SAVE THIS | EMAIL THIS | Close

Posted on Sun, Nov. 22, 2009

Too Much HappinessStoriesBy Alice Munro

Alfred A. Knopf. 304 pp. $25.95

Reviewed by Glenn C. Altschuler

Like many of the characters in Too Much Happiness, the 11th collection of stories by Alice Munro,Bruce Crozier finds pleasure in unexpected places.

A fighter pilot who returned home and contracted leukemia, Crozier doesn't welcome conversation.Until Roxanne, the masseuse, proposes a game of Chinese checkers. When she can't identifyAlexander the Great, or tells smutty jokes, he seems happy to close his eyes, let her talk, thenopen them "and find her there, like a chocolate bunny on Easter morning."

It doesn't last. Feeling guilty, perhaps, Crozier bars his room to everyone but Sylvia, his wife. Itwas strange, the narrator concludes, that "the almost obliterated prize" could summon the will todeprive himself of carnal desire - or true love - while at death's door.

Too Much Happiness reminds us, once again, why Munro has been called "our Chekhov." Set,almost without exception, in small towns in Canada, her sad, quirky gothic tales demonstrate thatan appreciation of comforts depends on what a person has gone through before getting them.And, as Joyce learns in "Fiction," that there might well be "some random and of course unfair thriftin the emotional house-keeping of the world, if the great happiness - however temporary, howeverflimsy - of one person could come out of the great unhappiness of another."

Like Nita, in "Free Radicals," Munro hates to see the word escape used to characterize fiction. Shesuggests, "not just playfully, that it was real life that was the escape."

Literally as well as figuratively. Imprisoned in her own home by a stranger who has just murdered

What comes before happiness http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=What+com...

1 of 2 11/23/2009 11:39 AM

his parents and sister, Nita thinks at first that her cancer "freed her, put her out of danger." But,she realizes, the fact that she was going to die within the year refused to cancel out the fact, andthe fear, that she might die now. To save her life, she tells him that she, too, is a killer, who serveda poisoned rhubarb pie to the girl her late husband had fallen for. "You just remember," thestranger says, as he drives off in her car, "a word outta you and there'll be a word outta me.' "

In "Dimension," Doree hasn't noticed the "things that generally made people happy, such as niceweather or flowers in bloom or the smell of a bakery" in the two years since her children died. Untilan old-fashioned idea, from an improbable source, worms its way into her head. Sasha, BarbaraAnn, and Dimitri, she chooses to believe, were now in "their Dimension." Armed with thisrevelation, Doree boards a bus headed for London, Ontario, and, at just the right moment, is nolonger paralyzed by the past.

At her best, and she is often at her best in this coherent and compelling collection, Munromanages to turn the sentimental into the existential. Her characters learn, the hard way, that "Lifewith death brings all to an issue" - and that, after a while, they won't be missed. And so, likeJoyce, they just might turn off the radio whenever they hear "Ode to Joy."

Realizing that you can become "too busy paying attention," however, Munro's men and womenrefuse, albeit just barely, to stay in the slough of despond. Would children (or celibacy), a differentprofession, life without an unsightly birthmark, or a few more meaningless (or meaningful)conversations with acquaintances, friends, and lovers have changed things? they ask. And thensurprise themselves with an answer: "of course, and for a while, and never."

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.

Find this article at:http://www.philly.com/inquirer/entertainment/books/20091122_What_comes_before_happiness.html

SAVE THIS | EMAIL THIS | Close

Check the box to include the list of links referenced in the article.

© Copyright | Philly Online, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Any copying, redistribution or retransmission of any of the contents of this service without the express writtenconsent of Philly Online, LLC is expressly prohibited.

What comes before happiness http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=What+com...

2 of 2 11/23/2009 11:39 AM