Last year, I was rummaging through a used bookstore to see what titles would catch my eye. Somewhere among the endless titles was the author Alice Munro, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning anthology “Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You” was staring back at me. With curiosity, I bought it with intent on seeing if there was something about her prose that spoke to me. With phenomenal blurbs on the back, I’ve taken up the challenge of working my way through these pages to see if I have found a new favorite. Given that she has a fascination with time and interpersonal relationships, I’m sure this will be a fulfilling journey. The only way to find out is to dive right in.
Given how much I liked the first three stories in this collection, there is something curious about “Walking on Water.” For starters, it’s the first to break from the interpersonal relationship of characters and finds her dealing with a variety of complicated themes. While this is usually a sign of promise, I think it’s clear that this is one of the first misfires in the anthology. It isn’t just my opinion. According to her daughter Sheila Munro, Alice believed that the execution of the story didn’t work that well.
As a reader, it is difficult to get to the end of the story and feel like there’s any truth directly expressed. Is this an allegory for religion? If it is, what is the greater message about Eugene attempting to walk on water? Is this an allegory for intergenerational conflicts between Mr. Lougheed and the hippies? Maybe it’s a story about homosexuality, where Mr. Lougheed has deep seeded affection for Eugene. There’s so much that is left to ambiguity. On the one hand, this has made the previous Munro stories such a delight to ponder over. However, I think that there’s maybe too much ambiguity or audience stretching interpretation to find a greater truth here. While it’s an intriguing premise and makes sense that Munro would try to capture a Late-60s period, I don’t know that it totally works.
The first impression that one gets when reading the title is a biblical reference. To summarize, that story is about a time when Jesus walked on water to save his disciples who were stranded at sea. It was an unbelievable feat that proved his divinity and appreciation of those who believed in him. With this in mind, Munro’s take would suggest that there’s some search for being saved, as if someone will come into the ocean and rescue those trapped. Like the other three stories, one would be forgiven for thinking that this could also be a criticism of religious ideology and is more of an ironic title. After all, Eugene says he can walk on water but ultimately finds himself drowning every time it happens. If there’s any parallel between the bible and reality, it’s maybe the idea that miracles aren’t real. Eugene can’t walk on water and reliance on higher beings to save us might not always work out.
To shift things slightly, Mr. Lougheed is the protagonist who enters the story from an interesting place. He is an intellectual who adores literature. However, he also desires to be free and escape the trappings of society. It makes sense why a hippie commune appeals to him. It’s the land of free love, where people grow their own food and have a carefree attitude. Some could argue that their attitude is too carefree, as a pair of hippies shamelessly and intentionally have sex in front of Mr. Lougheed. Maybe it’s their way of antagonizing him, to make his prudish ways seem silly here. Given that Mr. Lougheed fully admits to having done voyeuristic practices earlier in his life such as watching a brother and sister have sex, there’s maybe a suggestion that this appeals to him on a deeper level. Even then, it raises questions as to whether he is someone who has actively had sex. Has he ever been intimate with someone, or is it something he’s only appreciated from afar?
This isn’t the first time that Munro has explored sex in her work. However, it feels much more explicit this time around. Given that it’s also the story with the most religious references, one has to wonder what she is going for here. What connective tissue is there between faith and human arousal? It is easy to believe that Munro sees religion as something too abstract and more designed for emotional support, but does that benefit the relationships of the characters? Is there actually something empty in the love on display? Maybe it helps to reflect the pain that has caused Mr. Lougheed to feel repressed in ways that aren’t directly expressed but feel present on the fringes.
There is a tangent of another incident with water inserted into the story. He’s reminded of Frank McArter, who murdered his parents with a shovel. Given that Munro also uses the word “unmolested” strategically in connection to memory, one has to wonder if this is also tied to Mr. Lougheed’s conflict. He’s wondering how he could reach his dead loved ones and find greater answers. He lives with uncertainty. Maybe that’s the point of religion here. Every chance that a more spiritual story would help characters to find guidance, they are left experiencing dejection and failure. It is a poetic irony then that right when McArter was on the verge of capture, he was found drowned somewhere.
