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.
The greatest tool at Munro’s disposal is her ability to hide deep meaning through indirect language. In every story so far, she has managed to promote one idea while encouraging the audience to stop and wonder just how reliable the narrator actually was. It’s a sadistic idea and one that’s initially confusing but produces something much more profound. These are usually women who have learned how to navigate the world and present an image that benefits their success. There’s a reason that the narrator in “Forgiveness in Family” places all of the blame on her brother despite offering little evidence against herself. Similarly, the titular story of this anthology is one of the sharpest knife turns Munro has given, forcing the reader to immediately revisit the past few pages to find what led to this resentful undertone.
“Tell Me Yes Or No” subverts this idea by focusing less on someone else and more on the protagonist herself. This isn’t a defamation of her lover, but more an effort to try and understand what she personally saw in him. The design is introspective, formatted like a letter without any greater context. Is it one that she will send to this lover, or will this be one of purging deep, dark thoughts in the hopes that it finally makes sense of the past? Munro also incorporates the use of verb tenses, starting and ending in present while the rest is predominantly in the past, reflecting that everything has already happened. It’s so rooted in the past that the only benefit of this letter is self-reflection, a reminder of something long gone.
That is why the opening line is especially jarring upon first reading. Before any context is given, Munro gives the jolting “I persistently imagine you dead.” The two words that carry the most weight throughout the piece are imagine and dead. The reader is immediately questioning the narrator’s sanity, if the subject is in fact dead or simply the byproduct of vindictiveness. Maybe this is all just, as she states, imagination. For all the reader knows, nothing has happened and this is all a fantasy. What is truth and what is fiction? In five words, Munro has effectively set up the mystery and asks the reader to determine their own truth from here.
Something that I find especially refreshing about “Tell Me Yes Or No” is how candid it is about the narrator. Whereas most of the stories so far have diverted away from anything resembling blame, there is a willingness to take a long, hard look at who she is and whether there was anything valuable in this affair. She begins by exploring her life before they met. She isn’t a young woman with that naïve view of life. She has experienced many phases of what love was supposed to give her. She had a husband, children, and even the typical housewife lifestyle that was idealized in the American 1950s. There’s little to argue that she lives a terrible life, and yet there has to be some motivation for why she took on that affair in the first place.
How could she give up this comfortable life? There was a sense of maturing as she found the initial love beginning to fade. She comes up with excuses, believing that this is a sign of mastering marriage. As she observes her peers and their families, she feels some distance from them. Maybe what follows was a midlife crisis or simply a seven year itch. Something felt absent, and it explains why the affair was plausible. Even on the occasion she met her newly betrothed, she was pushing a carriage. There was no reason to reject that she was a mother. Whatever would follow was done knowingly of her lifestyle. Given that most stories of cheating released in the 1970s tended to place blame more on the man, it’s interesting to have a sympathetic view from the woman’s. She recognizes her complicity.
An interesting parallel comes in “Material,” where a wife observes her ex-husband’s open philandering. He is an author who flirts with women and believes in eternal desirability. He’s the villain of the piece, hated for his emotional recklessness. Similarly, “Material” also centers around the protagonist writing a letter, though it was more to cover up any blame for misdeeds. “Tell Me Yes Or No” meanwhile is using this moment to find some deeper meaning. The question is still about what happened, but it’s a lot more complicated than the structure would suggest. As the third word of the entire piece suggests, what is “imagine” and what actually happened? Is this just a housewife having a flight of fancy?
There’s nothing all that extraordinary about the affair in question. There’s a sense of happiness that emerges, but it’s nothing as extraordinary as something out of “How I Met My Husband” where a woman is captivated by a touring pilot. All that’s there is the kind of connection somebody who is older would want. It’s this sense of intimacy and trust that could be lacking in a boring relationship. “Material” worked as a study of why someone would settle for a boring lover who gave them predictable day-to-day. Even then, the antsy behavior will emerge, and one will eventually feel fossilized, at risk of becoming irrelevant. The fear is palpable, and “Tell Me Yes Or No” definitely understands that.
As Munro reaffirms in the closing moments that this could be something she imagined, it’s hard to tell how much she is referring to. Are there only moments that she’s considering, or is the entire relationship a façade? Again, the idea of dead holds a lot of connotations. There is a point in the story where a journalist shares the news of his passing, but it feels tandem enough with the central letter that one has to imagine that the protagonist came to this revelation on a more spiritual plane. Maybe she just assumed in an effort to cope with the loss of their romance. Maybe it was something much more uncanny. One can even imagine that he’s not dead and this is all some struggle to find relief in his survival. After all, who else would this letter be written to if nobody was there to receive it?
There’s no concern about how the receiver of this message will respond to what’s been written. This confession is simply to provide insight into the narrator’s worldview. Maybe it will simply be crumpled up and burned when the pages conclude and the reader leaves. This moment of vulnerability clearly speaks to her and provides some meaning, but what meaning exactly? Is she trying to rekindle the love or simply remind them of what has been lost? Is this trying to revive the dead relationship and restore the happiness that she’s currently lacking? As the title suggests, the answer could be yes or no. Like a silly crush note passed around in middle school, this invite is all about the dread of response, the one that cannot really be returned.
Maybe the whole thing is tragic. There’s also the potential that it’s a comedic study of how she’s moved on and is taunting them. However, I think that there’s a more sadistic read that may end up showing something greater about the narrator’s personal life. It’s clear that there’s some search for happiness that is not being achieved. However, it could be made worse by suggesting that everything that followed was not real at all. This was “imagine” as she claims twice. Her imagination has run rampant because she is needing stimulation and needs a reminder of her worth. Without any way to tie her to the past, it’s difficult to really have a sense of self.
To make up a lover may seem like a cop-out, but Munro’s cleverness allows for a greater tragedy to boil underneath. She is stuck in an unfulfilling marriage, forced to project her fantasies on strangers as she pushes a carriage across the park. She creates a life that is still alive, where she gets to experience something memorable. The fiction almost doesn’t matter so much as that creation shows her greater truth. She wanted so much more, and it’s the only thing that motivates her out of an unexpressed depression. She has a family, but that’s no fun. An affair has always been depicted as something lively.
There’s also the suggestion that the fabrication is even more sinister than the simple diversion. The character is a fabrication in order for her to connect with whatever good she saw in her past. With a loveless marriage, she can easily not feel connected to real people and thus needs someone to bridge to those thrills she felt before. The idea of imagining them dead could simply be a coping mechanism to suggest that she doesn’t need them anymore. Maybe it simply means that her fantasy world is something preserving a truth inside the fiction, where she can no longer access what was real without her memory’s correlation to ideas she’s developed about herself in the time since.
Like most Munro stories, I sometimes wonder if I’m reading too much into these stories. However, it’s also what has made her such a thrilling writer so far. She’s encouraging the depth of women characters that aren’t often provided. There’s a question of independence and what truth is owed to the reader. While this is far from the most flamboyant of protagonists she’s had, there’s something familiar about her, and that alone is enticing. Her search to escape loneliness is relatable and one can’t help but wonder what her life is really like. Is he dead? Is it all a metaphor? Maybe there’s truth inside the lies. There’s an indirectness to Munro’s style that has always been thrilling to me, and it continues here. Even the title’s uncertainty feels like a nice tease for the reader. I think this is one of those stories that reveal different things depending on your own personal experiences. That’s no easy feat. Kudos to making self-reflection as confusing as possible, Munro. I greatly appreciate it.
Coming Up Next: "The Found Boat"
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