There is a Canada has several claims to fame that most people would like to pawn off on the Americans. The list most notably includes Justin Bieber, Nickelback, and arguably Sarah McLachlan due to her now-infamous humane society commercials.
Then there are the famous Canadians that our neighbours like to call their own like Jim Carey, Seth Rogen and Ryan Gosling. Where Shania Twain and Celine Dion fall on the spectrum is best left to personal opinion.
This month, an 82-year-old lady from Ontario joined the ranks of Canadians to admire. Alice Munro was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature, making her the first born-and-raised Canadian to win the prize for literature – and $1 million dollars – since the awards began in Sweden in 1901.
I think Munro’s success is not only a testament to Canadian literature in an age and society where YouTube, movies and radio are more common than reading a book, but also to the power of age.
We all know that technology has changed the way we communicate. After all, with 140 characters as the limit for a tweet and the popularity of text messages, brevity and succinctness are the unofficial mottos.
Technology has also changed our habits. Life has become so busy keeping up with various digital media that any writing and reading beyond what’s required to successfully get through the day is really a test of dedication.
But technology has also made it more difficult to separate talent from imitation. A voice that can’t reach the perfect pitch can be adjusted by auto tune and a face that doesn’t quite meet fashion magazine and movie standards can be airbrushed.
Writing a coherent book is a feat in itself (and also number four on my bucket list). For the book to be recognized by the Swedish Academy, a panel known to have a notoriously rigorous selection procedure, is another thing.
Munro’s Nobel Prize recognized her as the “master of the modern short story,” but she has also won Canada’s Governor General’s Award for fiction three times before. According to her biography, she’s been writing since she was a teenager, and the fact that she is now in her 80s is a reminder that the Baby Boomer generation has a lot to say.
Indeed, Munro has a lot to say about Canada. Her 14 books of original short story collections make reference to the geography, culture and struggles that make Canada what it is. She has put into words almost 70 years of stories.
It’s also a reminder of everything that gets lost because we don’t write things down as often anymore.
A few years ago, I helped my mom clean out the attic in her mother’s house. Even though my grandmother passed away in 1995, the house was still full of literally everything she’d collected in her 60-plus years.
We found old letters that my grandparents had handwritten to each other, boxes of cards that all the children and grandchildren had sent to her, and stacks of books with messages written on the inside flap from the person who had bought them for her.
I don’t have many memories of her because she died when I was really young, but I got a sense of what she was like from the things she wrote and the way she wrote them.
In our society today, we send notes and messages, and read and write on computers and phones. If we could all be a little bit more like Munro and take time to write for the sake of it, a lot less would be lost, even after we accidentally press the delete button.