This could be an allusion to what happens to Eugene. He’s acknowledged as being mentally unstable. There’s belief that he can walk on water and fly. Any reader starting the story would be right to think he’s foolish here. At most one could have a naïve sense that Munro would grant her characters this one miracle. Again, that would be foolish since she’s an author who builds her stories on harsh truths, and Eugene is probably the most fatal of her cruelty. Anyone who hears Eugene talk about not being able to swim and enjoying being submerged may come away with a certain heartbreak. He could be mentally ill and just believe that he’s capable of something greater. Either that or, as the McArter story alludes to, he’s been coding his suicidality in a way that will make the eventual tragedy sound like an accident.
To return to Mr. Lougheed’s story, there is pressure for him to conform to the hippies’ free love way. There’s a fun contradiction to them having a more open lifestyle but demanding that he conforms to something that makes him uncomfortable. Maybe this is what Munro was trying to get at when comparing faith to hippies. There’s still societal limitations even as a more conservative generation paves the way for a liberal one. Given how repressed but present the theory that Mr. Lougheed loves Eugene, one is willing to believe that even in free love, the love isn’t equated with total freedom. Eugene’s instability could also be coded for queerness due to a Pre-1970s belief that being gay was itself a mental illness worthy of institutionalism. The fear that Mr. Lougheed could wind up imprisoned by his own desires feels more tragic even in a group that likely meant to burn the establishment to the ground. Could he possibly act on it, or will things end up like his dreams where everyone is dead?
I want to believe that there are some other parallels present around the idea of love. If religion can’t provide comfort, how can sex? The suggestion that Mr. Lougheed merely views sex from a distance suggests discomfort with intimacy. Given suggestions that he was molested or even participated in voyeuristic activities, there’s a sense that nothing could make him feel satisfied in life. When he feels like he might experience love, he is denied it both in the sense that people will make fun of him and that Eugene ends the story drowned. There is an inability to break through. Another tool that might connect religion to sex is the idea of Eugene proposing that when he drowns that he sees himself outside of his body. It is a common experience for people who have been molested to have out of body experiences and dissociate during sex, suggesting that both are some form of coping with inadequacies.
With this context, maybe the title “Walking on Water” is much more facetious than lets on. Maybe Eugene’s walking is actually a suicide and that his out of body experience is Jesus rescuing him from the miseries of the physical world. At the same time, one has to wonder why Mr. Lougheed is then billed as a protagonist save for a more stable viewpoint. Is he walking on water in his own way? Maybe to him, Eugene was a form of Jesus waiting to rescue him from uncertainty. Even then, Munro goes for the cruelest path imaginable and separates them from a happy ending.
Again, there’s a chance that one can get more than halfway to a convincing answer, but I’m still not sure what the greater purpose of “Walking on Water” is. There’s so many strands that have potential, but I concur that there’s a substantial amount that feels missing. Maybe that’s the point that faith and sex aren’t the total answers that fulfill our lives. Maybe it’s that they’re critical of those different from what society expects and thus punish them in ways that are uncomfortable.
The best that I can assume is that this was written at a time when the modern rhetoric wasn’t entirely there. As mentioned, homosexuality was a mental illness until the 1970s. The imagery of people being seen as crazy for being queer was much more commonplace because of the legal system. Even if the hippies represent life outside of said system, it could be that they weren’t ready to forgive that level of “deviance.” Munro gives Mr. Lougheed plenty of great interiority, but it doesn’t feel like there’s a clear statement being made. Eugene still winds up dead. It's as predictable as it was on the first page. There’s no grand revelation save that maybe these characters have a flair for the dramatic. There’s no great conclusion and what’s here maybe qualifies more as thematic resonance than any satisfying arc. Is that the point of religion in Munro’s viewpoint? Is it that we all live with a certain ambiguity that can never fully be resolved? I guess that’s how things go here.
All in all, “Walking on Water” is arguably the first disappointment in this great collection of stories. Munro’s willingness to make a complicated, intertwining narrative of themes is still admirable and I like seeing her try something different. With all of that said, this works better as an exercise than a successful and complete story. It’s a nice way to get ideas out and see a side of the author that will hopefully lead to greater works. For now, it’s a decent story but one that leaves a lot to be desired. I’m glad it exists, but the confusion that comes with it is not quite as satisfying as anything else in this anthology so far.
Coming Up Next: “Forgiveness in Families”
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