"Du côté de Castle Rock" offre un assez bonne introduction à Alice Munro, la grande conteuse Canadienne-anglaise et lauréate du prix Nobel. Je l'ai lu en francais parce qu'il y avait un exemplaire de la traduction française dans la bibliothèque municipale et qu'il n'y avait pas d'exemplaire de la version originelle anglaise.
Parlons d'abord de quelques petites réserves que j'ai au sujet de la traduction. Jacqueline Huet et Jean-Pierre Carasso rendent bien le style de Munro en français mais leur choix de mots est bien européen. Par exemple ils emploient le mot "autocar" qui est connu chez nous peu employé. On l'utilisé surtout pour des véhicules qui transportent des gens pour des excursions touristiques. C'est très rare que l'on parle des autocars scolaires ou municipaux comme Huet et Carasso font dans "Castle Rock".
J'ai été aussi très surpris de lire la phrase: "Pendant les années ma mère était abonnée au Grand Livre du Mois." (p. 288) Un traducteur québécois aurait écrit: "Pendant les années ma mère était membre du Book-of-the Month-Club." À une époque où quarante pourcent de la population canadienne vivaient à trois heures de route de la librairie la plus proche, Book-of-the Month-Club avait une place énorme chez les canadiens-anglais et aussi chez les canadiens-francais.
Je recommande "Du côté de Castle Rock" au lecteur européen car il offre dans un premier temps une critique de mythe national canadien selon lequel nous sommes tous des descendants des immigrants qui ont du passer par très rudes épreuves afin de s'établir au nouveau monde et dans un deuxième temps un portrait extraordinaire de la vie de tous les jours des Anglo-Canadiens au cours du vingtième siècle
Les contes de la première partie du livre parle de la vie des ancêtres de Munro en Écosse, leur voyage au Canada et leurs essais ratés de s'établir sur la terre. Ces récits sont excellents pour des gens qui entendent l'histoire de l'expérience immigrante pour la première fois (c'est-à-dire la grande majorité d'européens qui ont tendance à croire que la société nord-américaine est née à Hollywood pendant les années 1920 et une majorité moins grandes des américains et canadiens qui croient la même chose). Malheureusement lecteurs qui s'intéressent à histoire nord-américaine auront déjà lu beaucoup de chroniques sur le même sujet. La version de Munro est assez bonne mais elle offre vraiment rien de nouveau.
Les contes de la deuxième partie relatent les événements de la vie de l'auteure . Il n'y pas de lien avec celles de la première partie mais au moins on retrouve Munro en très grande forme.
Ma favorite est "Employé de maison", peut-être parce que j'avais pendant trois ans dans le conté de Parry Sound ou ses événements se déroulent. Adolescente, Munro travaille comme bonne au chalet d'un couple riche de Toronto. La famille de Munro est en train de descendre l'échelle sociale et elle veut tout cacher de ses origines et des problèmes financiers de sa famille. Le chalet se trouve sur une ile qui s'appellent Nausicaa que ses employeurs croient est le nom d'un personnage de Shakespeare. Munro sait que Nausicaa est plutôt un personnage de l’Odyssée d'Homère mais elle ne dit rien. Munro commence à feuilleter un exemplaire de "Sept Contes Gothiques" de Karen Blixen (un titre du Book-of-the Month-Club) qu'elle trouve au salon mais elle le ferme rapidement quand la femme pour qui elle travaille rentre dans la pièce. À sa grande surprise, on lui donne le livre à la fin de la conte parce qu'elle a l'air d'une fille qui s'intéresse à la littérature.

These stories trace a family line from Scotland to Ontario, from the land of barren moors and absentee landlords to post-WWII Canada with indoor plumbing and automobiles. The overall effect is a very personal and realistic portrayal of migration to North America. I found some stories less interesting than others, but some, like Home, were wonderful.

Las historias familiares siempre son enriquecedoras, pero a veces brutales, nos crían con determinadas expectativas y con determinados valores que damos por hecho, pero cuando retornamos a los recuerdos o las memorias de una historia que también es nuestra, nos sorprende que no todo es cómo pensamos, ni ha sido tan fácil como quisiéramos creer, pero siempre será bueno aprender del pasado. Alice Munro deja muy claro que la historia familiar nos determina más de lo que quisiéramos, pero tampoco nos obliga a seguir el mismo camino.

