Review of the Short Story "Deep-Holes"

Let it be said right now that the best parts of the story Deep Holes, written by Alice Munro and published by the New Yorker are the two cartoons that happen to be on the same pages as this short story. Now that that is out of the way, on to the actual review.

In Deep Holes, Munro attempts to examine the decisions and acts of fate that create the human personality and determine one's future. The story focuses on Sally, the mother of a small family who ventures out for a picnic one day. During said picnic, Kent, the elder of Sally's two sons, falls into a large crevasse from which the story gets its name. Kent survives his fall but comes close to death and is forever changed by what happened to him that day.

This seems like an interesting enough premise, but the story is sloppily written, with little to connect the two major events of the story, the first being Kent's tumble and the second being Kent's future career as a beggar.

The story starts out engagingly enough, with the author conveniently providing the reader with some background through the thoughts of Sally. At one point, Munro provides a hint of Kent's Oedipal complex when Sally begins to breastfeed her young daughter and Kent becomes "crudely excited by the sight of Sally's breast" (67). This, in just one example of Munro's sloppy writing, is never followed up. Kent runs off with his little brother and ends up falling into one of many crevasses surrounding the picnic site. He survives the fall and is rescued by his parents. The story then shifts to the future, providing glimpses of Kent's life through Sally's eyes. Munro emphasizes how Kent has changed, "he acted older than his age now, less antic, more serene" (68). What Munro fails to do however, is connect Kent's accident in any satisfying way to his supposedly changed attitude.

The story continues like this, following Kent's life through high school and college until he disappears. After searching for him, Sally discovers through her daughter that Kent is now living in Toronto as the head of a house that houses bums. That is honestly the best way to explain it. Near the end of the story, Sally visits Kent in what is clearly supposed to be the pivotal and climactic scene in the story, but the plain back-and-forth that the two have falls flat.

What is most disappointing about the story is that it is told from Sally's perspective. If the author had written a similar story from Kent's point of view, it would have been markedly more interesting. The thought process that Kent went through from the time of his fall to his final encounter with his mother would have been fascinating to observe but Munro denies her readers this pleasure and leaves it up to the reader to guess.

All in all, the New Yorker should have tossed this story down a deep hole rather than publish it and run the risk that readers would miss the cartoons because they skipped the story after reading the first page.


Here is another review of the story: http://perpetualfolly.blogspot.com/2008/06/new-yorker-deep-holes-by-alice-munro.html

The Amethyst Initiative

Recently, a group of about 100 college presidents signed on to an initiative to lower the legal drinking age in the United States. The movement, called the Amethyst Initiative calls for “an informed and dispassionate debate" over the issue and the federal highway law that made 21 the de facto national drinking age by denying money to any state that bucks the trend.”(MSNBC)

Predictably, the initiative has provoked an outcry from some major alcohol-related groups across the country, including Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. These groups claim that the current legal drinking age of 21 is effective in keeping underage drinkers from drinking and driving.

The movement for a lower drinking age has been growing (i.e. the facebook group “10 million people to lower the drinking age”), virtually unnoticed, for several years now. I, for one, completely support and stand by the movement to lower the legal drinking age in the United States, although with one noticeable provision.

The drinking age ought to be lowered to 16 while the age at which citizens may receive a driver’s license should be upped to 18 and here’s why.For much of adolescence, alcohol is a completely unknown substance. Most of us learn about it through watching relatives drink at the family Christmas party. In that setting drinking looks fun to those kids.

Fast forward to high school. The message is completely different.We’ve all had our obligatory health class which pretty much consists of this mantra: “Don’t have sex. You will die. Don’t do drugs. You will die,” and I’m not debating that there might not be some truth to that. But to a high school student, alcohol is a forbidden fruit, this symbol that you’ve reached adulthood. It’s very tempting to experiment with alcohol while underage. I’ll not even go into how easy it is to obtain.

Because it is so forbidden, teens (rebellious by nature) find alcohol especially tempting, which means that when they get their hands on some, they go all out. Binge-drinking is incredibly dangerous, there’s no denying that. Additionaly, most of these teens already have driver’s licenses which, in turn, leads to drunk driving.

If the drinking age was lowered to 16, alcohol would not be a prize to obtain. Drinking would lose all of its glamour and mystique. Parents would be able to watch over their children while they try alcohol and would be able to guide them through the process safely.

Now, if the driving age was raised to 18, most of the teens who would drink with friends or at parties would no longer be able to drive themselves home. This would drastically reduce the number of teen-related drunk driving accidents.

As if this wasn’t enough to at least cause a rethinking of the 21 law, college presidents have another reason to advocate this lowering of the drinking age.

By lowering the drinking age even to 18, freshmen coming into the school would be legally allowed to drink. Because the great majority of colleges require freshmen to reside on campus, universities could regulate alcohol use among freshmen to a much greater extent than is currently possible when freshmen go off campus to party.

Once the alcohol and underclassmen leave to go off campus it can spell disaster for the university, the students, and the surrounding community.

Lowering of the drinking age and raising the age when teens can drive are not the only two things that need to happen. America as a country needs to move away from the puritanical belief that alcohol and sex are the “Great Satan”. Only once that occurs can the United States emulate the success of other countries (i.e. Germany or Italy) that have extremely low drunk driving numbers despite having low or no drinking age.