Congratulations to Alice the Great (Munro)

What great news this morning to come in from my workout at hear that Alice "the Great" Munro is the Nobel Prize winner for literature. None could be more deserving of this honor. Amazing how her career began so slowly and quietly - interesting story in the NYT today highlighted the tepid nature of the early NYT reviews of her first books - and that it took quite a while for readers to realize that she had completely redesigned the short story - from the "open" form that Joyce established as the norm for the 20th century to a flowing form that moves back and forth seamlessly in time and that radically changes focus at various points in the story - working much like a camera panning a crowd and then zooming in - characters who seemed central become peripheral and key elements emerge from the margins and from the blur. Over time, she earned the praise she deserves and has been recognized not only for her radical and exemplary style but also for her strong sense of character - particularly women in distress, or on the verge of great change - and setting, the small Ontario towns of her youth and literarily vibrant but somewhat provincial and self-conscious cities of Toronto and Vancouver. Not sure if she's the first Canadian winner of the Nobel, unless you count Bellow, but she definitely is a national icon, much like their famous Group of 7 artists. Now that the Nobel committee has done right by Munro - what about other neglected English-language writers? It would have been great for her to share the prize this year with her contemporary and only equal, William Trevor. Or to share with the other grand writer who this year announced his retirement, Philip Roth. (Trevor may be slowing down, too.) That's all to the good, as I don't think a single Nobelist ever has published a great work after winning the prize (maybe Mann is an exception?). The oddsmakers in London, the only place where people might bet on such things, put the money on Murakami, whom I really admire, too - but I think he's got a few more great books in him before the mantle of the Nobel falls on his shoulders and dampens the flame. And then of course I think it would be really cool if they award the Nobel some year to the greatest living artist in any medium, Bob Dylan - though I'm not sure if his lyrics stand up so well as "literature" if you don't know the songs and his performance. Still, lyrics are an under-appreciated form of literature, and his lyrics are truly inseparable from his music - and deeply moving and evocative and provocative, like all great literature.