Friend from my youth

Alice Munro , Nobel Prize in Literature 2013

Girlfriend from my youth (original title: Friend of My Youth ) is a short story by Alice Munro from 1990, which, among other things, is about how the life of others can be told - or cannot be told.

A first-person narrator shares her dreams about her mother, in which the daughter sees how the mother is doing better than was actually the case in the 12 years before she died. Memories of what has been told and of other living conditions and sources of information are mixed with the dreams of the first-person narrator, especially from the years before the mother got married. The reproduction of the dreams creates an open framework for telling the life story of Flora Grieves, a childhood friend of her mother's, and at the same time provides space for reflection on how to deal with the biographies of others.

Friend of My Youth was first published on January 22, 1990 in The New Yorker and was chosen as the cover story of Munro's seventh short story book of the same name, which appeared in 1990. Girlfriend from my youth is one of the author's most frequently published works and was included in selected volumes in 1996 and 2006. In the translation by Karen Nölle-Fischer, the work is included in the collection Do you think it was love? which was laid in 1991 at Klett-Cotta in Stuttgart. The work bears the dedication "With thanks to RJT"

analysis

The work consists of seven sections between less than half a page and six pages in length. The last section is the shortest. Friend from my youth is 21 pages in English in Alice Munro's Best (New York, 2006).

The dream that is mentioned at the beginning is already deconstructed by the narrator before it is told by generously giving a presumed explanation for why these dreams end surprisingly. Only then can a story be told, says Deborah Heller in her analysis (1999). In a dream frame of the first-person narrator, this narrator initially seems to disappear by giving the mother the voice, shortly afterwards the mother, as the narrator of the story of her childhood friend and her sister Ellie Grieves, also seems to disappear by telling their story. In a reply from Flora Grieves to the mother of the first-person narrator, Flora defends herself against the interference of the mother of the first-person narrator, and this brings the seemingly neutral narrative to an abrupt end. Ultimately, it remains unclear whether it is the narrating daughter or the narrating mother who gives Flora's life a definitive voice, especially since assessments diverge between mother and daughter. In the credits, which consist of several short parts, the mediating role of narration itself is made the topic. The story on the surface is pretty miserable and can be summarized briefly, but it is subject to a second, more mysterious story, according to Lynn Blin in her linguistic analysis (2010), in which u. a. seven types of ambiguity can be identified in Munro's use of the word "but". In general, Blin sees four different voices at work in the story: that of the mother, that of the people around it, that of the unreliable narrator and the homodiegetic voice of the first-person narrator at the very beginning, which lays a basis for the complex narration on two levels. "Friend of my Youth" is one of those works by Munro that deals with letters that demonstrate the vanity or falsehood or even the maliciousness of their writers, so Margaret Atwood in her twelve-page introduction to Alice Munro's Best .

A friend from my youth is one of those works by Munro in which giving and taking care services are problematical, according to Amelia deFalco (2012).

literature

• Amelia DeFalco, “Caretakers / Caregivers: Economies of Affection in Alice Munro”, in: Twentieth Century Literature , 2012 Fall; 58 (3): 377-398.
• Lynn Blin, Alice Munro's Naughty Coordinators in “Friend of My Youth” , in: Journal of the Short Story in English (JSSE) / Les cahiers de la nouvelle , ISSN  0294-0442 , n ° 55 (Autumn 2010).
• Judith Maclean Miller, On Looking into Rifts and Crannies: Alice Munro's Friend of My Youth , in: Antigonish Review , 2000 Winter; 120: 205-26.
• Deborah Heller, Getting Loose: Women and Narration in Alice Munro's Friend of My Youth, in: Thacker, Robert (ed. And introd.), The Rest of the Story: Critical Essays on Alice Munro . Toronto, ON: ECW, 1999, pp. 60-80.
• Andrew Hiscock, 'Longing for a Human Climate': Alice Munro's Friend of My Youth and the Culture of Loss, in: Journal of Commonwealth Literature , 1997; 32 (2): 17-34. (journal article)
• Gayle Elliott, 'A Different Tack': Feminist Meta-Narrative in Alice Munro's Friend of My Youth , in: Journal of Modern Literature , 1996 Summer; 20 (1): 75-85.
• David Crouse, Resisting Reduction: Closure in Richard Ford's Rock Springs and Alice Munro's Friend of My Youth , in: Canadian Literature , 1995 Autumn; 146: 51-64.
• Kit Stead, The Twinkling of an 'I': Alice Munro's Friend of My Youth , in: Serge Jaumain (ed. & Introd.), Marc Maufort (ed. & Introd.). Lucette Nobell (introd.), The Guises of Canadian Diversity: New European Perspectives / Les Masques de la diversité canadienne: Nouvelles Perspectives Européennes , Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995, pp. 151-64.
• Tomaž Ložar, Alice Munro's Friend of My Youth Read on the Sly, in: Jurak, Mirko (ed.), Literature, Culture and Ethnicity: Studies on Medieval, Renaissance and Modern Literatures . Ljubljana: Author, 1992, pp. 133-39.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Deborah Heller, Getting Loose: Women and Narration in Alice Munro's Friend of my Youth , in: The rest of the story. Critical essays on Alice Munro , edited by Robert Thacker, ECW Press, Toronto 1999, ISBN 1-55022-392-5 , pp. 60-80.
2. ^ Carol L. Beran, The Luxury of Excellence: Alice Munro in the New Yorker , in: The rest of the story. Critical essays on Alice Munro , edited by Robert Thacker, ECW Press, Toronto 1999, ISBN 1-55022-392-5 , pp. 204-231, footnote 1, pp. 227-228.
3. ↑ Lynn Blin, Alice Munro's Naughty Coordinators in “Friend of My Youth” , in: Journal of the Short Story in English (JSSE) / Les cahiers de la nouvelle , ISSN  0294-0442 , n ° 55 (Autumn 2010), Special issue : The Short Stories of Alice Munro.
4. ↑ Margaret Atwood, Introduction , in: Alice Munro's Best. Selected Stories , Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2006, pp. Vii-xviii.
5. ↑ Problematic care services are also discussed in: "Cortes Island" (1998) and "My Mother's Dream" (1998). The dissolution of the boundary between giving and taking care services is discussed in: “Jesse and Meribeth” (1985), “Floating Bridge” (2002), “Queenie” (2002), “ Runaway ” (2004), “Soon "(2004) and" Hired Girl "(2006)
6. ↑ Amelia DeFalco, "Caretakers / Caregivers: Economies of Affection in Alice Munro", in: Twentieth Century Literature , 2012 Fall; 58 (3): 377-398.