the sundays, “you’re not the only one i know” (reading, writing & arithmetic, rough trade, 1990) + alice munro, “prue” (the new yorker, mar. 30, 1981, reprinted in the moons of jupiter (1982))

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have you ever stolen from someone?

why did you do it?

do you regret it?

now that alice munro has won herself the nobel peace prize, all of her earlier work is gilded with prestige, & so on and so forth.

this would include “prue,” bought by the new yorker in 1981.

i half think alice munro just wrote “prue” as a joke. like, “what will these pretentious american fuckers buy? let’s see.”

it’s her shortest story, anyway.

“prue” is about a middle-aged woman with grown children in some canadian place, like all of alice munro’s stories.

ok, i’m being a bitch.

prue, too, is the type of woman who can be kind of a bitch.

but only kind of.

she’s the type who, you will come in and be like “look girls, i just got a blow-out with anthony & hot-damn, he has issues nowadays now that he is on retrovir, he is fucking this little twinkie who came to the salon” & you’ll be like “wait girls, do you really want me to go on? like you know anthony, right?” & prue will be like, “no, go on, we all need to hear this story, obvi,” with that clever look on her face that tells you she’s totes not 4 rl.

but she won’t be like “oh, so what’s the punchline of this story? that your gay man hair cutter TOTES HAS FUCKING AIDS? HILLARYOUS, GIRL. U GO, GIRL. GO ON W UR BAD SELF.”

& everyone is like rl rl silent after that.

see she’s not quite like that.

she’s not quite like anything.

munro describes her as being pretty pissed that her parents named her prudence, because “prue” is a schoolgirl, and “prudence” is a dried-up old prune of a bitch. so she’s stuck between the two, way too old to be a cute “prue,” and not accepting that she might be, you know, a “prudence.”

she makes sarcastic little jokes, but nothing stinging, nothing lasting.

munro says she’s the kind of person who “doesn’t take herself too seriously.”

this blog opines at length about this aspect of the story.

she’s the type of woman who’s not exactly nice, but always has something amusing to say.

she keeps people at a distance.

released shortly before rough trade famously went bankrupt, like all fucking indie music labels, the sundays’ 1990 reading, writing & arithmetic (remember when albums were named things like that?) was a kind of unlikely success, critically anyway (like all fucking indie music right?).

rolling stone, after comparing the sundays to the cocteau twins (!), 10,000 maniacs & everything but the girl, then said:

a band must meet certain stylistic criteria [to join such ranks]. the guitar-based sound must be politely electric, near but outside the boundaries of folk rock, and delicate but not flimsy. lyrics should be intelligent, even a bit arty. appealing melodicism is crucial, as is a stylish, genteel reserve.

reading that 25 years later, that sounds incredibly backhanded & shady, but, you know, it was a more innocent time, &c.

the review goes on to call the album “a collection of uncommonly good songs,” and harriet wheeler’s singing “wondrous.”

isn’t this kind of like calling someone “nice,” though?

what makes “melodicism” “appealing”?

less famous than “here’s where the story ends,” “you’re not the only one i know” starts off a little more smiths-y.

“where’s the harm in voicing your doubt?” wheeler asks. then, she informs: “you’ll find me in the lavatory.” (this must be the most charming use of the word “lavatory” in all of western pop music.)

& where is the harm in talking out loud

when i’m on my own?

wheeler’s pitch intensifies, but only slightly, when she says:

you’re not the only one that i know. & i’m too proud to talk to you anyway.

then, one of my favorite lyrics from the album:

it’s perfectly fine to sleep in a chair from monday till saturday.

reading, writing & arithmetic is full of these small gems. they arise like thoughts in a sleepy head.

the critics did a bad thing, i think.

the smiths comparisons were and are not incorrect, but they don’t allow the sundays the space they need to show their own inventive spirit. in some ways (acknowledging that this comparison is completely unfair), the sundays’ 3 short albums show far more interesting melodic elements than some of the smiths’ best known records—interesting considering harriet wheeler & david gavurin never studied music, but, they claim, just came up with their songs as they went.

this is best shown, i think, in this seemingly random passage from “you’re not the only one i know”:

so they rode out west to the seaside, and they gladly decided to stay.

but after two hours wandering outside, the sea air drove them away.

the rest of “you’re not the only one i know” reads like a short note addressed directly to a lover, giving way to a few interpretations:

• wheeler is trying to convince the lover that sleeping in a chair & hiding in the lavatory is “perfectly fine”—considering she feels alone anyway.
• wheeler is saying to the lover that now that he has left her, how could he fault her for saying whatever she has to say, even though she is “far too proud” to say it to him?

what is this “they rode out west” business?

prue is taking a ride, really, in the short slice we see of her life.

in her case, the man’s name is gordon.

prue lived with him “after Gordon had left his wife and before he went back to her.” yes, seriously.

this is why i think this is almost a joke. i mean really.

chris gilmore casts gordon as hamlet & prue as prufrock, which i think is a bit grand for an alice munro story.

prue says, of gordon’s large house (one i imagine to be architectural, like one of my ex’s parents’): “do you know there are four bathrooms? so that if four people want to have baths at the same time there’s no problem.”

once, actually, in my ex’s apartment on the 24th floor of a luxury building w/ doorman and gym, i mocked something he had said earlier about the other luxury building right across the (wide) street: “oh, but the avalon, it doesn’t have laundry on each floor.”

i didn’t accentuate my speech, as in, “oh, but the avalon [motions of poverty]—it doesn’t even have LAUNDRY ON EACH FLOOR! pity these wastrels, these unfortunates of a bad economy . . .”

i didn’t need to.

he said, “do you know how it makes me feel when you say things like that?”

i said, “things like what.”

the “climax,” if you can call it that, of “prue” comes during a dinner at gordon’s house. a woman arrives and, with prue only hearing, not seeing, her, throws an overnight bag, making a kind of crash against the house.

this is kind of hilarious, but only kind of.

prue wants to know what is wrong (kind of) with gordon, and he says he thinks he is in love with this woman who throws bags against porches.

but he wants to marry prue, he says. yes, in a few years time.

“after you get over being in love?”

she says.

yes, essentially, that is the truth.

the only ending we’re given to prue is a small—tiny, even—revelation.

like a camera lens (munro’s stories are oddly, blandly cinematic, which accounts for much of their success), we see in an old tobacco tin, a stolen cufflink.

it was purchased, apparently, on a trip with the ex-wife.

the tin has several, perhaps many, little trinkets like this, which are “not of great value but not worthless, either.”

then, a rather devastating final few lines:

she does not take something every time she goes to gordon’s house, or every time she stays over, or to mark what she might call memorable visits. she just takes something, every now and then, and puts it away in the dark of the old tobacco tin, and more or less forgets about it.

the “dark” of this “old tobacco tin” holds prue’s tiny rebellions, her little crimes. the devastation of these lines comes in what they reveal (the stealing, its naughtiness) & what this revelation means: the very frivolous nature of her little crimes, the very forgettable nature of prue’s affair, & of her life.

the sundays’ “they,” in wheeler’s voice, go to the seaside and decide to stay, but after only two hours change their mind.

no one is changing their mind about prue. she doesn’t let them. she has too many defense mechanisms, too much humor to have anyone have any strong opinions of her.

the one person who could devastate her is engaged with this bag-throwing shadow of a woman, & she’s not the first, & won’t be the last. & he’s married, anyhow.