Opinion
Alice Munro is ghastly and horrible
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WHAT
WHEN
HOWWWWWW
I saw Myra and Jimmy ahead of me on the hill; they always went to school very early—sometimes so early that they had to stand outside waiting for the janitor to open the door. They were walking slowly, and now and then Myra half turned around. I had often loitered in that way, wanting to walk with some important girl who was behind me, and not quite daring to stop and wait. Now it occurred to me that Myra might be doing this with me. I did not know what to do. I could not afford to be seen walking with her, and I did not even want to— but, on the other hand, the flattery of those humble, hopeful turnings was not lost on me. A role was shaping for me that I could not resist playing. I felt a great pleasurable rush of self-conscious benevolence; before I thought what I was doing I called, "Myra! Hey, Myra, wait up, I got some Cracker Jack!" and I quickened my pace as she stopped.
Myra waited, but she did not look at me; she waited in the. withdrawn and rigid attitude with which she always met us. Perhaps she thought I was playing a trick on her, perhaps she expected me to run past and throw an empty Cracker Jack box in her face. And I opened the box and held it out to her. She took a little. Jimmy ducked behind her coat and would not take any when I offered the box to him.
"He's shy," I said reassuringly. "A lot of little kids are shy like that. He'll probably grow out of it."
"Yes," said Myra.
"I have a brother four," I said. "He's awfully shy." He wasn't. "Have some more Cracker Jack," I said. "I used to eat Cracker Jack all the time but I don't any more. I think it's bad for your complexion."
There was a silence. "Do you like Art?" said Myra faintly. "No. I like Social Studies and Spelling and
Health." "I like Art and Arithmetic." Myra could add and multiply in her head faster than anyone else in the class.
"I wish I was as good as you. In Arithmetic," I said, and felt magnanimous.
"But I am no good at Spelling," said Myra. "I make the most mistakes, I'll fail maybe." She did not sound unhappy about this, but pleased to have such a thing to say. She kept her head turned away from me staring at the dirty snowbanks along Victoria Street, and as she talked she made a sound as if she was wetting her lips with her tongue.
"You won't fail," I said. "You are too good in Arithmetic. What are you going to be when you grow up?"
She looked bewildered. "I will help my mother," she said. "And work in the store."
"Well I am going to be an airplane hostess," I said. "But don't mention it to anybody. I haven't told many people."
"No, I won't," said Myra. "Do you read Steve Canyon in the paper?"
"Yes." It was queer to think that Myra, too, read the comics, or that she did anything at all, apart from her role at the school. "Do you read Rip Kirby"
"Do you read Orphan Annie?"
"Do you read Betsy and the Boys?"
"You haven't had hardly any Cracker Jack," I said. "Have some. Take a whole handful."
Myra looked into the box. "There's a prize in there," she said. She pulled it out. It was a brooch, a little tin butterfly, painted gold with bits of colored glass stuck onto it to look like jewels. She held it in her brown hand, smiling slightly.
it's a simple, economic style, it's not particularly elaborate, but that's a stylistic decision, and seems fitting when the story is told from a child's perspective
With a sloshing plop the thing fell to the ground, evaporating in a thick scarlet cloud until it reatained its original size. It remained thus for a moment as the puckered maw took the shape of a protruding red eyeball, the pupil of which seemed to unravel before it the tale of creation. How a shapeless mass slithered from the quagmires of the stygmatic pool of time, only to degenerate into a leprosy of avaricious lust. In that fleeting moment the grim mystery of life was revealed before Grignr's ensnared gaze.
The eyeballs glare turned to a sudden plea of mercy, a plea for the whole of humanity. Then the blob began to quiver with violent convulsions; the eyeball shattered into a thousand tiny fragments and evaporated in a curling wisp of scarlet mist. The very ground below the thing began to vibrate and swallow it up with a belch.
The thing was gone forever. All that remained was a dark red blotch upon the face of the earth, blotching things up. Shaking his head, his shaggy mane to clear the jumbled fragments of his mind, Grignr tossed the limp female over his shoulder. Mounting one of the disgruntled mares, and leading the other; the weary, scarred barbarian trooted slowly off into the horizon to become a tiny pinpoint in a filtered filed of swirling blue mists, leaving the Nobles, soldiers and peasants to replace the missing monarch. Long leave the king!!!
i would expect this to be graded higher than a C, if nothing else
this is such a short sample, it mightn't even be representative
e: wrote this before seeing your above post, idk then
it's possible i've just heard the name somewhere
If nothing else it's pretty much standard in critical circles
this has nothing to do with this discussion, however.
Not that technical aspects are unimportant or that this is even really the wrong way to go about it, but that has been my observation