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.  NOBEL LETTERATURA 2013

Alice Munro

born Alice Ann Laidlaw

  

 10 luglio 1931 - Wingham - Ontario

I’m amazed and very grateful

terribly surprised .
I knew I was in the running .  yes . but I never thought I would win .   I’m particularly glad that winning this award will please so many Canadians . I’m happy too that this will bring more attention to Canadian writing.

the complexity of things  -  the things within things  -  just seems to be endless
I mean nothing is easy  
nothing is simple
Avevo troppo sangue di mio padre nelle vene
Per lui non era ammissibile l’esistenza di gente più o meno umile. Era rigorosamente egualitario ben attento a non piagnucolare - come diceva - davanti a nessuno - a non inchinarsi né darsi arie con chicchessia -  a comportarsi come se le differenze non esistessero.
...
Quando cominci veramente a lasciar perdere, succede così. Ti parte dentro una fitta di dolore segreta, inaspettata. E subito dopo, un senso di leggerezza.
...
They were all in their early thirties. An age at which it is sometimes hard to admit that what you are living is your life.
...
c’è un limite alla quantità di sofferenze  e  di scombussolamento che si è disposti a sopportare in nome dell’amore - come c’è un limite al disordine che siamo disposti a ignorare in una casa. Non si può conoscere in anticipo ma quando lo raggiungi te ne accorgi. Ne sono convinta.

There is a limit to the amount of misery and disarray you will put up with, for love, just as there is a limit to the amount of mess you can stand around a house. You can't know the limit beforehand, but you will know when you've reached it. I believe this.
bardon - autobus n. 144 - le lune di giove/the moons of jupiter - 1982

https://youtu.be/djHreNp-HvY -  phone interview 2013

youtu.be/FlsF_ZLpNHY -  interview 2009

too much happiness

https://youtu.be/8twOwfM4ZY0 

https://youtu.be/E3VjrDK8Mt4

www.youtube.com/watch - conversation - 2014

https://youtu.be/6BadNRy4VgM

https://youtu.be/2tn_Awynb2U  

https://youtu.be/SPe_bt3B0fs 

Peter Englund - Swedish Academy  - interview

https://youtu.be/jL83OB56lKA  - DARIO FO 2013

https://youtu.be/EgKC_SDhOKk - in her own words - 2013



E La piu grande scrittrice vivente del Nord America
Jonathan Franzen

I can’t think of another writer whose every paragraph is so quietly powerful
Jane Smiley - The Washington Post

As in much else  Munro is quintessentially Canadian
Faced with the Nobel she will be modest  - she won't get a swelled head -  The rest of us
on this magnificent occasion   will just have to do that for her.

margaret atwood - the guardian

In Alice Munro's stories, nothing is what it seems
Julieta director Pedro Almodóvar

. MAESTRA DEL RACCONTO BREVE CONTEMPORANEO
. leggere Alice Munro è imparare ogni volta qualcosa cui non si era mai pensato prima
motivazioni della giuria del Nobel
13MA DONNA A RICEVERE IL NOBEL DAL 1901
Il premio Nobel per la Letteratura Alice Munro è di salute troppo cagionevole per andare a ritirare di persona il riconoscimento a Stoccolma a dicembre   .   lo ha annunciato il segretario dell'Accademia svedese.
her daughter Jenny will come to Stockholm to receive the NobelPrize .

Nobel Lecture - In her Own Words
The Nobel Lecture in Literature this year will be replaced by a
pre-recorded video conversation with the Laureate  Alice Munro In her own words   at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm .   Alice Munro will not be attending .
The lecture will be webcast live at Nobelprize.org
nov 2013
I made stories up all the time, I had a long walk to school, and during that walk I would generally make up stories. As I got older the stories would be more and more about myself, as a heroine in some situation or other, and it didn’t bother me that the stories were not going to be published to the world immediately, and I don’t know if I even thought about other people 2 knowing them or reading them. It was about the story itself, generally a very satisfying story from my point of view, with the general idea of the little mermaid’s bravery, that she was clever, that she was in general able to make a better world, because she would jump in there,
and have magic powers and things like that.

fb/am -
nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2013/munro/lecture
nobelprize.org/mediaplayer

110th Nobel laureate in literature and the first Canadian-based writer to secure the honour. She also becomes only the 13th woman to receive the distinction.

82 yrs old -  Canadian  - is awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature  "master of the contemporary story" .
' Munro is acclaimed for her finely tuned
storytelling which is characterized by clarity and psychological realism. Some critics consider her a Canadian Chekhov '

fb/nobelprize -  cnn  -  2013
nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2013/munro/facts

 

 

"Non abbiamo potuto comunicare con lei . le abbiamo lasciato un messaggio telefonico"
svegliata dalla figlia con la notizia della vittoria .  Qui siamo nel bel mezzo della notte e mi ero naturalmente dimenticata  di questa cosa ma è meraviglioso .
alice munro è riservata e rifugge i media .
"Maestra del racconto breve contemporaneo" la motivazione dell'accademia svedese.
"Cominciai a scrivere racconti perché non avevo tempo di scrivere nient'altro, avevo tre bambine".

larepubblica.it

.

. I started writing them because I didn't have time to write anything else - I had three children

And then I got used to writing stories, so I saw my material that way

and now I don't think I'll ever write a novel

. cominciai a scrivere racconti perché non avevo tempo di scrivere nient'altro, avevo tre bambine da crescere 

poi mi sono abituata a scrivere racconti ed è così che vedo il mio lavoro. non penso che scriverò mai un romanzo

-am

 

It just seems impossible. It seems just so splendid a thing to happen, I can’t describe it, it’s more than I can say .
I would really hope this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something you played around with until you got a novel.