I'm very happy that Alice Monroe never took it upon herself to become a memoirist and instead used her own life in history to inform her short stories. The first part of this book is unbearably confusing and disjointed and almost impossible to understand. She mentioned so many people and so many discontinuous things happening that it's really hard to make anything of the first half of the book. She's really trying to reimagine her family history which I think is a very interesting idea but it's too confusing to understand. The last half is much better because she enters the scene and she is remembering rather than filling in the blanks.

This was my first Alice Munro book, and I approached through a fog of reviews that were running out of accolades "the best fiction writer now working in North America" "a sculptor of the human condition: nothing more and nothing less than an artist." "One of the great storytellers of our time, descended from a line going back to Chekhov and Katherine Mansfield....."

Oh dear. Obviously due to my own ineptitude, I was unable to grasp much of this at all. For the most part I found this book boring, boring, boring.

It was based on the history of Munro's own family, going right back to William Laidlaw, (Laidlaw was Munro's family name) born at the end of the 17th century....and it continued up to modern times. Munro makes it clear that these tales are stories though, and not simply biographical.

In fact I did enjoy a couple of them - based on her family history during the 19th century - Illinois and The Wilds of Morris Township. In the first there was a unexpected and gripping storyline,and I enjoyed the subtle quirkiness of the characters, in the second I was intrigued by the harsh demands of frontier life, beautifully described by Munro.

But for the most part I couldn't wait to finish the book. I felt that an author of her stature should be read from beginning to end, so I did stick it out, but I didn't find it enjoyable. I am wondering if my education were better I might have enjoyed it more....but I suspect not. I think I need a bit of Sturm and Drang in my fiction, and hooks that are probably found more in books for the mass market. (Oh woe is plebby me....)

One thing was really good, and that was a review I found of the book written by someone here at Goodreads who had enjoyed it. I found it fascinating to read about the ways in which the book had been attractive to her, plus it is just a great review. Highly recommended for anyone thinking of reading the book.

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Öykülerinde sevdiğim yaklaşımı kendi geçmişine ve ailesine yaptığı bu yolculuğunda bulamadım. Kurguyla iç içe ailesine ilişkin yaptığı araştırmalardan yola çıkarak yazdığı bazı öyküleri yazmasa da olurmuş (Veya okumasam da olurdu).
İlk bölümde atalarının İskoçya'dan Kanada'ya yaptığı yolculuk ve orada hayat kurma çabaları anlatılırken, ikinci bölümde kendine odaklanıyor. Daha doğrusu kendi gençliğinden kimi enstantanelere yer verirken kendini anlatmaktan biraz fazla kaçınıyor. Beklediğim Jeanette Winterson'ın keskin ve samimi otobiyografisindeki gibi bir yaklaşım olmasa da, yazarın kurgu öykülerinde kalakaldığım anları düşünüyorum ve bu anı kitabını nerede konumlandıracağıma karar veremiyorum. Bu kadar betimlemeye harcadığı zamanı kişilerin iç dünyalarını vurgulamak için harcasaydı fikrim değişebilirdi.

It may just be the point I am in life, but I have been enjoying memiors of late. Reflections on family history. This is a collection of memories, family history cobbled together in short story format. It must have been facinating to research and reflect. Alice Munro is a bit older than I, but I can relate to her family as we both have rustic Depression era roots. Hers in Canada, mine in Wisconsin. Both of us shared family immigration from greater Europe at the same time. Mine from Germany, hers from Scotland. In one of the final stories/excerpts she reflects on working as a maid one summer for an affluent family in their summer home. Must have been in the early sixties. Munro was in her teens. She refers to a couple honored at a cocktail party at that time. She observes them with envy as "likely having love affairs, seeing psychiatrists and drinking quite a lot." That appealed to me. Can I relate??? In a Woody Allen sort of way. Haven't read Alice Munro before (that I recall). I will give her another go based on this book.

