Alice Munro
(Part I)
[1] The solution to my life occurred to me one evening while I was ironing a shirt.It was simple but audacious.I went into the living room where my husband was watching television and I said, “I think I ought to have an office.”
[2] It sounded fantastic, even to me.What do I want an office for? I have a house; it is pleasant and roomy and has a view of the sea; it provides appropriate places for eating and sleeping, and having baths and conversations with one’s friends.Also I have a garden; there is no lack of space.
[3] No.But here comes the disclosure which is not easy for me: I am a writer.That does not sound right.Too presumptuous, phony, or at least unconvincing.Try again.I write.Is that better? I try to write.That makes it worse.Hypocritical humility.Well then?
[4] It doesn’t matter.However I put it, the words create their space of silence, the delicate moment of exposure.But people are kind, the silence is quickly absorbed by the solicitude of friendly voices, crying variously how wonderful and good for you, and well, that is intriguing.And what do you write? They inquire with spirit.Fiction, I reply, bearing my humiliation by this time with ease, even a suggestion of flippancy, which was not always mine, and again, again, the perceptible circles of dismay are smoothed out by such ready and tactful voices — which have however exhausted their stock of consolatory phrases , and can say only, “Ah!”
[5] So this is what I want an office for (I said to my husband): to write in.I was at once aware that it sounded like a finicky requirement, a piece of rare self-indulgence.To write, as everyone knows you need a typewriter, or at least a pencil, some paper, a table and chair; I have all these things in an corner of my bedroom.But now I want an office as well.
[6] And I was not even sure that I was going to write in it, if we come down to that.Maybe I would sit and stare at the wall; even that prospect was not unpleasant to me.It was really the sound of the words office that I liked, its sound of dignity and peace.And purposefulness and importance.But I didn’t care to mention this to my husband, so I launched instead into a high-flown explanation which went, as I remember, like this.