Ms. Munro revolutionized the architecture of short stories, often beginning a story in an unexpected place and then moving backward or forward in time. She brought a modesty and subtle wit to her work that her admirers often traced to her background growing up in rural Canada. She said she fell into writing short stories, the form that would make her famous, somewhat by accident.

julie bosman - nytimes.com - 2013

 

Ho lasciato perdere - tutto qui -  è incredibile come sia facile lasciar perdere

*

Ricordati sempre  

che quando un uomo esce da una stanza lascia tutto lì dentro … Mentre una donna porta con sè tutto quello che dentro quella stanza è accaduto .

...

L’aria gli piaceva ma gli dava fastidio il ronzio . Quindi voleva il ventilatore in camera per un po’, e poi lo voleva in corridoio ma accanto alla porta aperta  . fb/rai
troppa felicità - 2009

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.

.

A renderci desiderabili

non è qualcosa che facciamo ma qualcosa che senza saperlo abbiamo dentro di noi .
chi ti credi di essere?

.

.

.

The solution

to my life occurred to me one evening while I was ironing a shirt - It was simple but audacious - I went into the living room where my husband was watching television  and I said, 'I think I ought to have an office' .

...

I was at once

aware that it sounded like a finicky requirement, a piece of rare self-indulgence.  To write, as everyone knows, you need a typewriter, or at least a pencil, some paper,  a table and chair; I have all these things in a corner of my bedroom.    But now I want an office as well .

the office

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His face

contained for me all possibilities of fierceness and sweetness  pride and submissiveness, violence, self-containment.     I never saw more in it than I had when I saw it first, because I saw everything then.    The whole thing in him that I was going to love, and never catch or explain .

...

IT SEEMED TO ME
THAT WINTER WAS THE TIME FOR LOVE, NOT SPRING. IN WINTER THE HABITABLE WORLD WAS SO MUCH CONTRACTED; OUT OF THAT LITTLE SHUT-IN SPACE WE LIVED IN, FANTASTIC HOPES MIGHT BLOOM. BUT SPRING REVEALED THE ORDINARY GEOGRAPHY OF THE PLACE; THE LONG, BROWN ROADS, THE OLD CRACKED SIDEWALKS UNDERFOOT, ALL THE TREE BRANCHES BROKEN OFF IN WINTER STORMS, THAT HAD TO BE CLEARED OUT OF THE YARDS. SPRING REVEALED DISTANCES, EXACTLY AS THEY WERE.lives of girls and women
.

...
IT WAS THIS WAY   

THEY ALWAYS CARRIED THE FEED TO THE HORSES, PAIL BY PAIL. IN THE WINTER, WHEN THE HORSES WERE IN THE STALLS. SO MY FATHER TOOK THE NOTION TO CARRY IT TO THEM IN THE WHEELBARROW. NATURALLY IT WAS A LOT QUICKER. BUT HE GOT BEAT. FOR LAZINESS. THAT WAS THE WAY THEY WERE, YOU KNOW. ANY CHANGE OF ANY KIND WAS A BAD THING. EFFICIENCY WAS JUST LAZINESS, TO THEM. THAT'S THE PEASANT THINKING FOR YOU.
...

Now I no longer believe   

that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize .
chaddeleys and flemings - the stone in the field

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.

.

THE UNHAPPIEST MOMENT    

I COULD NEVER TELL YOU. ALL OUR FIGHTS BLEND INTO EACH OTHER AND ARE IN FACT RE-ENACTMENTS OF THE SAME FIGHT, IN WHICH WE PUNISH EACH OTHER―I WITH WORDS, HUGH WITH SILENCE―FOR BEING EACH OTHER. WE NEVER NEEDED ANY MORE THAN THAT.
something i've been meaning to tell you

.

.

.

I BELIEVE
THAT IT WAS ONLY AT THE MOMENT WHEN I DECIDED TO COME BACK, WHEN I GAVE UP THE FIGHT AGAINST MY MOTHER (WHICH MUST HAVE BEEN A FIGHT FOR SOMETHING LIKE HER TOTAL SURRENDER) AND WHEN IN FACT I CHOSE SURVIVAL OVER VICTORY (DEATH WOULD HAVE BEEN VICTORY), THAT I TOOK ON MY FEMALE NATURE.

my mother's dream

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HO PENSATO ALLA VITA DI MAMMA

ALMENO ALLA PARTE CHE CONOSCEVO. TUTTI I GIORNI AL LAVORO, PRENDENDO PRIMA IL TRAGHETTO E POI L’AUTOBUS. LA SPESA AL VECCHIO RED-AND-WHITE, E POI AL NUOVO SAFEWAY – NUOVO SI FA PER DIRE, AVEVA QUINDICI ANNI, ORMAI! UNA SCAPPATA SETTIMANALE ALLA BIBLIOTECA LA SERA, CON ME APPRESSO, PER POI TORNARE A CASA IN AUTOBUS INSIEME, CON IL NOSTRO CARICO DI LIBRI E UN SACCHETTO D’UVA COMPRATA DAL CINESE, PER FARCI UN REGALO. E I MERCOLEDÍ POMERIGGIO QUANDO AVEVO I BAMBINI PICCOLI E ANDAVO DA LEI A PRENDERE IL CAFFÈ E LEI ROLLAVA SIGARETTE PER TUTTE E DUE CON QUELL’AGGEGGIO CHE AVEVA. E HO PENSATO, QUESTE COSE NON SEMBRANO TANTO LA VITA MENTRE LE FAI, SONO SEMPLICEMENTE LE COSE CHE FAI, IL MODO IN CUI RIEMPI LE GIORNATE, E INTANTO CONTINUI A RIPETERTI CHE PRIMA O POI SI APRIRÀ UNA BRECCIA E A QUEL PUNTO, SOLO A QUEL PUNTO, TI RITROVERAI NELLA VITA VERA. NON È NEMMENO CHE TU NON VEDA L’ORA CHE SUCCEDA, LA BRECCIA INTENDO, TI VA ABBASTANZA BENE COSÍ COM’È, MA DI SICURO TE L’ASPETTI. E TUTTO A UN TRATTO STAI MORENDO, MAMMA STA MORENDO, E CI SONO SEMPRE LE STESSE SEDIE DI PLASTICA E LE STESSE PIANTE DI PLASTICA E LA STESSA GIORNATA QUALSIASI FUORI CON LA GENTE CHE VA A FARE LA SPESA E QUELLO CHE HAI FATTO FIN QUI È TUTTO IL TUO AVERE, E ANDARE IN BIBLIOTECA, UNA SEMPLICE COSA DEL GENERE, E TORNARE CON L’AUTOBUS SU PER LA SALITA CON I LIBRI E IL SACCHETTO DELL’UVA SEMBRA, DIO MIO, TALMENTE DESIDERABILE CHE TI SI SCHIANTA IL CUORE TANTO VORRESTI TORNARE AD AVERLO.
perdono in famiglia - da una cosa che volevo dirti da un po’

