“To Reach Japan” begins with a departure and ends with an arrival.
That is not commonly how it goes, but it’s not unusual in the territory of Alice Munro’s stories, which often begin in the present and work backwards to the past.
In her fiction, what comes before often does come after, in reflection, in memory, and in comprehension.
This is not only true for readers (who often only gain an understanding of a story in the final paragraphs) but for characters as well (who often have quiet epiphanies while reflecting on their earlier experiences).
Readers do not learn much of Greta’s past however; we learn more about her husband Peter’s past, more about the coming-of-age of a young man she meets travelling on the train between Vancouver and Toronto, than we learn about Greta’s earlier years and her identity.
Perhaps that’s not important to an understanding of Greta.
What is, then, important, what readers learn on the fourth page, is that she is a poet — or a ‘poetess’, not a term that one hears much anymore though “if you were writing poetry, it was somewhat safer to be a woman than a man”.
What it is safe for a woman to do and what is expected of her — and what is not (either directly stated or implied) — is at the heart of “To Reach Japan”.
The story is titled for a line of poetry that Greta has written:
Writing this letter is like putting a note in a bottle –
And hoping
It will reach Japan
She puts the letter in an envelope, and it is clearly addressed, but she expects it to be intercepted, expects that it will not reach its intended recipient.
And this is but one of a many thwarted efforts to communicate in this story. Not only her difficulty connecting with an audience, with finding readers for her poems (though she has had two poems published in a literary journal). Not only the unsuccessful conversations — at a party, in a children’s playroom. But a sense of interception from her own self.
“People’s eyes slid around her and then they went on with their conversation. They laughed. Everybody but Greta was equipped with friends, jokes, half-secrets, everybody appeared to have found somebody to welcome them.”
Both anxious to be seen and frightened by the idea of being seen, Greta does not feel any more satisfied by her life as a poet/poetess than she does by her life as a wife/mother.
“Here nobody was safe. Judgment might be passed behind backs, even on the known and published. An air of cleverness or nerves obtained, no matter who you were.”
And, yet, her dissatisfaction is not outwardly expressed in words. For all that she might spend time crafting a line of verse, Greta’s disappointments are expressed through the observations she makes of other characters in the story.
“Children Katy’s age had no problem with monotony. In fact they embraced it, diving into it and wrapping the familiar words round their tongues as if they were a candy that could last forever.”
Greta, it seems, might prefer a rich chocolate truffle to a hard candy; though she does not name it, she has a problem with monotony.
But, soon, her problem is less to do with sweets than with the weather.
“The dream was in fact a lot like the Vancouver weather – a dismal sort of longing, a rainy dreamy sadness, a weight that shifted round the heart.”
(You see how it goes: it’s not about the weather, any more than it was about a candy.)
And, later, it grows much more complicated, crosses into unsafe territory for a woman.
“A sin. She had given her attention elsewhere. Determined, foraging attention to something other than the child. A sin.”
Greta does not come with a backstory and she does not seem to fit into a neat-and-tidy package of ‘wife and mother’ either. She is a poet, and she fiercely inhabits the present.
And, yet, the present is comprised of a series of joining moments, moments that stretch out and connect with other moments, like the railcars on a passenger train.
“You always hurried through these passages, where the banging and swaying reminded you how things were put together in a way that seemed not so inevitable after all. Almost casual, yet in too much of a hurry, that banging and swaying.”
Readers might expect Greta to step between railcars during the story, in the middle. But keep in mind that the story begins with a departure and ends with an arrival. At the end of the story, Greta is hurrying through a passage, but with all the banging and swaying, the reader cannot see where she is headed. She might be headed into a beginning.
Have you read “To Reach Japan”? Do you have other Munro stories in your reading plans for 2013?
Note: This is part of a series of posts on Alice Munro’s stories, as I read through her work-to-date. She is one of my MRE authors and, until now, this has been a chronological reading project, but I was unable to resist inserting her most recent collection. Please feel free to check the schedule and join in, for the series, or for a single story. This story is the first in Dear Life, with next Sunday reserved for “Amundsen” and the following Wednesday for “Leaving Maverley”. Wednesdays and Sundays for Alice Munro, for March and April 2013.
Greta is hardly a flag-waving feminist. She leaves her husband and within a short period of time requires two other men. Whatever understanding her poetry might express has certainly not been internalized. Few people (at the party) find her interesting and perhaps she doesn’t find herself interesting enough. She needs men to feel complete. She writes a letter to Harris, the first fling of her trip, hoping Prince Charming will save her. Shortly after, she irresponsibly leaves Katy alone in a train compartment (with a window that opens) so she can have sex with a second rate actor. She is neither mother, nor wife, nor poet.
It’s no wonder that Peter doesn’t mind waving goodbye and her actor/lover is happy to wave goodbye.
Good luck Harris!
