Nobel Laureate Chat… 30 Years On

In a literary meeting the likes of which has seldom been seen north of the 49th parallel, this is one interview worth revisiting.

In 1973, Graeme Gibson (Five Legs, Communion) sat down with writer Alice Munro (The View From Castle Rock, Dear Life) to talk about the things that made the future Nobel laureate tick.

Gibson, who is a celebrated writer in his own right and who has been Margaret Atwood’s life partner since around the time this interview was conducted asked, among other things, about how writing was important to Munro. She answers:

God.. do you mean why do I do it? I don’t know if I can get at that. I always have done it. It’s... do you mean is it important as a kind of therapy? No, that’s not it. I don’t know why it’s important. I don’t understand this. I know that I’m never not writing, so that I’m not just sort of turning out one book and then taking a rest and then turning out another book. I’ll never live long enough to deal with all the ideas that are -- things that are working, because I write very slowly and things, with me, things sort of jell very slowly. But there are always things there that just -- well I’m thinking of a thing I’m working on now which I haven’t really begun to write much of at all, and it just, it exists and so I’m going to have to put it down or forget it. If I can.

The interview is one of 11 originally published by House of Anansi Press back in 1973 as Eleven Canadian Novelists. To help celebrate Munro’s recent Nobel Prize award, Anansi is re-releasing Gibson’s interview with Munro as an e-publication. The taste of Gibson’s book is a tempting one, though. Who wouldn’t love to see a republication of the full book which includes interviews with Margaret Atwood, Austin Clarke, Marian Engel, Timothy Findley, Margaret Laurence and others? Meanwhile, we’ll have to settle for this tantalizing taste.