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.

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ISN'T IT TRUE   

THAT ALL THE PEOPLE I KNOW IN THE WORLD SO FAR ARE HARDLY MORE THAN PUPPETS FOR ME,   SERVING THE GLOSSY CONTRIVINGS OF MY IMAGINATION ?

the progress of love

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.

Soon   

they are having a 'great row': A fight like this was stunning, revealing not just how much he was on the lookout for enemies, but how she too was unable to abandon argument which escalated into rage. Neither of them would back off, they held bitterly to principles.
comfort - hateship courtship loveship marriage - stories - fb/am - 2017

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I KNOW   

HOW YOU LOVE THIS PLACE - HE SAYS TO ME, APOLOGETICALLY YET WITH SATISFACTION. AND I DON'T TELL HIM THAT I AM NOT SURE NOW WHETHER I LOVE ANY PLACE, AND THAT IT SEEMS TO ME IT WAS MYSELF I LOVED HERE - SOME SELF THAT I HAVE FINISHED WITH, AND NONE TOO SOON.

the view from castel rock

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.

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Hatred is always a sin, my mother told me. remember that

One drop of hatred in your soul will spread and discolo everything  like a drop of black ink in white milk. i was struck by that and meant to try it, but I knew I should'nt waste the milk.

L’odio è sempre un peccato,  mi diceva mia madre.   Tienilo a mente.    Una sola goccia d’odio nell’anima  si può diffondere  e macchiare tutto il resto  come una goccia d’inchiostro  nel latte.  L’immagine mi colpì   e avrei voluto fare la prova,  ma sapevo di non dover sprecare il latte.
vintage munro - nobel prize edition

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.

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WHAT HAD HAPPENED
IN THEIR LIVES SURPRISED THEM, AND THEY WOULD JOKE ABOUT IT.
...
AUNT MURIEL

BELONGED TO MERIEL’S GRANDMOTHER’S GENERATION, RATHER THAN HER MOTHER’S. SHE HAD BEEN MERIEL’S MOTHER’S ART TEACHER AT SCHOOL, FIRST AN INSPIRATION, THEN AN ALLY, THEN A FRIEND. SHE HAD PAINTED LARGE ABSTRACT PICTURES, ONE OF WHICH—A PRESENT TO MERIEL’S MOTHER—HAD HUNG IN THE BACK HALL OF THE HOUSE WHERE MERIEL GREW UP AND BEEN MOVED TO THE DINING ROOM WHENEVER THE ARTIST CAME TO VISIT.
...
HER LEGS

WERE SHAKING. SHE COULD NOT PUT UP WITH THIS ANY LONGER.
“TAKE ME SOMEWHERE ELSE,” SHE SAID.
HE LOOKED HER IN THE FACE. HE SAID, “YES.”
THERE ON THE SIDEWALK IN THE WORLD’S VIEW. KISSING LIKE MAD.

what is remembered - 2001 AM/newyorker.com

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.

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YOU DON'T IMPRESS ME AT ALL, SHE SAID. EVERYTHING YOU SAY IS BORING AND INCOMPREHENSIBLE, BUT THAT ALONE DOESN'T MAKE IT TRUE.
description of a struggle - 1912

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*

Old rejection letters from publishers addressed to author Alice Munro

were recently found in the Harry Ransom Center

fb/am - 2013

O. Henry Prize Stories 2015

fb/am - 2016

Racconti
Era arrivato al punto in cui la gratitudine non rappresentava più un peso, ma un sentimento spontaneo, specie quando nessuno la pretendeva .
Alice Munro privilegia, pressoché esclusivamente, la forma del racconto e riserva un'attenzione particolare all'universo femminile. I suoi racconti sono ambientati nella realtà canadese moderna o descrivono vicende recuperate dalla memoria dei suoi personaggi. È importante, nella sua narrativa, la componente autobiografica. Il mondo descritto dalla Munro è, per lo più, quello di una piccola società gretta e arretrata, situata in una regione rurale dell'Ontario occidentale, con qualche incursione nelle più moderne e vivide realtà urbane di Vancouver o di Toronto.
La scrittura si contraddistingue per affilata secchezza, assenza di retorica, raffinata tecnica dialogica che mette in evidenza una straordinaria empatia coi personaggi, nonché la capacità di descrivere in modo catturante e geniale i sentimenti e le esperienze più intime e segrete. Ciò che affascina l'autrice è la «complessità delle cose: niente è facile, niente è semplice». E infatti il mondo che fa da sfondo alle sue storie è pieno di insidie e di minacce, talora crudele e violento: spesso i suoi racconti non descrivono le vicende di successo dei suoi personaggi, bensì le amarezze, i momenti di azione fatale, le fratture irrevocabili, le minime e inaspettate pieghe del dramma.

