More on Mavis Gallant and why she's nearly forgotten

In memory of Mavis Gallant, I started reading some of the stories in (one of her last) collection(s), Home Truths, in particular the Linette Muir stories, which are notably autobiographical. Re-reading these pieces that I'd first read in the '90s, maybe twice (all appeared first in the New Yorker) made me recollect what a fine writer Gallant was and to wonder why she's slipped into relative obscurity. It's unfair but inevitable to compare her with her compatriot and coeval, Alice Munro - but it seems that Munro's fame and popularity continued to grow over the past 20 years and Gallant's just stopped dead - of course, her writing slowed down quite a bit before Munro's so that's part of it. I think two two writers may be of equal talent, which is saying a lot, and both devoted themselves almost entirely to the short story - Munro's set almost exclusively in Canada, either Ontario or B.C., Gallant's often in Canada but also many in Paris, where she lived for many years (this Eurocentrism may have kept her from the full embrace of American - U.S. and Canada - readers). Gallant pushes the boundaries of the story in the way that Munro does, with very ambitious narratives that span a great deal of time and encompass a lot of characters and a lot of emotion; neither writer was content with living within the confines of the typical arc of the short story - and each is/was too ambitious to settle for the open form that Joyce pioneered and that became a staple of New Yorker fiction from the 50s onward: they each had too much to say, for them each story bore the emotional weight of a novel. The two Gallant stories I read last night also showed me, though, why, despite her enormous talent, she is a little off-putting: her life was extremely difficult and bitter (especially her childhood, abandoned by her mother, left in a boarding school, never told that her father died - all of this recounted in one of the Muir stories) - and her narrative attitude is angry and proud - proud particularly of her literary accomplishments against all odds, risking everything for a career as a writer (the subject of another Muir story). Munro touches on this theme, too, with a shared feminist sensibility - but Munro seems to look back with some amusement at her youthful follies and indiscretions, while Gallant looks back at her sufferings, gets some payback, and seems to say to the reader: So there!