Alice Munro’s short story, “Dimensions,” which appears in her recent collection Too Much Happiness, is one that the author herself cannot reread.  In the story, a blue-collar B.C. father suffocates his three young children with a pillow while his wife is away. 

What makes this story even more unsettling is its resemblance to the 2008 criminal murder trial of B.C. father Allan Schoenborn, who was charged with first-degree murder for killing his three children after the story was published in The New Yorker in 2006.

Maclean’s writer Bill Richardson points out the striking similarities between the murder trial and Munro’s short story:

There are other examples of life imitating art. The 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic was foretold in the novella Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan, in which a luxury ocean liner called Titan smashes into an iceberg and capsizes in the North Atlantic. A 2004 Hubble space telescope image of dust and gas swirling around stars in the dark has the distinct look of Vincent van Gogh’s painting The Starry Night. As for Munro’s short story, it ran in The New Yorker in 2006.

At the centre of “Dimensions” and the B.C. murders is the father. Both are blue-collar (the fictional father, Lloyd, works at an ice cream factory, Schoenborn was a roofer), and seemingly threatened by the possibility of their wives leaving them. Insanity figures prominently. Schoenborn has testified about hearing voices, and that he’s been diagnosed with schizophrenia and paranoia.

 

Geoffrey Taylor, director of Harbourfront’s Reading Series, is to receive an honorary degree from the School of Creative & Performing Arts at the Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning. Taylor, who has been with Harboufront Centre for 20 years, is being honoured for his contribution to the promotion of Canadian books and authors.

Over the last five years, Taylor has been responsible for the International Festival of Authors, has served as a jury member for both the Toronto Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Awards, and has been an adviser to the Humber School for Writers. In 2008, Q&Q included him in a list of the most influential people in Canadian publishing.

Taylor will be presented with the degree at a ceremony on Nov. 7.

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The IFOA has also confirmed the lineup for its second annual presentation of the Rogers Writer’s Trust Fiction Prize shortlist. For the reading on Oct. 28, the following authors will be reading:

• Douglas Coupland will read from Generation A
• Annabel Lyon will read from The Golden Mean
• Andrew Steinmetz will read from Eva’s Threepenny Theatre
• Jacqueline Larson will read from Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood’s English-language translations of Nicole Brossard’s Fences in Breathing
• Jane Urquhart will read from Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness on behalf of Munro, who is unable to attend the event

The winner of the $25,000 award will be announced on Nov. 24 in Toronto.

It’s not quite the biggest reward that can be given to a writer (that would be inclusion in Oprah’s Book Club, or maybe Richard and Judy’s), but the Nobel Prize for Literature is nothing to sneeze at – just look what it has done for last year’s winner, J.M.G. Le Clézio (who?). The prize is to be handed out tomorrow, and the international book media abounds with speculation. That the head of the prize  recently remarked that the Nobel has been too “Eurocentric” in its picks has caused some to believe this is America’s year, with maybe Philip Roth or Joyce Carol Oates heading to Stockholm.

As far as the oddsmakers are concerned, however, the prize is most likely to go to Israeli writer Amos Oz. According to the odds posted at Ladbrokes.com, Oz has a 3-1 chance of walking away with it, the same German author Herta Müller (who?).

Alice Munro is farther down the list at 25-1, the same odds as Bob Dylan(?). Atwood is 40-1, and Ondaatje is 50-1.

Whoever wins, the odds of someone posting, within 24 hours of the announcement, a video mashup on YouTube featuring Kanye West interrupting the ceremony in Stockholm are about 2-1.

Academy Award-winning director Jane Campion is in Toronto for the 2009 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival, where her new movie, Bright Star, about a love affair between John Keats and the girl next door (not Elisha Cuthbert), is premiering. In addition to doing promos for Bright Star, Campion is apparently also scouting talent for her next film, an adaptation of Alice Munro’s short story “Runaway.”

Campion, who won a screenwriting Oscar as well as the Palme d’Or for her 1994 film The Piano, is a fan of Munro’s writing. She told the Canadian Press that Munro is a “genius,” someone who is “so unassuming, yet goes so deep.”

Although she was cagey about whom she might be talking to, she did admit that she has found some Canadian talent that interests her:

“I did meet somebody here,” she added.

“It’s a nice opportunity to meet a lot of actors who I’ve loved because they’re not having to audition – they’re just meetings and we talk about the story.”

This is not the first time that a Munro story has been brought to the screen. Homegrown filmmaker Sarah Polley adapted Munro’s short story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” for her acclaimed 2006 film Away from Her.

Anyone who was champing at the bit for an awards-season showdown between the two reigning CanLit deities – Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood – must be feeling a bit disappointed following the news that Munro has taken her new collection, Too Much Happiness, out of contention for this year’s Scotiabank Giller Prize. According to an article in Saturday’s Globe and Mail, “punters” are upset that the literary cage match between Munro and Atwood (whose new novel, The Year of the Flood, is also a likely contender for the award) won’t materialize. Among the most disappointed, unsurprisingly, are Munro’s own publisher and the organizers of the Giller Prize itself:

“Her reason is that she has won twice and would like to leave the field to younger writers,” Munro’s publisher, Douglas Gibson, confirmed this week. “In my role as greedy publisher I pointed out that the Giller Prize produces so much publicity, that even to be nominated for it is tremendous publicity,” he said. “But her mind is made up on this. Alice preferred to withdraw from the competition.”