libri.mondadori.it  -  lafeltrinelli.it  -  www.alaaddin.it/Munro/Racconti.html
La Munro dichiarò di avere scritto solo racconti perché aveva tre figlie a cui badare e poco tempo per scrivere un romanzo. Questa dicotomia tra romanzo e racconto lei l’affronta così, con l’ironia che merita questa contrapposizione, fino a imporla a una questione di sguardo, tecnica e visione letteraria.
rossella milone - ilfattoquotidiano.it - 2014

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in fuga
L'idea strana e terrificante   che le si andava chiarendo riguardo al suo mondo futuro, mentre cercava di immaginarlo, era che lei in quel mondo non sarebbe esistita. Vi si sarebbe soltanto mossa, avrebbe aperto la bocca e parlato, facendo ora questo ora quello.
Ma non sarebbe stata davvero presente
.
E la cosa ancora piú strana era che lei stava facendo tutto quanto, viaggiando a bordo di questo autobus, proprio nella speranza di ritrovare se stessa.
Nella speranza - per usare parole che avrebbe potuto pronunciare Mrs Jamieson, e anche lei poco fa, con grande soddisfazione - di prendere in mano le redini della sua vita.
Senza nessuno che le alitasse sul collo, senza che i malumori degli altri la contagiassero di infelicità.

.
VOGLIO CHE LA SCRITTURA MOSTRI COME SONO COMPLICATE LE COSE E SORPRENDENTI. VOGLIO EMOZIONARE I LETTORI MA SENZA TRUCCHI. VOGLIO CHE PENSINO SÌ, QUELLA È VITA. PERCHÉ È LA REAZIONE CHE HO IO DI FRONTE ALLA SCRITTURA CHE AMMIRO DI PIÙ. UNA SORTA DI MERAVIGLIOSO SBALORDIMENTO.

...
Eppure quelle poche ore le procuravano la certezza che l’esistenza a cui faceva ritorno, precaria e insoddisfacente come appariva, fosse provvisoria e dunque tollerabile  .
...
Ecco dunque il dolore .     Juliet ha la sensazione che le rovescino dentro un sacco di cemento a presa rapida .    Quasi non riesce a muoversi .    Salire sull’autobus, scendere, percorrere il mezzo isolato fino a casa (ma perché adesso abita qui?) è come scalare uno scoglio a strapiombo .
...
Avanza verso di lei e Juliet si sente scrutata da capo a piedi, traboccante sollievo, aggredita dalla felicità. Che cosa sbalorditiva. E quanto assomiglia allo sgomento .
...
Juliet sente sbattere la portiera del furgone, sente lui che parla con il cane, e il terrore la invade. Vuole nascondersi da qualche parte
...
giorgia cro' - pangea.news/in-fuga
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BUT THIS WAS THE THING THAT HAD NOT HAPPENED
IN MAURY’S CAR, OR OUT ON THE GRASS UNDER THE STARS, SHE WAS WILLING. AND MAURY WAS READY, BUT NOT WILLING. HE FELT THAT IT WAS HIS RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT HER. AND THE EASE WITH WHICH SHE OFFERED HERSELF THREW HIM OFF BALANCE. HE SENSED, PERHAPS, THAT IT WAS COLD—A DELIBERATE OFFERING THAT HE COULD NOT UNDERSTAND AND THAT DID NOT FIT IN AT ALL WITH HIS NOTIONS OF HER. SHE HERSELF DID NOT REALIZE HOW COLD SHE WAS—SHE BELIEVED THAT HER SHOW OF EAGERNESS WOULD LEAD TO THE PLEASURES SHE KNEW ABOUT, IN SOLITUDE AND IN HER IMAGINATION, AND SHE FELT THAT IT WAS UP TO MAURY TO TAKE OVER. WHICH HE WOULD NOT DO.

passion
-  in fuga
.

I suoi racconti indagano le relazioni umane
analizzate attraverso la lente della vita quotidiana. Sebbene la maggior parte delle sue storie sia ambientata nel Southwestern Ontario, la sua fama come scrittrice di racconti e' internazionale, e' considerata uno dei maggiori scrittori di racconti vivente.
Alice Munro e' nata nella citta' di Wingham, Ontario in una famiglia di allevatori e agricoltori. Comincio' a scrivere da adolescente e pubblico' la sua prima novella, The Dimensions of a Shadow, mentre era studentessa all'University of Western Ontario nel 1950. Durante questo periodo lavoro' come cameriera, raccoglitrice di tabacco e impiegata di biblioteca.
Nel 1951, abbandono' l'universita' per sposare James Munro e trasferirsi a Vancouver, British Columbia. Nel 1963 i Munro si trasferirono a Victoria dove aprirono "
Munro's Books".

agi - 2013



AMICO NEMICO AMANTE
– Sono contenta di vederti, – disse, tirandogli i lobi delle orecchie.
– Per quanto ne sapevo potevi essere semplicemente sparito, – disse. – Potevi essere montato in macchina senza un pensiero al mondo e avermi lasciata qui. Abbandonata.
Lui appoggio la faccia ai capelli bianchi di lei, alla cute rosa, alla dolce curva del cranio. – Mai e poi mai, – disse.
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Si coricarono senza rivolgersi la parola, si separarono senza parlare il mattino dopo, e nel corso della giornata furono sopraffatti dallo spavento; lei ebbe paura che lui non tornasse a casa e lui di tornare e di non trovarla.
 
