Those of you who are reading here now, but not reading Alistair MacLeod’s short stories, will probably only be interested in the first couple of paragraphs after this introduction. Feel free to skip past the section that I’ve titled The Underneath, written with those who know the story-or other writers curious about the mechanical elements of storytelling-in mind. If you’d like to join for a single story or for the duration, here’s the schedule for this reading project. Regardless, I hope you’ll enjoy reading about Alistair MacLeod’s stories, even if you weren’t planning to read them yourself.
On “As Birds Bring Forth the Sun”
Photo by Jeff Nissen on Unsplash
When I think of Alistair MacLeod and his stories, this is the story that comes to mind; I believe it was the story of his that I first heard him read aloud.
That’s a bookish moment pressed into my memory, and here—after the brief introduction (about two minutes) which introduces him as the speaker—you can hear and view it as well.
(Listen to just a minute or two, to receive the rhythm of these stories in a way that is evident but perhaps not obvious on the page. But if you want to listen to the whole story—it is hard to stop after a few paragraphs, and it is only a few pages long—it takes about 20 minutes for him to tell it. Mel, at The Reading Life, directed me to this link.)
Those of you who share my concerns about animal stories—including those of you whom I have warned about certain of MacLeod’s stories, those of you who have kindly reminded me in advance of particular MacLeod stories in exchange—need not be concerned, for the dog in this story survives. Having said that, it is an unsettling story.
What makes this story so unsettling—though, I repeat, the dog survives and, even, triumphs— are the very elements that scrape my nerves, raise the hackles when a story begins with a dog. Key questions: what cruelties do humans inflict on other animals; how do those of us, who seek to redress this balance and bestow kindness to counter those cruelties, navigate this territory; and, finally, what of those who inhabit that between space.
And the line between what we know and what we believe is heavily trodden but, simultaneously, difficult to discern. Mysteries remain.
The Underneath
In this story, the man who inhabits this between-space is the narrator’s great-great-great-great grandfather. That is just enough ‘greats’ to make it the stuff of stories but, because the narrator is the great-great-great-great grandson, it is not only the stuff of stories, but also the stuff of now.
His inhabiting of a between-space is most suitable because the veil between the worlds also plays a key role here:
“The cù mòr glas, though, was supposed to be sighted here and there for a number of years. Seen on a hill in one region or silhouetted on a ridge in another or loping across the valleys or glens in the early morning or the shadowy evening. Always in the area of the half perceived. For a while she became rather like the Loch Ness monster or the Sasquatch on a smaller scale. Seen but not recorded. Seen when there were no cameras. Seen but never taken.”
It’s unmistakeable that this great-great-great-great man loved her, that big grey dog; it’s unmistakeable that he sees nothing contradictory about sourcing a big male dog and uniting his relevant body parts with hers (which is how he views it, a necessary task leading to a desirable outcome): readers are left to reconcile this contradiction.
The big grey dog is the reason for this story, but her pups fuel it. Love and loss are prominent themes in MacLeod’s stories and this story rests on a moment in time which encapsulates both. “It all took perhaps little more than a minute.”
One of the reasons this story is so successful, so powerful, is that it inhabits simultaneously natural and supernatural territory. One man tells a story in a hospital, where his father confronts his own mortality; this scene sparks memories of an ancestral story, passed through the generations, about how men meet their ends, what burdens they carry throughout their lifetimes, how they describe their worst fears, and what scenes of brutality are lodged in their minds at the end of their days.
And, yet, there is still room for a joke in there (some good-natured wordplay), and the final paragraph is so chilling because it is so ordinary, so evocative.
For the better part of two years, I am rereading Alistair MacLeod’s short stories, from start to stop, just as I’ve done with Alice Munro’s and Mavis Gallant’s short stories previously. If you love short stories or if you would like to be a short-story lover, several of these authors’ stories are among my favourites, and would make an excellent introduction to the finest of the form. If you have other favourite story writers, please feel free to contribute those to the conversation too.
Lovely to see you continuing with your Alistair MacLeod reading. His writing does sound excellent. So glad to hear the dog is OK, that picture at the top of your post is beautiful.
Thank you! I’m still slightly behind with my posts on this project (and grateful that my schedule left for long gaps between stories heheh) but it’s good to resume. That’s dog’s profile against that landscape is so striking, isn’t it.
I listened all the way through – I found pictures to look at because I found watching MacLeod ‘performing’ distracting – and I found both the introductions unnecessary. As with written materials, I would have preferred them after. Melanie/Grab the Lapels wrote one time that if poetry only makes sense in the context of some long introduction, then it fails, and that has stuck with me. I don’t think the story fails, I just think it didn’t need introducing.
I find animal stories, including this one, overly sentimental. But it reminded me of long ago working on a dairy farm where the big jersey bull had to be guided into the cows, especially the younger ones.
I think MacLeod’s writing is more objective than sentimental, but he creates a space in which the reader can respond and bring in their own experiences and thoughts and feelings and, then, that’s where *I* make it sentimental, I think. Heheh Even while writing this post, and with the story being a re-read (for the third or fourth time, I think this is one that Naomi nudged me to reread a couple years ago), I felt that I was letting my heart hold sway.
The introductions here, for me, didn’t complement the piece either, but I suppose it was being recorded as a duplication of that evening’s events, not for others to watch years later, so I can see where, that might have felt different if you were in attendance, rather than taking it in, like we are, years later, from far away in time and landscape.
I can see where that’s true for, say, a love poem, or some wholly emotional piece of poetry, that the work should be able to speak clearly without an interpretation? But I’ve been most struck by poetry with a political bent, and I simply lack the context to fully understand a lot of that kind of poetry, because I do not know enough about world politics and world events to fully appreciate all the content that a poet with vastly different experiences than mine could be channelling into their work. There are some poets, like Liz Howard, too, for instance, who write out of their knowledge of science, and I simply don’t get all the details, so I really appreciate having them pointed out to me, in notes or an introduction.