It’s been a long time since I read this story, but I don’t recall Greta feeling complete with or without a relationship/encounter with a man; she struck me as a very lonely, isolated character, with only brief moments of respite from disappointment. I also don’t recall believing that any of the men in the story felt particularly satisfied either, the story being more about gaps and missed connections and meaning all the way around, but there are many stories/books falling now between today and my reading of this story.
Thanks for leaving a comment. I’ll be beginning a re-read of Love of a Good Woman in four weeks. If you enjoy Munro’s stories, you might like to join in. There is always so much to discuss after reading her works, so many ways of interpreting events therein!
Yes the children in Munro’s work do seem to be remembering their childhoods or are actually adolescents or slightly older. I went back to take a look at Royal Beatings in Who Do You Think You Are? when Rose recalls her father working in his shed and muttering and “now and then some words would break through and hang clear and nonsensical on the air.” And then she makes this rather astute observation: “The person who spoke these words and the person who spoke to her as her father were not the same, though they seemed to occupy the same space. It would be the worst sort of taste to acknowledge the person who was not supposed to be there; it would not be forgiven. Just the same, she loitered and listened.” I found myself going over and over this. If the younger child actually sensed this and didn’t just figure it out later in life it is quite a distinction that is being made. It is a recognition that her father was more than the Parent in her world.No doubt it is also tied to the idea that Rose in this story learns to her great disappointment that her father is going to support her stepmother Flo more often than not and this would explain why she could not approach her father from this different side of himself which she had observed. Aside from this example I haven’t found another yet of children being other than individuals who accompanied their parents here and there.
And yes, I felt that Katy had intuited that a change was occurring: she didn’t let her wave to her father slow down and she wouldn’t wave to Greg at all and at the station she just stood waiting to see what would happen next. When she left her sleeping berth she must have felt very frightened and,possibly,abandoned. Munro wisely chooses not to attach emotion to Katy and reminds us that the story is about Greta. Is this her way of asking us to trust her and Greta too? I am interested to see if more children will appear in this collection.
I think we have to assume that Rose is laying her later understanding of this on her memory of earlier years, but there is a similar realization in the first story in Dance of the Happy Shades (“Walker Brothers Cowboy”) though I would need to re-read to see if that isn’t the same looking-back phenomenon (or, indeed, if I’ve remembered it correctly….normally I have a terrible memory for such details, but some of the Munro stories sure do stick — I wonder if others find that, too). “Royal Beatings” is one of my favourite stories, but it is a hard one to re-read, isn’t it. So sobering, overall. I’ve just started to read the next story, and I am pleasantly surprised to find that it, too, contains a train; for a time, I had to keep reminding myself that it was not a continuation! (And there is a child in here, too!)
I like the allusions that she makes as part of her poetry, and think that she gets quite a lot of emotional leverage in the poems that she writes; that are seemingly about her surroundings. This was an excellent review. You manage to capture the ennui of the main character without being overly explanatory. Very, very nice job today!
Those few lines are quite evocative…makes me wonder about the two poems that she had published as well, whether they would have been more revealing than the narrative itself, in terms of her character. Thanks, Zibilee: I hope I convince you try a single Munro story eventually!
Good to be back in Munro-land and thanks for this very interesting beginning and the insights into Greta’s journey. When I first read To Reach Japan I was both uncertain of its meaning and ambivalent in my reaction, not sure if I was disappointed. I have read it two more times and Munro has done it again. Initially I was intrigued when Peter “seemed eager to get himself out of the way.” Why? Then a whole paragraph was used to describe a smile and its significance. And Peter’s mother who “carried not noticing to an extreme” and who found jokes painful. Greta admits that Peter’s attitude,-“hands off, tolerant” was “a blessing for her.” Talk about putting the state of a relationship in a nutshell. We are continually learning about Greta through her comments and observations about those characters circling around her i.e. those external to her but not intimate with her. For me, much of this approach was encapsulated in the three lines in Greta’s letter and the words “hoping It will reach Japan.” It seemed almost as if she had been trying to get to this place represented by “Japan” all her life and the longing is apparent but so is resignation to the fact that the letter/Greta has about as much chance as a “note in a bottle”. Then there is the amazing resolution in the two words “immense settling”. I could feel that settling in my own stomach!
Another aspect of the story that interested me with hindsight was the presentation of the child Katy. I don’t recall any hints regarding Katy’s interaction with her father except the smile described in the first paragraph is Peter’s smile for Katy: “wide open, sunny, without a doubt in the world, as if he believed that she would continue to be a marvel to him, and he to her, forever” while the smile for his wife “seemed hopeful and trusting, with some sort of determination about it.” Amazing how much Munro is passing to us by describing one man’s smile. What do you think of Katy’s rather passive nature? She did not allow the waving to her father to slow down and later when Greg waved to her she would not respond and when they arrived in Toronto she “just stood waiting for whatever had to come next”. I am pondering other Munro stories with children in them to make comparisons.