  La sorte invece fu generosa.    Si incontrarono nel tardo pomeriggio, pallidi di pentimento, tremanti d’amore come chi, scampato per un pelo al terremoto, vaghi senza meta in preda a una confusione palese.    Quella non fu l’ultima volta .
.
Cercò di metterci una pietra sopra ma quella si rifiutava di far da coperchio al passato.
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Ma ormai sapeva che nella vita viene il momento in cui brutto e bello svolgono più o meno la stessa funzione, quando tutto ciò che guardi altro non è che un gancio a cui appendere le sensazioni scomposte del corpo, e i brandelli della mente.
...
Hai mai notato che quando qualcuno dice che gli dispiace dire qualcosa  in realtà non vede l’ora di dirla ?

nemico, amico, amante …

2001
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Nove racconti; nove caroselli sul ritornello delle parole “nemico, amico, spasimante, amante, sposo” che sviscerano, spiegano, tratteggiano e alludono alle relazioni d’amore. Nove finestre sul quotidiano, su matrimoni difficili, relazioni infelici e malattie che minano anche il rapporto più saldo. Dalla cameriera che crede di essere amata dal padre della ragazzina a cui fa da governante, al marito che vede la propria moglie scivolare via per una malattia mentale, al ricordo del primo lancinante amore d’infanzia, tutti i personaggi offrono la visuale sull’amore “ordinario”, su quanto di eccezionale si può trovare in una normale e apparentemente noiosa vita.
aoife - criticaletteraria.or - 2013
Munro's writing creates... an empathetic union among readers, critics most apparent among them. We are drawn to her writing by its verisimilitude – not of mimesis, so-called and... 'realism' – but rather the feeling of being itself ... of just being a human being.
robert thacker - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Munro     bio_biblio
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She often gets things that people don’t write about. There’s a story in her last collection about a young child whose mother is having another baby. Her mother hires extra help, a young woman who is already up and out in the world. I think almost every girl has had somebody like that in her life at some point, but nobody writes about that. Alice writes about the smaller parts of growing up, or marriage, or you’re leaving somebody, and she does it so well that it is indelible.
ann close - ms. munro’s editor at alfred a. knopf since the late 1970s  -  blogs.wsj.com  -  2013
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Alice Munro's short stories are revelatory in nature - She writes about the quotidian in our lives, enhanced by her subtle wit, and her deep perception of hidden desires.
artistic directors susan harloe and joanne winter - isabel bader theatre in toronto
broadwayworld.com - 2015
Alice Munro - 10 luglio 1931 - Wingham - Ontario
FAMOSA PER racconti ispirati alla vita nelle campagne dell'Ontario.
prima pubblicazione The Dimensions of a Shadow 1950 - ERA STUDENTESSA UNIVERSITARIA.
tra i numerosi riconoscimenti
 - 3 volte Canada's Governor General's Award e il 
Man Booker International Prize 2009
www.facebook.com/alicemunroauthor

Non ho alcun talento non sono un'intellettuale e come casalinga me la cavo piuttosto male.  quindi nulla può disturbare la mia attività aveva detto di sè stessa qualche anno fa.
quando ho letto "
La sirenetta" di Andersen che ha un finale molto triste sono uscita di casa e ho cominciato a camminare in tondo senza fermarmi. Cercavo di inventare un finale felice .
tmnews.it - 2013

Non riuscivo a introdurre dei personaggi in una stanza senza descrivere tutti i mobili. Hemingway insegnava a non descrivere mai i personaggi. So tutto di quella regola. Ma tiro dritto.
*
Born in 1931 in the southwestern Ontario farming community of Wingham, Munro later moved to Victoria, B.C., with her first husband, with whom she had three children.
The couple eventually divorced and Munro moved back to Ontario. She eventually remarried, to Gerald Fremlin.
Munro is beloved by readers around the world for her striking portraits of women living in small-town Ontario.
Her first collection of short stories, Dance of the Happy Shades (1968), won the Governor General’s Literary Award as did her 1978 collection Who Do You Think You Are?
She has won a slew of other awards, including two Giller prizes (in 1998 for The Love of a Good Woman and in 2004 for Runaway).
In 2009, when she won the prestigious Man Booker International Prize honouring her body of work, prize judge chair Jane Smiley noted that “the surface of Alice Munro’s works, its simplicity and quiet appearance, is a deceptive thing, that beneath that surface is a store of insight, a body of observation and a world of wisdom that is close to addictive.”
Munro’s most recent works include the 2009 short story collection entitled Too Much Happiness, which was nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award and a Writers’ Trust Award, and 2012’s Dear Life.
Fellow short story writer Cynthia Ozick has called Munro our Chekhov.”
The American novelist Jonathan Franzen has said she is the
“remote provider of intensely pleasurable private experiences.”
He has also said: “This is not a golfer on a practice tee. This is a gymnast in a plain black leotard, alone on a bare floor, outperforming all the novelists with their flashy costumes and whips and elephants and tigers.”
Munro has described what she aims for this way:
“I want to tell a story, in the old-fashioned way — what happens to somebody — but I want that ‘what happens’ to be delivered with quite a bit of interruption, turnarounds, and strangeness. I want the reader to feel something is astonishing — not the ‘what happens’ but the way everything happens. These long short story fictions do that best, for me.”
Three years ago, in an interview at Toronto’s International Festival of Authors, Munro revealed she’d been through a battle with
cancer but did not provide specifics.
Two weeks ago, the International Festival of Authors announced Munro was the recipient of their $10,000 Harbourfront Festival Prize. She has been invited to attend the event’s Tribute to Alice Munro, Nov. 2, but she has not confirmed her attendance yet, festival director Geoffrey Taylor told the Toronto Star on Wednesday.
The event, at which her award will be officially presented, includes a “who’s-who” of the literary community the IFOA says, including writers, colleagues and family members who will present readings of her work.
Taylor says Munro is
an ambassador (for Canada) on the world stage.” No matter what country he travels to for his job, he says, she is one of the few Canadian authors who is always known. “She’s part of the tapestry of Canadian writing. I can’t think of a landscape in Canadian literature without thinking of her.”
When she won the IFOA prize this year, she said: “I’m thrilled to be named this year’s winner . . . to be recognized in this way by (the festival) and to be counted amongst the prize’s accomplished recipients is truly an honour.”
The announcement of her award from the IFOA came on the heels of Munro, who is originally from Wingham, Ont. announcing she was giving up writing (though she has hinted at that before only to publish again).
The Toronto Star review of Dear Life described her stories as “evocative, so right with life and mood, that they speak broadly across borders.”

