Why Alice Munro’s Biographer Left Her Daughter’s Abuse Out of His Book
An exclusive interview with Robert Thacker on the secret he carried for twenty years
AST JULY, the Toronto Star published Andrea Robin Skinner’s account of her sexual abuse, as a child, by Alice Munro’s husband, Gerald Fremlin—abuse that Munro, her mother, ultimately chose to overlook in her decision to stay with Fremlin. In the days and weeks after that revelation, one other name was added to the ledger of people who had betrayed Skinner: Robert Thacker.
A professor of English and Canadian studies, Thacker is best known for his biography of the Nobel Prize–winning short story writer, Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives. It emerged that Thacker had been made aware of the abuse before the book’s publication in 2005, the same year Fremlin pleaded guilty to a charge of indecent assault, and opted against including it. One critic called it “an astonishingly perplexing decision.”
I reached out to Thacker months ago to talk about that decision. We spoke by Zoom, and then over email, about the book he wrote, the nature of his relationship with Munro, and the ongoing fallout from Skinner’s essay.
Let’s start with your connection to Alice Munro. How did you first become involved with her?
In 1973, just as I was preparing to move to Canada to pursue graduate work in Canadian literature, I happened to read Munro’s new story, “Material,” in Tamarack Review. Quite literally, it made me decide that Alice Munro was going someplace. That story spoke to me in unique ways, ways I still feel today.
I studied her first three books and then did a master’s thesis on her early stories, at the University of Waterloo, in 1976. Afterwards, I embarked on an academic career, and I did what academics do: I took research I’d done and tried to get it published. From that time until the 1990s, I concentrated on critical work on Munro, some based on my thesis, but I also did an annotated bibliography on Munro, her work, and its critical reception. In the late 1980s and into the ’90s, lots of significant Canadian writers—Hugh MacLennan, Robertson Davies—were getting major biographical treatment. I floated the idea of doing a biography, both to Alice and to her agent, Virginia Barber. I wanted it to be an account of Alice’s life as a writer.
Meaning?
Meaning, I wanted to structure it around her literary and professional circumstances, focusing on her short stories and their provenance. I also talked to Munro’s long-time publisher, Douglas Gibson, about it. This was probably about 1992 or ’93. He said, you know, I don’t think she wants to do anything now. But the thing about a project like this, he also said, is that as time passes, it will become a better project. He both discouraged and encouraged me.
How did she come around?
Late in the 1990s, I wrote again to both Alice and her agent, saying that I know you don’t want to co-operate but I’m going to go ahead anyway. And about a month or two later, an envelope arrived in the mail. It was from Alice. She had decided that she would co-operate. She always made it very clear that her co-operation was not an endorsement. But she thought that if somebody was going to do a biography, she’d be better off talking to them and knowing what kinds of things were of interest and what might emerge. And so that’s what we did. I shifted gears in early 2000 and started working quite consciously on biographical matters.
How did the relationship work?
The deal was that we would meet periodically, when I had enough questions, to talk. And we did that, oh, three times. In August 2001, June 2003, and April 2004—two long sessions over two days each. The first two in Clinton, the last in Comox, British Columbia. I recorded the conversations. There were also some phone calls, and she opened doors for me with friends and professional associates.
Can you say anything about the interviews? Was she a willing participant? Were her answers substantive? Did you find her reticent?
When we met, Munro was willing and businesslike, always very pleasant. She answered questions thoughtfully, often asking questions of her own, for context. I asked about her childhood, her parents, university and later. But I also asked about the critical role played by editor Robert Weaver at the CBC in the 1950s and ’60s and about individual stories—publication, failures, successes. Her answers were always substantive, although occasionally she did not remember this or that crux or detail. The first two times, we began at Bailey’s Fine Dining, on the square in Goderich, where there was a table Munro used for such meetings. At lunchtime. In 2001, we went back to the house in Clinton for the rest of the afternoon; in 2003, we spent the time after lunch driving to Wingham and touring relevant sites together. In 2004, we just stayed at a restaurant until it reopened for dinner at about 5 p.m.
