SOUNDTRACK: NOBEL PRIZE PLAYLIST-CBC Radio 3 (2013).
In honor of Alice Munro’s Nobel Prize, CBC radio has a playlist of “Literary Music.” Now, I have made many literary playlists over they years myself (including “My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors” by Moxy Fruvous which is not included here), but this one consists of a few bands that I don’t know (and two that I do).
- Library Voices–“Generation Handclap”
- The Darcys–“Pretty Girls”
- Kathryn Calder–“Right Book”
- AroarA–“#6”
- Arkells–“Book Club”
- Dan Mangan–“Road Regrets”
- John K. Samson–“When I Write My Master’s Thesis”
Samson is the only artist I know well, although I know Dan Mangan a little. It’s a good listen and I’m sure if you scrutinize the lyrics you’ll find their literary worth.
Listen here.
[READ: January 18, 2014] “Her Big Break”
I’ve been a fan of Alice Munro for a while, and I’m always happy to see her in the New Yorker. Strangely, I have never read any of her collected short stories. Maybe some day….
When Munro won the Nobel Prize for Literature, I imagined she’d get a lot more press. And then I realized that it’s a literature prize. And she’s Canadian. So, perhaps a few columns in Canada’s The Walrus is all she’ll get.
But this article, which is really entirely this below letter and a brief introduction, explains that on November 18, 1976, Charles McGrath, a fiction editor at The New Yorker, sent Alice Munro her first acceptance letter from the magazine for her story “Royal Beatings.” Soon after this, she signed a first-reading agreement with the magazine, which I gather means that they will see any of her short stories before she can send them anywhere else.
I am including this letter in its entirety because I assume that most people, like me, have never actually seen an acceptance letter from a magazine for a piece of fiction (I have several rejections). But even if you have seen an acceptance letter, I can’t imagine that it will every be as thoughtful and considerate as this one. i also love that as recent as 1976 The NEw Yorker was kind of prudish about their fiction. I mean, now, the cursing is rampant, but back then the fiction was a more genteel breed.
I have not read “Royal Beatings,” but you can bet I’ve added it to my short list. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 