thestar.com -  oct 2013
www.theatlantic.com/dance-happy-shades-50-years-later

IL VESTITO ROSSO   .PDF 

racconto 

IL RACCONTO
NON E'
UNA STRADA
CHE CI SI METTE
A PERCORRERE
E' UNA CASA


I want my stories to move people — I don’t care if they’re men or women or children. I want my stories to be something about life that causes people not to say, “Oh, isn’t that the truth,” but to feel some kind of reward from the writing. And that doesn’t mean that it was to have a happy ending or anything — but just that everything the story tells moves [you] in such a way that you feel you’re a different person when you finish.
AM in an interview on writing and storytelling after winning the 2013 nobel prize in literature  -  fb/am - 2013
Munro revealed earlier this year that her latest book -  Dear Life -  2012 - would be her last.
In an interview she said the novel was "a little more special in that I'm probably not going to write anymore".
She continued:   It's nice to go out with a bang.
Not that I didn't love writing, but I think you do get to a stage where you sort of think about your life in a different way.
And perhaps, when you're my age, you don't wish to be alone as much as a writer has to be. It's like at the wrong end of life, sort of becoming very sociable.
In 2009, Munro revealed she had been receiving treatment for cancer. She also had bypass surgery for a heart condition.
bbc.co.uk
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retirement ?
Ms. Munro said she continues to have ideas about stories amid an internal debate over what to do with them.
' Every day I have mixed messages to myself over whether I will retire.   I have promised to retire but now and then I get an idea ' .
she will not allow her works to be published posthumously.    ' destroy them '
blogs.wsj.com - 2013
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you seem to have a very simple view on things
Do I ?   Well, yes.
well, I read somewhere that you want things to be explained in an easy way
Yes, I do.   But I never think that I want to explain things more easily, that’s just the way I write.     I think I write naturally in an easy way, without thinking that this was to be made easier.
our reporter - sunnewsonline.com - 2014




DEAR LIFE - USCIRNE VIVI

Di certe cose diciamo che non si possono perdonare o che non ce le perdoneremo mai. E invece poi lo facciamo, lo facciamo di continuo.
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Scrivere alla vita, scrivere la vita per uscirne vivi .    Reggersi forte al filo del discorso per non lasciarlo andare .    Tesserlo ancora una volta per tornare alla breve essenza del narrare .    Chiuderlo, forse, con un nodo che raggruppa in un finale gli ultimi quattro pezzi di questo libro, a detta della stessa autrice
autobiografici nel sentire sebbene non, talvolta, interamente nei fatti. Le prime e le ultime cose - e le più private - che ho da dire sulla mia vita.

einaudi - 2014
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SHE WOULD LIVE NOW, NOT READ. SHE'D LEFT HER CLOTHES HANGING IN THE CLOSET AND HER HIGH-HEELED SHOES IN THEIR SHOE TREES. HER DIAMOND RING AND HER WEDDING RING ON THE DRESSER. HER SILK NIGHTDRESSES IN THEIR DRAWER.
gravel  - included in dear life - fb/am - 2016
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film Hateship Loveship based on the short story
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage .    And now such a warm commotion, such busy love.
fb/am - 2014
Vintage Shorts' celebration of Short Story Month
' Years ago,  before the trains stopped running on so many of the branch lines,   a woman with a high, freckled forehead and a frizz of reddish hair came into the railway station and inquired about shipping furniture. '

hateship, friendship, courtship, loveship, marriage
fb/am - 2016
I thought it was a dream. It was you.
www.headbutler.com/dear-life-by-alice-munro
There's a kind of tension that if I'm getting a story right I can feel right away and I don't feel that when I try to write a novel.
I kind of want a moment that's explosive and I want everything gathered into that.
fb/am - 2014
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Perché  quel che volevo     era ogni singola cosa, ogni strato di conversazione e pensiero, pennellata di luce su una corteccia d’albero come su un muro, ogni odore, ogni buca, dolore, fessura, illusione, tenuti immobili, insieme: in un’inestinguibile radiosità .   -AM
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Alberi, case, strade, staccionate, mi si presentavano nelle loro forme sobrie e familiari .    Una volta sganciato dalla vita dell'amore, spogliato dei suoi colori, il mondo recupera i propri insieme alla propria rilevanza naturale e indifferente .   Il che in principio è un duro colpo, ma poi diventa un conforto inatteso .    E io già sentivo la me stessa di un tempo - subdola, solitaria ironica - ricominciare a respirare, sgranchirsi le gambe e prendere posto nel dolore ottuso della perdita, benché il mio corpo tutto intorno rimanesse ammaccato e confuso  .
fb/einaudi - la vita segreta delle ragazze e delle donne
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del  resto    lei doveva  assomigliare a  una di  quelle donne  non  disposte  a rassegnarsi  a  una conversazione banale   e  decise di pretenderne   invece   una    'autentica '  .
fb/einaudi - i racconti delle donne
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A woman goes to her doctor to have a prescription renewed.
But the doctor is not there. It's her day off. In fact the woman has got the day wrong, she has mixed up Monday with Tuesday.
This is the very thing she wanted to talk to the doctor about, as well as renewing the prescription. She has wondered if her mind is slipping a bit.
"What a laugh," she has expected the doctor to say. "Your mind. You of all people."
- It isn't that the doctor knows her all that well, but they do have friends in common. -

