This August marked the centennial birthday of Mavis Gallant (1922–2014), who is known primarily for her short stories, many of which were published in The New Yorker and later turned into acclaimed collections, and two novels and nonfiction essays. Somehow, I’d never read Mavis Gallant when I was very young, even though we were both born in Montreal, and I am fond of writing from my home city. Of course, I’d heard her name, but that was about it. Her work was never assigned in any of my English literature classes at McGill. I even took a year-long course on Canadian women writers, but her stories were not touched upon. I do believe, though, we find writers when we need them most. I was in my mid-twenties when I heard her voice on a car radio. She was talking about how all she had ever wanted to do in life was write. She went off to Paris so she could do only that. It was exactly what I needed to hear at that moment. I went to the library and checked out a pile of her collections and never looked back.
Over the past decade, I have remarked on a renewed interest and curiosity in Gallant’s writing. She has been republished by New York Review Books’ Classics imprint, and I keep seeing her name bandied about on Twitter and amongst book addicts. In Wes Anderson’s 2021 film, The French Dispatch, the character Lucinda Krementz, played by Frances McDormand, is largely inspired by Gallant. I did not know, before the film came out, what a big influence she’d had on Anderson’s oeuvre. But it also immediately made sense to me. The attention to peculiar and mundane details is similar. And, like in Anderson’s films, Gallant’s stories are filled with eccentric and wise children.
