孟若女兒揭露過往之後，瑪格麗特愛特伍說，孟若寫的一直是地下室裡的犯罪，被信任的人原來是狼人。至於孟若本身，屬於把事情藏起來的一代。
「時代」不能夠解釋所有的原因，但過去的時代，家庭中確實有許多藏在壁櫉裡的秘密。
譬如我父母，皆是那時代的成員。自己曾在那樣的家庭成長，初入文壇，我的一篇得奬散文就叫做「恐怖電影」。昔日的時代氛圍裡，小孩不重要，小孩受到傷害不重要，孩子破碎的心靈，在維繫大人形象或者維持大人關係考量下，皆可以是藏在壁櫥後面的骷顱。
當年，我一位長輩近親，強行猥褻他妻子的年輕姪女。事後聽到控訴，親戚們應對如常，一切一切，毫無異狀，婚姻也白頭到老。
直到多年後，那位姪女提起血淚過往，我才恍然如夢。艱難而禁忌重重的時代嗎？當年，為維繫大人們的祥和景象，角落裡秘藏著多少不堪？
另一方面～
「時代」的餘緒像八爪魚，有許多面向，譬如：
在今天，對「母職」應該如何，不少人還留著神聖化的想像，包括女人做了母親，就應該無條件放棄自我與犧牲自己，有時候，那是另一種「位殺」！替女性擔當的角色定標準，也替當事人預設各樣的失敗感。為什麼形同聖女的「母職」「母性」被高度頌揚？而母親一職，有沒有所謂的理想範本？有沒有統一界定的所謂成功與失敗？對撻伐孟若貪戀歡愉/屈從男人，若單從荒廢母職去說，不免泥沙俱下，摻有許多父權時代的殘留物。
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人性複雜難解，親疏關係中，有秤量有算計，我想，優先浮現的⋯卻應該是「等距」的不忍人之心。‘Live or die, but don't poison everything...’，這是女詩人Anne Sexton 的句子。面對別人的創痛，人與人之間的互感是等距關係。無論是不是母女，是否有親緣，這件事本應該感同身受。因為不忍，必須有所作為，而毎𠆤人的自律在於：盡量不要造成傷害，隨時反省自己是否無意中成為共犯，而且體認到我們擅會自我開脫，反省永遠可以深刻下去，一層又一層。
孟若，問題不僅在她身為母親，即使不是母親，她對另一個人身受的傷害怎麼如此無感？竟然說出「與我無關」，而聽任傷害繼續下去？
更詭異的在於，那個時代，知情者皆選擇不語，直到多年後，受害的女兒打破沉默。
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「最宏大的事件藏於人心，最沉重的痛苦隱而不言。」這是孟若受贈諾貝爾獎時的頒獎詞。我們只能猜想，孟若餘生自咎，她身為作者，更洞悉每個選擇的起心動念、因此更難以寬諒她自己，她的痛苦，應該也比常人更固著更綿長⋯⋯
楊索【凝視深淵】
今年初，我離開臉書，過了一段悠閒寧靜的日子，沒有電視、沒有社交媒體，少與人往還，時間多到我把手上孟若的小說又重讀一回，感覺更靠近她。
我卻在孟若辭世後兩週才得知訊息，有一種心碎的感受，從來沒有一位藝術家的殞落令我如此心痛，我一直想篇文紀念她。
這兩日愈來愈完整的報導，讓我再次心碎，大部分是為她痛苦一生的么女安德莉亞．斯金納，也為「聖艾莉絲」的墜落崩離，為此深深迷惘。
艾莉絲．孟若拚了命的終生搏鬥，讓她贏得「聖艾莉絲」的尊銜，她像是創作者的守護神，精神範型，守在安大略省的荒地，一個世界地圖沒有繪出的地方，安安靜靜地寫了一輩子，不過大都會的名流生活，如一個鄰家平凡老太太，她屬於天天汲水喝的那種勤耕勞動者。
孟若深不可測。
契可夫說過：「如果沒有真實與虛構的永恆滲透，文學將死於貧瘠。」悲劇並非無跡可覓，孟若知曉丈夫與鎮上一些女孩的「友誼」，她小說中常出現寧捨妻子迷戀少女的老嬉皮，似是丈夫的白描。
她善於拆解情感的魔術方塊，我們以為人性的每一立面被她寫盡了，誰知老太太留了一手，關於她自身。她成了小說素材，被擠香腸的情節倒著寫，這本她沒有寫出來的小說中，孟若是一個冷酷怯懦的母親，對受害者的女兒毫無同理心，竟然選擇與侵犯她女兒的戀童症丈夫繼續婚姻生活。
2012年，具自傳色彩《親愛的人生》出版，孟若宣佈封筆；隔年丈夫去世，年末獲得諾貝爾文學獎。
孟若曾說過：「事物的複雜性，即蘊含在事物之中的事物，似乎無窮無盡。我的意思是，沒有任何事是輕鬆簡單的。」她又說：「人類的關係和心理之謎，即是文學的本質。」《紐約時報》封她為為洞悉人心的大師。
榮獲文學桂冠前，孟若已罹患失智症，生命的餘燼燃燒，她走入全然的黑暗，停筆的12年，不知她如何渡過？真實與虛構如平行宇宙，她終生穿越其中，面對女兒破碎的心靈，她卻為自己哭泣，「女兒」的存在是否被虛構化，孟若被人性荒蕪反噬了嗎？
盛名是一種獨特的折磨，也得過殊榮的莫言就曾言，諾貝爾獎害慘了我。光芒萬丈，陰影覆蓋面積就有多廣。巨星的瑣細都得受公眾檢視，瑪格麗特．愛特伍形容，孟若是屬於需要把事情藏起來的一代。對於斯金納所承受的悲劇，孟若家族沈默共謀的真相，我們恐怕已無法知道孟若的觀點。
凝視深淵，深淵也回瞪你。這位大師佈置許多坑洞，故事要素從來不是重點，她只是拋出線頭，讓我們循線看見那可怖的地下之城，荒涼而少有救贖，造化弄人冷酷無情。
孟若從不輕信救贖，看她對宗教銳利的譏嘲，《出走》中，那頭如聖神降臨的小羊的命運。我還是會繼續讀孟若，更靠近道德衝突中的她，孟若從來不是聖人，我們誰也不是。
圖：紐約時報檔案照
Who is the real Buffy Sainte-Marie?