in sight of the lake - fb/am - 2014
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People are curious. A few people are.
They will be driven to find things out, even trivial things. They will put things together, knowing all along that they may be mistaken. You see them going around with notebooks, scraping the dirt off gravestones, reading microfilm, just in the hope of seeing this trickle in time, making a connection, rescuing one thing from the rubbish.
And they may get it wrong, after all. I may have got it wrong.
menesetung - friend of my youth - 1990 - fb/am
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Always remember that when a man goes out of the room, he leaves everything in it behind ... When a woman goes out she carries everything that happened in the room along with her.
ricordati sempre: quando un uomo esce da una stanza, si lascia alle spalle tutto quel che c’è dentro. una donna, invece, si porta appresso tutto quel che c’è avvenuto.
...
She hated
to hear the word 'escape' used about fiction. She might have argued, not just playfully, that it was real life that was the escape. But this was too important to argue about .
.
..
What she wants
to do if she can get the time to do it, is not so much to live in the past as to open it up and get one good look at it .
...
In your life
there are a few places, or maybe only the one place, where something happened, and then there are all the other places .
...
She was learning
quite late, what many people around her appeared to have known since childhood — that life can be perfectly satisfying without major achievements .
too much happiness  2009  - fb/am 2015
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Pedro Almodóvar on the Challenges of Adapting Alice Munro for Julieta
I read them like ten years ago. At that point, I was a follower of Munro’s writing,” Almodóvar explained, and was interested in how, “in this specific collection, Runaway, the three stories were part of this collection, but for the first time, it was the same protagonist, Juliet. And I was really very hooked.
fb/am 2016
Things will happen in your life - things will probably happen in your life - that will make this seem minor. Other things you’ll be able to feel guilty about.
chance - julieta


An ethereal female figure emerges from a pen
… the Royal Canadian Mint's Alice Munro coin.
her face is going to appear on a five-dollar
.
theparisreview.org - theguardian.com - 2014



a tutti i premi nobel viene chiesto di autografare una sedia nel ristorante del museo.
La sua firma e quelle di oltre 200 premiati  si possono vedere al Bistro Nobel.

foto staffan windrup
fb/am - 2014
     


Canada Post released a stamp honouring author Alice Munro on  83rd birthday
j.r.kennedy - globalnews.ca - 2015



munro's bench - 2018
collaborative initiative between
the Municipality of Central Huron
the Central Huron BIA
and Libro Credit Union

clintonnewsrecord.com

HAVEN WAS THE WORD .  A WOMAN'S MOST IMPORTANT JOB IS MAKING A HAVEN FOR HER MAN .
...
ALL THIS HAPPENED IN THE SEVENTIES, THOUGH IN THAT TOWN AND OTHER SMALL TOWNS LIKE IT THE SEVENTIES WERE NOT AS WE PICTURE THEM NOW, OR AS I HAD KNOWN THEM EVEN IN VANCOUVER.   THE BOYS’ HAIR WAS LONGER THAN IT HAD BEEN, BUT NOT STRAGGLING DOWN THEIR BACKS, AND THERE DIDN’T SEEM TO BE AN UNUSUAL AMOUNT OF LIBERATION AND DEFIANCE IN THE AIR .
haven 2012
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You would think as you get older your mind would fill up with what they call the spiritual side of things, but mine just seems to get more and more practical, trying to get something settled.
...
You cannot let your parents anywhere near your real humiliations.
open secrets  - outsiders - 1994
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He seemed happy
She thought that she seldom concerned herself about Laurence’s being happy. She wanted him to be in a good mood, so that everything would go smoothly, but that was not the same thing.
the progress of love
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A MAN CAME
ALONG AND FELL IN LOVE WITH DORRIE BECK. AT LEAST, HE WANTED TO MARRY HER. IT WAS TRUE.    IF HER BROTHER WAS ALIVE, SHE WOULD NEVER HAVE NEEDED TO GET MARRIED, MILLICENT SAID. WHAT DID SHE MEAN ? NOT SOMETHING SHAMEFUL   .

...

MILLICENT
WHO WAS SHREWD AND PRACTICAL IN SOME WAYS, WAS STUBBORNLY SENTIMENTAL IN OTHERS . SHE BELIEVED ALWAYS IN THE SWEETNESS OF AFFECTION THAT ELIMINATED SEX .
...
IF I DECIDED
TO SEND THIS TO YOU, WHERE WOULD I SEND IT ? WHEN I THINK OF WRITING THE WHOLE ADDRESS ON THE ENVELOPE I AM PARALYZED. IT’S TOO PAINFUL TO THINK OF YOU IN THE SAME PLACE WITH YOUR LIFE GOING ON IN THE SAME WAY, MINUS ME. AND TO THINK OF YOU NOT THERE, YOU SOMEWHERE ELSE BUT I DON’T KNOW WHERE THAT IS, IS WORSE .
wedding stories - real life 1992
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PEOPLE ARE CURIOUS
A FEW PEOPLE ARE … THEY WILL PUT THINGS TOGETHER, KNOWING ALL ALONG THAT THEY MAY BE MISTAKEN. YOU SEE THEM GOING AROUND WITH NOTEBOOKS, SCRAPING THE DIRT OFF GRAVESTONES, READING MICROFILM, JUST IN THE HOPE OF SEEING THIS TRICKLE IN TIME, MAKING A CONNECTION, RESCUING ONE THING FROM THE RUBBISH .
friend of my youth 1990
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NEVER UNDERESTIMATE
THE MEANNESS THERE IS IN PEOPLE'S SOULS ... EVEN WHEN THEY WERE BEING KIND - ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY WERE BEING KIND.
the love of a good woman
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WHAT SHE WANTS
TO DO IF SHE CAN GET THE TIME TO DO IT, IS NOT SO MUCH TO LIVE IN THE PAST AS TO OPEN IT UP AND GET ONE GOOD LOOK AT IT.
runaways 2004
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I NEVER CAN SEE FURTHER THAN THE NOVEL I'M WORKING ON
...
It's the insight, the work, the way you give yourself to the story that matters
fb/nobelprize
I want the reader to feel something is astonishing.     Not the 'what happens'   but the way everything happens.    These long short story fictions do that best, for me.
fb/am
’I know I’ve got far too much stuff in here’  - she said.   ‘But it’s my parents’ stuff.    It’s family furnishings and I couldn’t let them go.’
family furnishings - selected stories
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People open shops in order to sell things, they hope to become busy so that they will have to enlarge the shop, then to sell more things, and grow rich, and eventually not have to come into the shop at all. Isn't that true?
But are there other people who open a shop with the hope of being sheltered there, among such things as they most value - the yarn or the teacups or the books - and with the idea only of making a comfortable assertion? They will become a part of the block, a part of the street, part of everybody's map of the town, and eventually of everybody's memories. They will sit and drink coffee in the middle of the morning, they will get out the familiar bits of tinsel at Christmas, they will wash the windows in spring before spreading out the new stock. Shops, to these people, are what a cabin in the woods might be to somebody else - a refuge and a justification.