Looking forward to these discussions. Welcome back.
That’s interesting to hear, that you had a bit of trouble connecting with the story: I did as well, and I wonder, now, if that’s partly because Greta doesn’t really give us much to hang onto? She doesn’t openly acknowledge some aspects of herself that we readers must piece together, so we are kind of banging about between the railcars as well, trying to gain our footing with the narrative, with her. But, then, with the resolution, yes, there is something else, something which makes you want to read it again (which I, too, did). It’s as though something settles for us, too, just as it does for her.
If Katy had much interaction with her father, it sure doesn’t seem to be something that Greta felt worthy of commenting upon, which would fit with the traditional roles of that time; marvelling seems to have a positive connotation and, yet, it doesn’t suggest any meaningful interaction, forever placing each of them in the role of the observer, distanced from the marvel. And, yes, isn’t it interesting that Katy waves to her father, not comprehending that he has been left behind and refuses to wave to Greg; I think she has understood more about her mother’s sense of disconnection from Katy’s father and her mother’s fleeting connection with Greg than readers — and Greta — might be inclined to think. Doesn’t it seem like she has intuited something that nobody has articulated for her (maybe not even for themselves)?
In trying to think of other children in her stories, they seem to be outnumbered either by narrators remembering their childhoods or by adolescents (like the early tales in The Beggar Maid/Who Do You Think You Are?. I think “Time of Death”, “Day of the Butterfly”, “Winter Wind”, “Forgiveness in Families”, maybe “Princess Ida” and “Age of Faith”, but I think she is older and reflecting as well. The idea that children are wiser than many adults choose to believe does fit with my memory of other children in her stories, but I can’t think of specific passages to support this either…
I have this collection on the TBR shelf, but won’t be reading it yet. I am reading Dance of the Happy Shades right now though – it’s been good so far.
Nice to see you back!
Thanks, Jules. I posted on all the stories in Happy Shades last year, but I was covering three stories in a single post, so I didn’t have as much to say about them comparatively; still, I was struck by the fact that I enjoyed them immensely, whereas I think I had expected they would seem less fully formed as earlier works. I really liked “The Office” and “Boys and Girls”.
I also enjoyed “Boys and Girls” and “The Office” although I prefer “The Office”. The one from Dance of the Happy Shades that sticks with me the most so far is “Time of Death”. I hope to read this collection soon, but I think some of her older works will be read first.
I like the way that one hinges with “The Day of the Butterfly”, but they are a sad pair for sure. The image of the bed at the neighbour’s house has, however, stuck with me. And I liked the way she took on the class differences through the eyes of the children. (And, yes, I would rather have stuck with my chronological reading, in some ways, but was also encouraged by the fact that so many people are reading this collection right now…and there’s nothing better than bookchat!)
I didn’t have any Munro in my sights, but this is the second time in as many days that I’ve heard her praises sung so maybe I should be changing my reading plans. I’ve never been much of a short story reader but slowly I’m beginning to appreciate what a remarkable form it is. Do you have any other writers working in this genre that you would recommend?
I started determinedly reading short stories a little more than ten years ago, so I have a lot of favourites now; if you let me know your favourite authors/books, I could mention some collections with that in mind.
Thank you, looking round my shelves the authors who most obviously populated them are Julian Barnes, Margaret Atwood, A S Byatt, Hilary Mantel, Sue Gee, Marge Piercy, Jane Smiley, Ian McEwan, Peter Ackroyd. Is that any help? I also read a lot of crime fiction. Many thank.
Quite likely, then, some of Atwood’s and Byatt’s stories are already on your shelves but, if not, I think you’ll enjoy them; I now enjoy Byatt’s short stories more than her novels. But beyond the authors you’ve mentioned? I’m thinking you might like Helen Simpson, Jane Gardam, Rose Tremain, Mary Lavin, Carol Shields, Ursula Hegi, Mavis Gallant and William Trevor. When it comes to specific collections by other authors, some of my other favourites are Maegan Mayhew Bergman’s Birds of a Lesser Paradise, Diane Schoemperlen’s Forms of Devotion, Barbara Gowdy’s We So Seldom Look on Love, Lynn Coady’s Play the Monster Blind, Cynthia Flood’s The English Stories; there is quite a variation in these specific collections, but there is quite a gap between Byatt’s and Piercy’s styles too, and I’ve read most of both their oeuvres and do enjoy these specific titles a great deal, so I would think something there might be a good match for you too. (Besides Munro, of course. If you enjoy coming-of-age tales, you might like to start with Lives of Girls and Women, which is the “classic” work that often appears on curricula in Canadian schools, but which I loved, even as a student!) Ten years ago, I hardly read short stories, but now I feel there’s something off if I don’t have a collection on the go; I hope you come to enjoy them too.
Thank you so much. I’m off to the library right now.