A comforting bit of autobiography from Scotland and Canada; places and times I am not familiar with. It was just what I needed to read after failing to make much headway in Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind.

Fulgente armonia
Con “La vista da Castle Rock” Alice Munro ci consegna un’opera alquanto singolare: una serie di racconti legati tra loro da un fil rouge che li rende quasi un romanzo e, dal punto di vista tematico, una storia familiare che si evolve in memoir.
La prima parte del libro ricostruisce, attraverso documenti storici e testimonianze private, le vicende del ramo paterno della famiglia dell’autrice (i Laidlaw) a partire dal 18° secolo, con il racconto del viaggio per mare dalla miseria della Scozia alla promessa di una vita migliore nella Nova Scotia; la seconda parte invece è autobiografica e ripercorre episodi della vita dell’autrice dall’infanzia all’attuale maturità.
Nell’insieme, inoltre, vengono sviluppati i temi più disparati: un vivido ritratto della Scozia degli antenati; la nascita del Canada come nazione e le sue trasformazioni; l’allevamento delle volpi da pelliccia e le alterne fortune del commercio di questi prodotti; e poi resoconti di viaggio, visite a persone, biblioteche e cimiteri, descrizioni naturali talora di rigore scientifico e molto altro ancora.
Tutti questi elementi, all’apparenza così eterogenei, si fondono incredibilmente in un ibrido di rara armonia grazie alla meravigliosa vena interpretativa di questa impareggiabile scrittrice.
Nelle sue mani anche l’episodio più comune e quotidiano o il più arido e oggettivo documento d’archivio si animano di vita , si colmano di significati intensi e segreti e si trasformano in arte narrativa pura.
La Munro scava implacabile nel materiale a sua disposizione, lo amalgama con innata perizia e lo popola di personaggi reali e palpitanti, per i quali reinventa stralci di vissuto, dialoghi e stati d’animo laddove la sua fantasia deve intervenire per colmare i vuoti lasciati dallo scorrere del tempo e dall’assenza di testimonianze esaustive.
Il ritmo narrativo è, al solito, piano e privo di scosse, ma mai banale o prevedibile: vi si intuiscono infatti una tensione creativa sempre feconda, una acutissima sensibilità al particolare e a tutto ciò che è più propriamente ‘umano’ e la magia dell’invenzione letteraria più munifica e fulgente.

Marin Preda, a great Romanian author, declared once in an interview, speaking of his most famous character: “Ilie Moromete, who really existed, was my father.” I’ve always used this quote as an example for my students of how writers like to maintain a deliberate confusion between fiction and reality.

In her Foreword of The View from Castle Rock, Alice Munro is even more ambiguous. After informing the reader that there is an historical truth behind her stories, she emphasizes the word stories as though putting it in opposition with the concept of real events, only to suggest immediately afterwards that reality and fiction are impossible to be told apart, that you can read them, without being wrong, either as the biography of a family or as a narrative inspired by this biography:

These are stories.
You could say that such stories pay more attention to the truth of life than fiction usually does. But not enough to swear on. And the part of this book that might be called family history has expanded into fiction, but always within the outline of a true narrative. With these developments the two streams came close enough together that they seemed to me meant to flow in one channel, as they do in this book.

And you become tired soon enough if you go in search of the truth, that is if you try to separate reality from fiction, the narrator voice from the auctorial voice and the auctorial voice from the real one. For the masterstroke of The View from Castle Rock, which, besides, ensures the unity of the text, is the perfect blend of those voices, so much so that some critics named the narrator Alice, in spite of her complete silence regarding her name. This is the first writer’s privilege Alice Munro makes use of: to challenge the reader not only to redefine reality (or fiction, if you wish), but also to become comfortable in this hybrid universe.

