Two quotations from Alice Munro's story collection The View from Castle Rock:

And as the saying goes, about this matter of what molds us or warps us, if it's not one thing it will be another. At least that was a saying of my elders in those days. Mysterious, uncomforting, unaccusing. (from "Fathers")

*

I thought that the appointment I had was for a biopsy, but it turned out not to be. It was an appointment to let the city doctor decide whether he would do a biopsy, and after examining my breast and the results of the mammogram, he decided that he would. . . . The biopsy was set for a date two weeks ahead and I was given a sheet with instructions about how to prepare for it.

I said that two weeks seemed like quite a while to wait.

At this stage of the game, the doctor said, two weeks was immaterial.

That was not what I had been led to believe. But I did not complain--not after a look at some of the people in the waiting room. I am over sixty. My death would not be a disaster. Not in comparison with the death of a young mother, a family wage-earner, a child. It would not be apparent as a disaster. (from "What Do You Want to Know For?")

Though I've reread this collection often, I had completely forgotten both of these passages. It's odd how an admired book can be so familiar and so strange at the same time.

Munro is my favorite living fiction writer, and she is very old now. She won't be living for much longer, yet I still tend to think of her as a sly great-aunt rather than a object of literary worship. As in, "She's told a lot of tales over the years but we'll likely never know the truth." Or "That's the way she's always been. Nothing she'd do would surprise me." Or "Her kind isn't so common anymore." Aggrieved pronouns combined with reluctant admiration. The greed of the reader: "Do you mean this is all I get?"

It's unfair, but maybe the still-living are always unfair to the almost-dead. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Stop lollygagging. Put some spring in your step. Don't leave me.