from the albanian virgin in carried away: a personal selection of stories
fb/am - 2015
All right.
Work your fingers around and get the guts loose. Easy. Easy. Keep your fingers together. Keep the palm inwards. Feel the ribs with the back of your hand. Feel the guts fit into your palm. Feel that?    Keep going. Break the strings – as many as you can. Keep going.   Feel a hard lump?   That’s the gizzard. Feel a soft lump  That’s the heart.     O.K. ? O.K.     Get your fingers around the gizzard. Easy.    Start pulling this way.    That’s right.    That’s right.    Start to pull her out.

the turkey season - included in christmas stories  - fb/am -2015
A story is not like a road to follow it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.
fb/am - 2015


I'D LIKE TO THINK THAT THERE ARE LOT OF PERIODS OF HAPPINESS IN THE STORIES. IT'S ALL MUDDLED UP: HAPPINESS, SADNESS, DEPRESSION, ELATION. AS I SAID, THE CONSTANT HAPPINESS IS CURIOSITY. I WOULDN'T SET OUT TO WRITE A STORY THAT I THOUGHT WAS DEPRESSING, BECAUSE THAT WOULD DEPRESS ME. BUT I NOTICE THAT SOMETIMES OTHER PEOPLE'S STORIES THAT I LIKE VERY MUCH ARE CRITICIZED AS BEING DEPRESSING.
interview - fb/am - 5.3.2017
they spoke like caricatures, it was unBEARable
hateship, friendship, courtship, loveship, marriage
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HE NEVER WANTED TO BE AWAY FROM HER. SHE HAD THE SPARK OF LIFE
...
OVER A YEAR AGO GRANT HAD STARTED NOTICING SO MANY LITTLE YELLOW NOTES STUCK UP ALL OVER THE HOUSE .
THAT WAS NOT ENTIRELY NEW . SHE'D ALWAYS WRITTEN THINGS DOWN - THE TITLE OF A BOOK SHE'D HEARD MENTIONED
ON THE RADIO OR THE JOBS SHE WANTED TO MAKE SURE SHE DID THAT DAY .
EVEN HER MORNING SCHEDULE WAS WRITTEN DOWN - HE FOUND IT MYSTIFYING AND TOUCHING IN ITS PRECISION .
the bear came over the mountain - 1999
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BECAUSE IF SHE LET GO OF HER GRIEF EVEN FOR A MINUTE
IT WOULD ONLY HIT HER HARDER WHEN SHE BUMPED INTO IT AGAIN
away from her 2001
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Alice Munro is a writer with no pretensions - Urquhart explains - That is part of the strength of her work.  She doesn’t look away from the dark, but she doesn’t look away from the light, either. She is not affected by fashion. She has her own world view. I admire her as a person because she does not change.

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I love working with young writers, because their imaginations have not been tempered with too much experience and too much received wisdom.  -am

canadian Alice Munro Festival - giu 2017 - colin burrowes - southwesternontario.ca
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TROPPA FELICITA
In "Dimensioni" una giovane moglie e madre trae conforto dall'indicibile dolore di perdere i suoi tre figli in modo orrendo e per mano dell'uomo che ha amato attraverso la più sorprendente delle circostanze. La giovane protagonista di "Wenlock Edge" in parte subisce e in parte accetta un corteggiamento insolito e umiliante, e a freddo reagisce con una mossa intelligente e obliqua che sa di vendetta. Buchi profondi esplora le trappole insidiose di un rapporto familiare come tanti. Nella storia che da il titolo alla raccolta seguiamo Sophia Kovalevsky - una matematica emigrata dalla Russia alla fine del XIX secolo - in un lungo viaggio dalla Riviera italiana, dove incontra il suo amante, attraverso Parigi, la Germania, la Danimarca, fino in Svezia, sola università europea disposta a dare impiego a un matematico donna.
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Aveva escogitato un giochetto per tenersi la mente impegnata. Prendeva le lettere di qualunque parola su cui le capitasse di posare lo sguardo e cercava di stabilire quante parole diverse sarebbe riuscita a cavarne. «Gelati», ad esempio, dava «tela», «lega», e poi «lite» e «tale» e «alti» e «lati» e «lieta», mentre «bottega» produceva «botte» e «toga» e «gatto» e «botta» e – aspetta un po’ – anche «getto». C’era scorta abbondante di parole in uscita dalla città, fra tabelloni, megastore, parcheggi, perfino palloni aerostatici ormeggiati sui tetti a scopo pubblicitario.
...
Doree e Maggie presero l’abitudine di andare a fare la spesa insieme dopo aver ritirato il materiale a scuola. A quel punto qualche volta si prendevano un caffè da asporto da Tim Hortons e portavano i bambini fino al Riverside Park. Si sedevano su una panchina mentre Sasha e i figli di Maggie scorrazzavano intorno o si arrampicavano alle spalliere, Barbara Ann ci dava dentro a spingersi in altalena e Dimitri giocava nella sabbiera. Oppure restavano sedute nel furgoncino, se faceva freddo.

...
mondadoristore.it/Troppa-felicita-Alice-Munro  -  ESTRATTO - 2023
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I can’t remember when I wasn’t writing stories

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