“A Sort of Refusal”: Alice Munro’s Reluctant Career

Abstract

This chapter considers how celebrity reluctance functions in the Canadian literary field, using Alice Munro’s career, reception, and dedication as an example of how reluctance as a very public feeling negotiates the literary marketplace, how it works in the national imaginary to legitimize model Canadian subjects, and how it functions globally to critique a neoliberal economic order that places a premium on moving forward and leaning in. Inspired by theorists of negative affect like Sara Ahmed, Ann Cvetkovich, and Lauren Berlant, who have argued for the consideration of negative affects—like shame, envy, anger—as markers of political engagement, York considers the “emotion work” in Munro’s career and writings to be messy amalgamations of audience desire, writerly response, and national dreamwork.

This content originally appeared in Studies in Canadian Literature’s 40th Anniversary issue: 40, no. 1 (2016). Thanks to editor Cynthia Sugars for granting permission to reprint it in this volume.