David Foster Walice Munro

Alice Munro is an award-winning Canadian writer responsible for the creation of a collection of short stories which have captured the attention of the world. Her international neighbor David Foster Wallace is a man of many works, be it novels, short stories or essays. One such essay is ‘This is Water’, where Wallace puts forward his theory about a higher education and what it can offer students.

One of the greatest praises of Munro’s stories comes due to the author’s ability to create a story out of ordinary situations or everyday life. Taking a look at one of the stories ‘The Moons of Jupiter’, Munro follows a character as she faces the struggles of a dying father and distant children; this is perhaps a situation which has been experienced by so many, as opposed to a UFO boarding or even a professional sporting career which are experienced by so few or none. Not only does this allow readers to gain empathy for something which many go through, but also displays the author’s ability to create so much out of something which would be considered by many as ordinary.

Already, we can see a clear link between Wallace’s theory and Munro’s stories. Wallace spends a great deal of his renowned essay focusing on a supermarket situation and the empathy that can be evoked if you open your mind to others’ lives and struggles. If it happened to be the woman from Munro’s story in the supermarket, and she was acting slightly out-of-line, someone who adopted Wallace’s theory and could consciously chose how to perceive others would be able to understand her problems or thought process without having to speak to her, thus achieving greater perspective of the world and of the people who are more than just obstacles (as Wallace extensively focuses on in the essay) than someone who finds themselves unnecessarily frustrated at the fact that the universe doesn’t centre itself around him or her. In such a situation, what is going on – or the plot – is secondary to the meaning which can be extracted, similarly seen in Munro’s publications where there is little actual plot or climax which would be expected in fictional writing. Both of these authors choose to derive as much meaning as possible out of something so ordinary, solidifying their positions as the world’s leading writers.

This is furthered by the employment of an omniscient narrator in most of Alice Munro’s stories which intends to make sense of the world beyond the perspective of a protagonist, creating extensive literary depth; such a depth is striven for in David Foster Wallace’s ‘This is Water’, with both writers hoping to see and share with their readers the beauty that can be found in the little things in life.