You met her alone? Was Andrea ever there?
Yes, I met Munro alone. The first time I went to Clinton for the biography, in August 2001, Andrea happened to be visiting. She answered the door, and we spoke briefly before Alice and I left for lunch. While I had intended to interview her—I spoke directly to Munro’s other daughters, Sheila and Jenny—it never worked out. In any case, by the time Andrea was born, in 1966, the Munros’ marriage had gone south. There really wasn’t a lot of reason for me to talk to Andrea, or so I thought then. Particularly since Sheila had published Lives of Mothers and Daughters: Growing Up with Alice Munro and there went into Munro’s time in Vancouver and Victoria in some detail, and also the circumstances of the marriage breakup.
And that was your only contact with Andrea?
Yes, until my book was just about finished. It was in production. So this is summer 2005. And out of the blue, I got an email from Jenny telling me about the abuse, as a confidential matter, and also that Andrea would be writing to me directly regarding it. I then received an email from Andrea on July 1, 2005—the same day, as it happened, that I received the book’s page proofs from the publisher for review. She told me about Fremlin’s abuse, something of the situation in the family during the years that followed, and of her bringing charges and the court’s action convicting him earlier that year. She wanted me to pull the book off the press and turn it into a very different kind of book in light of this information. She wanted her story to be told.
And that’s when you decided against including it?
Yes. But before I did, I explained that my book was focused on her mother’s experiences as a writer and drew on archival and published sources—that Alice’s personal life, while certainly a consideration, was secondary. I know people now think, well, why the hell didn’t he include it? Particularly when I updated the book in 2011. The reason was that I hadn’t written a traditional biography that focuses on the daily doings of its subject. Anybody who actually looks at the thing can see that—and since Andrea’s story first appeared in the Star, I’ve been questioned by lots of people who clearly haven’t looked at the book, let alone read it.
How would you describe your book?
I’m an archival scholar. I think I’m probably the only person in the world who has read, and is familiar with, the entire Alice Munro archive. That’s what I used as the foundation for Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives. And yes, because Munro herself used her own experiences so often, and in a traceable way, that autobiographical element was part of my research. But my book offers a story of Munro’s career based on the record of her texts. Two examples: When Munro returned to Huron County in 1975, she worked on a collection of vignettes called “Places at Home,” for a photo book—that book was never published, but the vignettes led her to Who Do You Think You Are? A second instance is “Train,” which derives from an extended record of an abandoned novel called “The Boy Murderer” that Munro worked on during the late 1950s and early ’60s. Examples like this abound. The focus is on the ways and methods Munro used to become the writer we know, on how she became a significant and influential literary presence on her way to a Nobel Prize.
What was your reaction when you got that email from Andrea? Can you describe a bit of how you processed the news?
Given what I learned—a set of facts I had not discovered in my research and so knew nothing about—I was deeply shocked. While I knew that there was some tension in the family, I certainly never envisioned anything like this. Learning it, I took it all very seriously, and I stewed a great deal. Reading the proof, I made some small deletions which I thought were positive about Fremlin. But for those, the book was published as originally written. I told Andrea of my decision in mid-July 2005.
How did she react?
She wasn’t happy, obviously. Again, the circumstances she described were news to me and nothing I had uncovered myself.
Part of what was surprising about the package the Toronto Star put together was the documentation Andrea provided, specifically her letter to her mother. Did you have access to that material when you were working?
I never, I never saw any of that. The quotations and descriptions the Starincluded were the first I knew of them. I knew of the consternation within the family. And I knew letters had been written, probably because Alice mentioned them to me. But I never saw any of those. I certainly had not seen anything from Fremlin. Other than meeting him in Clinton in 2001, and another time with Alice at Bayfield in 2006 after my book was published, I only saw him dropping her off at Bailey’s or picking her up at the house. I did a telephone interview with him. That was basically just to ascertain what his factual history was. I just published another book on Munro’s late style, last November, where he figures a bit more because she was using some of his experience in her stories.
