Many writers and editors rejoiced last week when Alice Munro was awarded the Nobel Prize. The Nobel Committee has often chosen lesser known writers with a sharply defined political agenda that at its best illuminates the harsh inequities of living on this planet. The selection of Munro, a writer of short stories, was the choice of an author whose only agenda is illuminating the small Ontario worlds she knows intimately or Toronto, the city where she says that every Canadian ends up at one time or another. We would like to think that this great writer was chosen for the prize because, not only does she give us a panorama of her fictional world, she also gives us a remarkable sense of its emotional and psychological layers. [Read more…]