The second privilege is to redefine genre. It has already been said that Alice Munro does not need to write novels, for her stories are often enough novels in nuce. However, this book looks suspiciously like a novel, moreover, like a saga with, it’s true, many pages ripped out. And just as the broken parts of the slate tablets could not prevent human imagination to restore Gilgamesh tale, the broken links between the stories can easily be filled in to retrace a line that, as beautifully said Elizabeth Hay in her Introduction “is not just the line of blood, but of ink”. To keep the reader in hesitant balance between the two genres, the writer uses some narrative hooks that unite and divide at the same time the stories. The steadiest is the narrative voice, whose reliability is uncertain even when provides documents to support her story, like the letter of her ancestor Old James which, like the other events she talks about, could or could not have existed (and does she not, with a subtle irony, urges us to believe only in James Hogg’s, her fellow writer, words?):

“…I belive that Hogg and Walter Scott has got more money for Lieing than old Boston and the Erskins got for all the Sermons ever they Wrote…”

and I am surely one of the liars the old man talks about, in what I have written about the voyage. Except for Walter’s journal, and the letters, the story is full of my inventions.
The sighting of Fife from Castle Rock is related by Hogg, so it must be true.

Another hook is the leitmotiv of the journey, or journeys, for are many: the narrator’s from Canada to Scotland in search of her ancestors and from Ontario to Vancouver in search of herself; James Laidlaw’s from Scotland to Canada to fulfil a dream dreamt on the top of Castle Rock from where he pretended to see the American Coast; William Laidlaw’s from Scotland to United States to break with family; Andrew’s from upper Canada to Illinois to bring back with him William’s widow and her children; and one last travel of the narrator to Illinois to find William’s grave.

In fact it is with the image of a grave that the book symmetrically opens and closes, in the same game of decanting reality until it becomes imaginary: a real gravestone, discovered in Scotland, of her direct ancestor, the first William Laidlaw, whose life had had “something of the radiance of myth” for he was the last to see fairies and ghosts; and an imaginary one, since it was never discovered, of the other William Laidlaw, dead of cholera in Illinois.

In my opinion, though, the most impressive tale the book talks about is the initiatory journey the narrator takes, in which she looks not only for the ancestors that could define her past but for the origin of her gift, of her own need to express herself in writing, to arrive at a proud acknowledgment of a hereditary talent that, like a messenger from the past, gave her the power to reshape reality by flooding timeframe, distance, reality:

And in one of these houses – I can’t remember whose – a magic doorstop, a big mother-of-pearl seashell that I recognized as a messenger from near and far, because I could hold it to my ear – when nobody was there to stop me – and discover the tremendous pounding of my own blood, and of the sea.

la prima parte del libro prova a ricostruire la storia della famiglia laidlaw (da cui discende l'autrice) dalla scozia al nuovo mondo, mentre la seconda è fatta di racconti autobiografici. alice munro non mi delude mai e questo libro è davvero splendido e rafforza la mia convinzione che sia una delle più grandi scrittrici contemporanee.
i racconti migliori: la vista da castle rock, illinois, sotto il melo, stipendiata, lo sport, a casa.

Primera novela larga que leo a Alice Munro y, aunque los cuentos que le he leído me parecen superiores, me ha gustado mucho. Hay algo en la escritura de Munro que me remite a Coetzee, uno de mis autores favoritos: la claridad en la exposición o tal vez la falta de 'misericordia' para con los personajes a la hora de exponer los sentimientos contados en primera persona. Por otra parte, lo que más me ha gustado es la capacidad de evocar escenas aparentemente completas y antes de cerrarlas, con una leve pincelada darles un enfoque adicional que las vuelve mucho más ricas.
En cuanto a la trama, me preguntaba por la continuidad entre la parte inicial, en la que fabula sobre una historia familiar y la final en que se narran los recuerdos de la narradora. Finalmente aparece el motivo del propio libro, como de pasada, como un suceso más en la vida de la protagonista, y en ese momento repasas el libro y te das cuenta de cuál era su objetivo: ante la posible cercanía de la muerte la narradora quiere dejar constancia de quién ha sido, esa confesada afición(que yo he observado en familiares míos) por la genealogía que a veces sobreviene en la madurez le da material para reafirmarse como ser vivo, como parte de una historia que todavía puede ser contada aunque sus protagonistas, excepto ella misma, hace tiempo que han desaparecido. A mi me resulta emocionante reflexionar sobre ello, ¿qué más le puedo pedir a un libro bien escrito?