CBC
https://www.cbc.ca › newsinteractives › features › buffy...
Oct 27, 2023 — Buffy Sainte-Marie's claims to Indigenous ancestry are being contradicted by members of the iconic singer-songwriter's
台灣聯合文學六月號
5/13日孟若辭世，此文寫於5/8日，彷彿提前追悼：我心中的短篇小說女王，日常生活的觀察大師
【文學魔法大教室 10位作家推介10位諾貝爾文學獎得主──3】
鍾文音／日常背後的伏流暗影——與孟若對話
https://reading.udn.com/read/story/7048/7983566
（節錄）：
一個人不會突然就大器晚成，必然是早已啟航只是還沒抵達的中途，不斷以強大的力量灌溉自己的沃土，猶如每一道強風都使樹木的根部更向下埋。時間磚塊堆疊其上才有的成果，無懼衰老，自信自在，歲月風霜，讓她在寒索之地逐步解封記憶凍土，源源流著不絕的溪流，溪流匯歸江河，終至如海洶湧之力。
猶如小鎮的裁縫師，熟知每個人的身心靈變化，以合宜完美且創新的體例尺寸，裁成精緻作品。站在旁觀者的位置，凝視最不起眼的角落，以時光將不起眼的生活化為珍珠，珍珠的珍貴在於淚水的砥礪，奧義來自長期密鎖幽暗。但抵達出口，打開蚌殼，可能是珍珠也可能是淚水白流。
在時光的神祕際遇裡，只管交給寫作，最初即最末。
荊棘與玫瑰，同在。
INTERVIEWER
Do you ever revise a story after it’s been published? Apparently, before he died, Proust rewrote the first volumes of Remembrance of Things Past.
MUNRO
Yes, and Henry James rewrote simple, understandable stuff so it was obscure and difficult. Actually I’ve done it recently. The story “Carried Away” was included in Best American Short Stories 1991. I read it again in the anthology, because I wanted to see what it was like and I found a paragraph that I thought was really soggy. It was a very important little paragraph, maybe two sentences. I just took a pen and rewrote it up in the margin of the anthology so that I’d have it there to refer to when I published the story in book form. I’ve often made revisions at that stage that turned out to be mistakes because I wasn’t really in the rhythm of the story anymore. I see a little bit of writing that doesn’t seem to be doing as much work as it should be doing, and right at the end I will sort of rev it up. But when I finally read the story again it seems a bit obtrusive. So I’m not too sure about this sort of thing. The answer may be that one should stop this behavior. There should be a point where you say, the way you would with a child, this isn’t mine anymore.
Alice Munro, The Art of Fiction No. 137
ISSUE 131, SUMMER 1994
Canadian short-story writer and Nobel prize winner Alice Munro has died aged 92.
Margaret Atwood once called her “among the major writers of English fiction of our time,’’ while Jonathan Franzen once wrote: “[Munro] is one of the handful of writers, some living, most dead, whom I have in mind when I say that fiction is my religion.”
Born in 1931 to a family of fox and poultry farmers living outside Wingham, Ontario, Munro went to university on a scholarship and studied for two years before moving to Vancouver with her first husband, James Munro, in 1951.
During this time – when she had to ask her husband for money to buy groceries – Munro began to write whenever her daughters were asleep, keeping the pieces short because it was too hard to concentrate for extended periods.
Her stories were soon being published in Canadian magazines and in 1968 the New York Times used them as evidence that the short story was “alive and well in Canada”.
Dance of the Happy Shades was praised for its “sympathetic vibration with the farmers and townspeople who live there”, and for Munro’s “refreshing strategy” of providing more questions than answers.
For Atwood, “few writers have explored such processes more thoroughly, and more ruthlessly” than Munro: “Hands, chairs, glances – all are part of an intricate inner map strewn with barbed wire and booby traps, and secret paths through the shrubbery.”
AS Byatt, a longstanding admirer, described how Munro stretched and challenged the genre. ‘’Not only does she consistently wrongfoot the reader, overturning our expectations of characters and their actions, but she melds several narrative strands together, bringing into one tale several plots.’’
Munro’s reputation continued to grow as her stories grew in scope and complexity and she won the Man Booker International prize in 2009 and the Nobel prize in literature in 2013.
‘’I have been writing personal stories all my life. I hope they are a good read. I hope they move people. When I like a story it’s because it does something … a blow to the chest.”
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