Giller Prize administrator Elana Rabinovitch echoed the disappointment. “I appreciate the reason she’s doing it, but I also think it’s a bit of a shame,” she said. “Ultimately the prize is for the best work of fiction in Canada, period, and this takes a likely contender out of the mix.”

Translation: Munro’s classy move puts the kibosh on a no-brainer of a marketing campaign for the Giller organizers and McClelland & Stewart, which publishes both authors.

It is perhaps worth noting that when Munro’s 2001 collection Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage failed to garner a Giller nod, there was speculation that Munro had pulled the title from contention. At the time, Gibson told Q&Q, “It would be entirely consistent with [Munro's] personality” to do so, although if she had, it was without his knowledge. That same year, Timothy Findley pulled his novel Spadework from consideration “for any literary prizes.” Munro and Atwood have both taken books out of the running in years that they served on the Giller jury, the former with The View from Castle Rock in 2006, and the latter with The Blind Assassin in 2000.

In this year’s case, it is hardly “disappointing” that Munro is generous enough to put her own interests aside and allow other writers the opportunity to share in some of Giller’s reflected glory. (If there is anyone still unconvinced of Munro’s merit, her winning another award is unlikely to change that.) The disappointment voiced by Gibson (who is admittedly speaking with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek) and by Rabinovitch smacks of self-interest. By recusing herself, Munro has made it harder to argue that CanLit is dominated by a hegemony of familiar figures that keep popping up again and again.

In fact, the only person who seems to appear completely selfless in all of this is Alice Munro.

Some book-related links:

• Where the Brooklyn Public Library hides the offensive books
• William Golding was not the lord of his own fly
• Travels in Alice Munro country
• How John Grisham helped free the Norfolk Four
• Five sci-fi and fantasy books that never should have been written

The International Festival of Authors has just announced the preliminary lineup for this year’s edition, which will mark the festival’s 30th anniversary. (In the press release, the festival is dubbed “IFOA XXX,” which suggests the usual schedule of readings, panels, and onstage interviews will be enlivened by literary mud wrestling and peep shows. Alas…)

Though it seems a wee bit early  for the announcement – the festival runs Oct. 21-31 – the list of confirmed authors is impressive.

Already confirmed are Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Barry Callaghan, Anne Michaels, Lisa Moore, Miriam Toews, Daniel Poliquin, Leon Rooke, Jane Urquhart, John Irving, Nicholson Baker, Debra Adelaide, Denise Mina, Tash Aw, Paul Theroux, Sarah Waters, Audrey Niffenegger, Kyle Buckley, Paul Durcan, Jacob McArthur Mooney, Linwood Barclay, John Brady, Hal Niedzviecki, Tim Cook, Sherman Alexie, John Bemrose, Diana Fitzgerald Bryden, Bonnie Burnard, Dani Couture, Michael Crummey, Anne DeGrace, Margaret Elphinstone, Robert Girardi, Jason Guriel, Jennica Harper, Jim Lynch, Linden MacIntyre, Jean McNeil, James W. Nichol, Kate Pullinger, Boualem Sansal, Ingo Schulze, Olive Senior, Adam Thorpe, Michael Turner, and Alexis Wright.

In other words, more writers than you can shake a stick at.

There will also be an appearance by Anne Murray – yes, that Anne Murray – and fans of the late Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series will get a look at a new, 6th installment, penned by U.K. kidlit favourite Eoin Colfer.

(We are also happy to note that Q&Q’s own Meaghan Strimas will be reading at the festival.)

Among the many reactions to Alice Munro’s well-deserved winning of the Man Booker International Prize, one of the more interesting is that of The New Yorker, the magazine that has published the lion’s share of Munro’s stories over the decades.

On The Book Bench, the magazine’s book blog, Willing Davidson claims that “the arrival of a Munro story in the fiction department is always an event – her typescript pages, with their oddly bolded paragraphs, produce an almost atavistic salivary response.”

Really? They actually salivate when a new story arrives? Munro’s stories are great and all, but you know you’ve perhaps given over too much of your life to literature when you find yourself preparing to eat one.

Though, given how dry Munro’s prose style can be, perhaps a little spit is exactly what’s needed.

There’s a new Alice Munro short story in the latest New Yorker. The biennial fiction issue also includes work by Roberto Bolaño, Colson Whitehead, and Donald Antrim. The magazine has put several of the fiction pieces, including the Munro story, behind the online paywall, so you’ll have to shell out for the print copy.

In other news, Giller winner and erstwhile Q&Q cover star Joseph Boyden has another cover to his credit – the new issue of the men’s lifestyle magazine Driven, out this week, includes both a Boyden cover profile and a new short story by the author. (Disclosure: Driven editor-in-chief Gary Butler is a Friend of Q&Q and sometime contributor.)

• Over at The Guardian, Rawi Hage’s De Niro’s Game, Joseph Boyden’s Through Black Spruce, and Alice Munro’s short-story collection Carried Away, were mentioned as some of the best books of 2008.

• Publishing big-wigs have had to cut their lavish lunches — but their wardrobe expenses won’t be next. At least, not according to this video at New York magazine of publisher Christian Van Gastel and his designer gear

• Firefox users can install the Tumbarumba extension to their browsers, and wait for story text to gradually surface while browsing. While some may call this “reading,” others  call it “procrastinating” or “wasting time”