oh yeah, counterpoint, if I’m so smart why do I have so many books?”

I read that Rachel Aviv piece on Alice Munro over the course of the next day, as I was unpacking those same books in the new house and then putting them on shelves and loving them as I did, but also unloving them a bit. (I am still not unpacked.) Before I started it, I did think for a second: Do I have room in my heart for more on this story? More words on Alice Munro? But I did, and I’m better off for it.

It was interesting to interweave my own feelings about my work and the work of others with this contemplation of a lifetime of bad behavior ostensibly allowed (if not forgiven at points along the way) in service of the ideas of art and literature and fame. (Whatever fame means for being a writer, but Munro had it, anyway.)

I have made plenty of mistakes—nothing like Munro’s, to be clear—and then created excuses for my actions and have turned them into my own work. In no way did this piece make me want to defend the actions of Alice Munro, but it was hard not to connect with what it means to fuck up, and why some people feel like that’s justifiable in service of art. In my youth I have thought, “Oh well, it’s already done, might as well use it.” Although Munro did it for a lifetime. Or the lifetime of her daughter, anyway. Fucking up and using it. That’s what I keep circling. There are mistakes and then there are choices.

What kinds of choices do we want to make for the rest of our lives?