Outliers (short story)

Alice Munro , Nobel Prize in Literature 2013

Runaway (in the original Runaway , 2003/2004 ) is a short story by Alice Munro in which three people renegotiate their relationships with one another and in which a goat that disappears and returns seems to play an important role.

action

The story begins during a rainy summer phase and is about three people (Carla, Sylvia and Clark) and Flora, a goat, whose breakout and return have made the married couple Carla and Clark and their recently widowed neighbor Sylvia stand together differently than before. Three of the named move away from the narrative horizon at different points in time, only two of them return in the course of the story and in one of the three cases the return ends fatally. Another descriptive summary of the story is provided by Annette Traks in German: Carla and her husband Clark run a horse farm that is not running well, from which one day the white goat Flora disappears. Carla miss her very much. With her husband, she constantly had the feeling that she couldn't please him. Although she can hardly stand him anymore, for economic reasons it is unthinkable to leave him. The escape assistance that Carla accepts from neighbor Sylvia ends differently than planned. It is mostly told chronologically.

interpretation

In this story Munro problematizes the giving and taking of care services, in particular it dissolves the demarcation between the two. According to Amelia DeFalco (2012), figures that do not clearly appear as givers or takers are often as indispensable as they are threatening in their ambiguity.

Katrin Berndt has dealt with the fantastic elements in this story, for example in the way the goat reappears, and she believes that the three typical characters of a horror novel appear here: Carla as a virgin , Clark as the menacing male figure and Sylvia as a wise woman. Carla and Sylvia are, however, sarcastic variants of the well-known characters, because the younger one is characterized as being unnecessarily emotionally dependent and the older one has to struggle with emotional problems herself. Clark, in turn, is seen by Carla as the romantic lover in spite of everything, while Sylvia sees Clark as the villain who maltreats his wife. Full of black irony it is shown that he is neither of the two, but a fool who is not suitable for either role. Berndt thinks that the three characters are entangled with one another out of suppressed desires and questioned power relations. Munro's tight and succinct storytelling lay out several different explanations for why Carla chooses to stay with her husband. Carla gives preference to a familiar unhappiness over the vague temptation of freedom, writes Berndt and adds: apparently.

In this work Munro's strengths would become clear: how descriptions in detail and in the long shot complement each other, how the characters are observed but not criticized, how subliminal the participation remains so that readers can get involved, but not have to, and how refined they are Action is constructed, the construction of which is imperceptible, says Tilman Spreckelsen in his contribution to Alice Munro's Nobel Prize 2013 for the FAZ .

Editions and versions

• "Runaway", first published in: The New Yorker on August 11, 2003, shorter version, freely readable on the web
• Included as the cover story in the Runaway collection , 2004. This is a more elaborated version.
• On pages 429–465 contained in: Alice Munro's Best: A Selection of Stories. With an introduction by Margaret Atwood . Table of Contents (PDF; 55 kB) XVIII, 509 S., McClelland & Stewart, Toronto 2006, ISBN 978-0-7710-6520-0 or Carried Away: A Selection of Stories. With an introduction by Margaret Atwood. Stories included XXXV, 559 S., Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2006, ISBN 0-307-26486-6
  • contained in German in: Tricks. Eight stories. Translation by Heidi Zerning. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-10-048826-1

Alice Munro: "Runaway" (2003/2004), version differences according to sections

In English, the work in the volume Alice Munro's Best has a length of 37 pages. The narrative consists of 21 sections, one of which consists of just two lines. This is a crucial phone call between Carla and Clark. Two other very short sections, 5-7 lines long, are about Sylvia. The other sections are much longer. The first version from 2003 is divided into only 15 sections and a few pages shorter.

In the 2004 version, the sixth section is completely new in terms of content. It describes how Carla misses Flora, looks for her and calls her. In the last section, only two complete sentences were added: “Nothing there” and “She might be free”, in other sections, in some cases, whole paragraphs have been added, otherwise there are mainly stylistic shortages.

literature

• Amelia DeFalco, "Caretakers / Caregivers: Economies of Affection in Alice Munro", in: Twentieth Century Literature , 2012 Fall; 58 (3): 377-398.
• Katrin Berndt, The Ordinary Terrors of Survival: Alice Munro and the Canadian Gothic , in: Journal of the Short Story in English (JSSE) / Les cahiers de la nouvelle , ISSN  0294-0442 , n ° 55 (Autumn 2010) Runaway from §25.
• Fiona Tolan, "To Leave and to Return: Frustrated Departures and Female Quest in Alice Munro's Runaway, " in: Contemporary Women's Writing , 2010 Nov; 4 (3): 161-178.
• Héliane Ventura, "The Relevance of the Chimera: Phantasy, Ekphrasis, and Anamorphosis in Alice Munro's Runaway ", in: The Relevance of Theory / La Résonance de la théorie , Pedot, Richard (preface), Paris, France: Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, 2010, pp. 239-260.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Annette Traks, Tricks Review , Alice Munro (Nobel Prize for Literature 2013) , huffingtonpost.de , October 31, 2013.
2. ↑ Problematic care services are discussed in: " Friend of My Youth " (1990), "Cortes Island" (1998), "My Mother's Dream" (1998) and "Some Women" (2009)
3. ↑ With the exception of “Runaway” (2004), in: “Jesse and Meribeth” (1985), “Floating Bridge” (2002), “Queenie” (2002), it is about the dissolution of the boundary between giving and taking care services ), "Soon" (2004), and "Hired Girl" (2006)
4. ↑ Amelia DeFalco, "Caretakers / Caregivers: Economies of Affection in Alice Munro", in: Twentieth Century Literature , 2012 Fall; 58 (3): 377-398.
5. ↑ Katrin Berndt, The Ordinary Terrors of Survival: Alice Munro and the Canadian Gothic , in: Journal of the Short Story in English (JSSE) / Les cahiers de la nouvelle , ISSN  0294-0442 , n ° 55 (Autumn 2010).
6. ^ Tilman Spreckelsen, Nobel Prize for Literature for Alice Munro. It's about the whole thing, anytime , faz.net , October 11, 2013.
7. ↑ Alice Munro: Alice Munro's Best: A Selection of Stories. With an introduction by Margaret Atwood , XVIII, 509 pp., McClelland & Stewart, Toronto 2006, ISBN 978-0-7710-6520-0 , pp. 429-465.