Was there anything else about her life that you opted not to include? I appreciate that your biography is very much a scholarly tracking of her career. And I could easily see that, to keep to that structure, you might have decided to shut out other discoveries that were similarly hot.
No, this was the only thing. And it came to me out of the blue when the book was almost done. At the time Andrea approached me, it was just an email, one corroborated by Jenny. And, again, my book was in the proof stage. So, you know, even if I wanted to adjust for her story, it would have been extremely difficult to do so. But I don’t want to sound like that’s the only reason I decided against taking it up. At the time, as I say, I was in contact with Jenny. And she certainly understood both my surprise and my unwillingness to do anything. I did view it as a family matter.
Do you regret not doing anything?
No. I certainly thought about it a lot. As I said, I stewed. I fully expected it to come out eventually. At one point, I started looking into the procedures to see what the record of the court case against Fremlin was. You had to file a Freedom of Information request. I looked into it, but I didn’t pursue it very far. I never questioned Andrea’s right to tell her own story. I don’t now. And the thing is, Alice did leave Fremlin—she left him for a protracted period of time, for some months. But she decided to go back to him.
There is the sense that this was, at least in some communities, an open secret. Even in the Munro family, the sisters had decided not to say anything, to protect Alice. Sheila opted not to include it in her memoir.
I’ve been carrying this around since 2005, and the only people I’ve talked to about it are people I already knew: Alice, her first husband, her daughters, and some of the people she worked with very closely. As far as I know, the people who knew about it were people in the family: Jim Munro and his second wife, in Victoria, her son Andrew Frankly—you would think that it wouldhave leaked, but if it did, it didn’t leak very far. The fact that somebody like Margaret Atwood talked about being blindsided, when asked in July, means something. They were close friends and saw each other regularly.
Are you surprised it took this long for the story to be told?
No. Alice eventually told me about it herself. I was interviewing her in 2008. The purpose of the interview was to keep up with Munro’s output—by then, she had published another book, The View from Castle Rock, one that interested me a great deal, and it was evident, too, that at least another book, which turned out to be Too Much Happiness, was coming. She began by saying, I understand that you know about this matter. She had learned that from her daughters. She was estranged from Andrea, but so far as I knew, she was not estranged from the other two. And so, I think, they told her. She wanted to discuss it with me, to acknowledge the abuse and the court case as facts, just so that I was aware of it as something that might come out. She was concerned about it coming out in her lifetime. I think that’s part of the reason she told me. And frankly, that’s part of the reason why I saw it as a family matter—because I realized that they had been trying to work it out. Alice and Fremlin were too—they worked with a therapist. And again, my decision in not including it was that I was interested in her life as a writer and what she did as a writer.
Do you think her reputation will survive this?
In all candour, I don’t have any experience with something like this. So the short answer is: I don’t know. But what I would expect is that a certain number of readers will recoil and make a judgement. And, you know, we all spend time judging how other people live their lives so we don’t have to talk about how we live ours. And ironically, this is exactly the kind of material Munro wrote about in a variety of ways.
That’s what is so grimly fascinating. It’s hard not to draw links between the revelation—a long-held and devastating secret—and Munro’s own obsessions as a writer. One of her themes is the lies we tell ourselves and the self-deceptions we depend on to keep going.
Alice has got a pretty graphic story about a murder suicide, and she’s got a story which gives a vivid description of what’s involved in an abortion. She wrote about being human with an unflinching eye. I had occasion recently to look at an interview she did with Peter Gzowski after Open Secrets was published. He’s asking her about the way she writes, and she says that she can’t really describe how she writes. But she views the story as “happening someplace, and I just learn about it.” She’s going for that level of reality, and I know she hits it. But another answer to your earlier question is: the stories are still the stories. You’ve got the art, and you’ve got the artist. And we’re talking here about the artist. One of the daughters said, in one of the Toronto Star pieces, that for Alice, it was always all about the stories. And that’s completely true. The stories and their writing were, for her, the highest priority. I gave as subtitle to my last Munro book a quotation from Munro in a 2011 interview: “Writing Is the Final Thing.” For her, it always was.
