How will the revelations about Alice Munro affect your reading and opinions — and just feelings — about her writings? (In case anybody hasn't heard and I am sure everybody has, Andrea Skinner, Munro's daughter, revealed in a Toronto Star story that her stepfather, Alice Munro's husband, sexually abused her when she was a child and that some years later when she told her mother, Munro brushed it away and continued to live with him and actually praise him.
Me, I am appalled, of course. I also so love her stories and I am sure I will continue to — her work is her work. But then, I can't just eliminate that new knowledge about Munro from my mind and I am sure it will color my reading of her stories. (I may sit down with one tonight and see but even without that don't think that I can remember her stories without the abuse.)
Will you be able to read them cleanly and separately from what we now know of Munro's life and callous (and horrifying) behaviour? Can you read them now at all? Can you personally separate the art from the artist? What makes this so wrenching for her readers, I think, is that Munro is such a superb story tellers and writer.
by Traveler108