What we’re about
This group started in May 2011, and we've read novels by Joyce, Malraux, Kafka, Wright, Mishima, Faulkner, Nabokov, Unamuno, Ellison, Hamsun, Woolf, Biely, Gide, and many others. We try to have a good time discussing the books without descending to small talk, think critically without descending to pedantry, etc.
Also, as the title shows, we've expanded our reading list since the group started. We don't really want to title the group something as vague as "Chicago Literature Group," etc., and modernist fiction and poetry still make up most of the reading list. But if some group members are excited about reading something else, be it Goethe or Ovid, Wallace or Perec, we're interested in that too. Feel free to make suggestions.
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- Alice Munro: “Dear Life” (2012) — Short Story DiscussionLink visible for attendees
"The only prerequisite for reading the Nobel laureate, a master of short stories, is: having lived." (New York Times, 1/31/2024, "Alice Munro: A Guide")
Alice Munro (1931-2024) is a Canadian writer dubbed a "master of the contemporary short story" when she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. She is the recipient of many other literary accolades, including the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement and is a three-time winner of the Governor General's Award, Canada's highest literary honour. Much of Munro's work is set in Canada and concerns the lives of everyday people.
The British Council's directory of writers describes her work as follows: "One Alice Munro short story has the power of many novels. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is irrelevant. Every word glows. Munro is able to capture the shape and mood, the flavour of a life in 30 pages. She is wholly without cliché... Munro has talked about ‘the complexity of things, the things within things’. She teases the surface, until all that is hidden, all those tucked away pivots of a life, are revealed..."
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This is a series of occasional meetups (hosted by the Toronto Philosophy Meetup group) to discuss short stories by various authors. We started in the fall of 2023 and currently meet every other Sunday evening.
This time we will discuss Alice Munro's “Dear Life”, a story about a memory that may not be a real memory. It's the final story in Munro's final collection of short stories.
Munro passed away on May 13, 2024 so we are taking a literary detour to read both her first and final stories in her honor (we'll discuss her first story "Walker Brothers Cowboy" from 1968 at the next meeting.)
Please read "Dear Life" in advance (22 pages). A free pdf copy will be posted on the main event page. Bring your thoughts, queries, critiques, and favourite passages to share with us at the meeting. We'll be joined by many other participants from the Toronto Philosophy Meetup.
Stories by Munro we've previously discussed in this group:
- Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001)
- What is Remembered (2001)
- The Bear Came Over the Mountain (1999)
- A Real Life (1992)
- The Turkey Season (1980)
- Vandals (1993)
- Wood (2009)
- Too Much Happiness (2009)
- The Albanian Virgin (1995)
- A Wilderness Station (1992)
- Differently (1989)
- Miles City, Montana (1985)
FYI, the annual Alice Munro Festival of the Short Story in Huron County, Ontario is taking place on June 5-9 this year.