But for those who have read her work deeply, it can be hard to now see the stories simply as stories. How do we reconcile what we know with the celebrated work? Especially when you realize it sounds like a story she herself could have written.
And, in fact, did write. I mean, there are two stories in which an adult child breaks off with the parents and has no contact. And that’s Andrea, I’m sure. And the one that’s been quoted by journalists writing about this, “Vandals,” owes directly to Andrea’s abuse. It has a pedophile in it, one who appears a figure much like Fremlin. And there was another story, apparently more precise yet, which Munro herself sickened over and destroyed. Rachel Aviv, in The New Yorker, treats this story, and others too, very thoroughly.
I feel the shock is the latest expression of a long-standing literary problem: readers discovering that beloved writers don’t always lead exemplary lives.
And often are not very likable people, right? I would not say that of Alice, because I always found her to be likable, but then I didn’t live with her nor was I related to her. But at the same time, she had a commitment to her art that was an utterly steely resolve. The whole plan to get married in 1951 was, in large part, a cold-blooded decision. She did not want to get stuck in Wingham looking after her mother, who was suffering from Parkinson’s disease. She left her father and her two siblings so she could become the writer she wanted to become—and did become. As I said before, I think I’m the only person who’s read the whole of the Alice Munro fonds at the University of Calgary archive. I went out there several times and, for the biography, spent an entire semester, day in and day out, reading. Doing that, you pause regularly, and say to yourself, Christ, this is a lot of work! As the product of days and ways, it just goes on and on. Just the sheer number of drafts. I mean there’s a box out there that has nothing but rejected beginnings in it. An entire archival box. Few attempts longer than a paragraph or so. And other such instances too.
I enjoyed getting to know Alice, and she became a friend. Not a close friend but a person I saw for a decade or more pretty regularly—and sadly, as the symptoms of Alzheimer’s took over. But I never, never had any illusions about her as an artist. A great review of one of her books in the The Times Literary Supplement, by Ruth Scurr, is titled “The Darkness of Alice Munro.” Exactly so.
What did Munro—the artist—get from Fremlin?
I don’t know, in any quotidian way, how Alice and Jerry worked. I don’t know anything about their relationship at all, really, although they liked to drive about and explore Huron County together. She once told me that they were working together on a project focused on tracing the watercourses of Huron County—all its streams and tributaries—to the Maitland River. But he was a facilitator, I think. He gave Alice time to write. And that was, for her, what it was all about. At any given moment, she was working on three or four stories simultaneously. She needed time to make the stories that she made, and he gave it to her.
It was a happy partnership then—or at least not an unhappy one?
Again, who knows? I only saw him a couple of times. And I certainly wasn’t seeing him in any situation where I could gauge something like that. As I’ve said, I was in the house just once, in 2001, and after meeting and saying hello, he made himself scarce.
One of the narratives emerging is of Alice being a deceiver and betrayer. Does this square with your sense of who she was?
No, no, no. Quite the opposite. I mean, look, if I wanted to, I could reach back here at my desk and wave my Alice Munro commemorative coin, or wave the stamp that Canada Post put out after she got the Nobel. Martin Levin, the former books editor for the Globe and Mail, was quoted in the New York Times saying that when he was there, she was always “Saint Alice.” So I think arguments about betrayal probably have something to do with how she was sanctified. She certainly didn’t sanctify herself. I think one fact running through the shock is that she’s arguably the greatest author that Canada has produced. And she still is that. That’s not going to change.
My last question for you is this: If this had come out before she got the Nobel, would they have given it to her?
If this came up before 2013? Probably not.
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