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.

Photo by Bjorn Snelders on Unsplash
Quiraing – Isle of Skye, Scotland

This story’s specialised vocabulary, ordinary but specific, directs readers’ attention to salient details about life on the mountain, where the narrator’s great-grandfather settled generation ago, having left behind the violence of the Isle of Skye.

The paved road is called the “main road” and our narrator wears “overboots”, which are made of rubber and designed to protect the shoes worn underneath though distinct from rubber boots (which he never wears around other people). He is seventy-eight years old and explains that he avoids the use of “old” or “vigorous” or “younger than his years,” revealing that it not only matters what TO say, but also what NOT to say.

Decisions made in his lifetime, like how to construct the house two miles up the mountain and three miles down the mountain in 1925, and when to involve siblings other than his twin reveal key story elements. There he planned “to live alone together” with his wife, immediately following their marriage, not with in-laws or relatives, as others chose to do. That’s when he expected that what had been “his life” would end and what would be “their lives” would begin.The reference to “perfection” emerges here, with the talk of construction of this home; he worked with “determined perfection.” His description of returning for weekends, after long weeks of work in a lumbercamp, travelling by sleigh through the snow, reminded me of Grove’s Over Prairie Trails, except of course Grove might have longed for a mountaintop, both for navigation and interest, rather than the endless flat of the snowy prairie landscape.

But things aren’t perfect. MacLeod unfurls generations of experience and gradually this great-grandson’s character is developed in unexpected ways. There is a cringey scene with his twin brother’s wife. There is a curious scene with his granddaughter, who brings news of an invitation for the family to sing some of the old songs from Scotland (this vid has side-by-side translation and illuminates the point that only someone who doesn’t understand the language would perform the song up-tempo). And there’s a scene with Carver from the other side of the mountain who brings a man from Montreal looking to buy the last of the narrator’s good horses (Carver is there for his own sake, story-wise, too).

When it’s understood that the city man procures horses to keep them pregnant all the time, to harvest their fluids for hormonal treatments, the sale is halted. Life elsewhere is different from life on the mountain. The visiting folklorists marvel at the presence of the bald eagles there, for instance, their populations decimated (lineages disrupted and obliterated) in regions where pesticides are sprayed. Life is not the same for all mountain residents either. There are, for example, fewer men at the vocal practices because they have left to work elsewhere (fishing, for some). Males and females inhabit separate spheres in some ways, face unique threats in some ways, but, ultimately, all share a kind of vulnerability.

Belonging and un-belonging: MacLeod builds to a crescendo that satisfies equally on both counts. His chords are sombre, but there are grace notes too: without spoilers, I can’t say more, but I did not expect this conclusion (I don’t believe that I’ve read this story more than once—it’s one of the longer ones) and it blends qualities of improvisation and orchestration to leave readers only gently surprised.

Despite all the particular details—a bumper-sticker, a t-shirt slogan, a catchphrase, specific songs and lyrics, including “mo chridhe Trom” and “oran gillean alasdair mhoir”— MacLeod’s style is informal. This is not a story from a library or schoolroom, but a story from a kitchen table or fireside.

The idea of formality—the distance that ensues, with unfamiliarity—is introduced directly, however, with observations about how this character is addressed. At the beginning of the story, he is unnamed. After a series of events, others begin to refer to him as “Archibald”, not “Arch” and not “Archie.” In Gaelic, his name is Gilleasbuig (readers know this, but nobody else seems too). He is only twenty-seven and this degree of formality, the accompanying sense of loneliness and separateness, is central to the plot.

“Archibald” has been recorded by folklorists and patiently explains Gaelic pronunciations, “archaic meanings and footnoting himself the words and phrases of local origin.” (It feels like Gilleasbuig would be more appropriate in this context, but it goes unsaid: maybe “Archibald” should be set apart, though, like the “main road” and “overboots.”)

In this way, “Archibald” has been a translator, in much the same way that Alistair MacLeod is a translator, of the lives like Archibald’s, lives of men who carry traditions and “all with care and seriousness in much the same way that he filed and set his saws or structured his woodpile.” (Perfection is not named, here; by now readers understand, and it no longer needs to be said.)

How “Archibald” is connected—to tradition and to modern life, to his family members who all call him by his first name (even when a relationship would more replace one’s name), to the community and its members—and how he is isolated: this is at the heart of this story. Outwardly, he is bound to his clan, perceived as one of their group. Inwardly, he feels a great kinship with an older woman who belongs to another clan, whose family held different religious beliefs, one of the few people alive who remember how their clans were once connected (i.e. were the same clan) through marriage.

“He thought of her [Mrs. MacKenzie] with great compassion, she who was probably the best of them all and who had tried the hardest to impress the man from Halifax [who sought traditional singers]. The image of her in the twilight of the valley of the MacKenzies playing the tape-recorded voices of her departed family to a man who did not know the language kept running through his mind. He imagined her now, sitting quietly with her knitting needles in her lap, listening to the ghostly voices which were there without their people.”

When readers witness his family, Mrs. MacKenzie’s family, and Carver’s family singing to audition for the producers, who are looking to broadcast a three-or-four-minute set of traditional songs for listeners nation-wide, we have the opportunity to glimpse the breadth of Scottish-Canadian families who live in the vicinity of this mountain. Alongside the sense of how/whether they view themselves as a homogeneous group and how they understand that others, from other parts of Canada, might view them. (The producers persist, for instance, in requesting shorter songs, then shorter versions of songs, prioritising the impression rather than the truth of the performances. They are translating Cape Bretoners for Canadian audiences.)

In terms of voice, I imagine that Alistair MacLeod, in this story is both the folklorist and the man who feels integrally connected ancestrally to those. He was born into this Scottish-Canadian culture, naturally belonging to what came to be called Cape Breton, a descendant of the settlers who converged on this land, fleeing violence in their homelands and establishing and building lives on the homelands of others (unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq, in this case, I believe). But he also left the island behind, to study in faraway places, and lecture in southwestern Ontario, so I imagine others in his family felt that he had journeyed far from his roots and that, sometimes, he must have felt quite apart from his heritage too.

While preoccupied with a temporary relocation, I began this MacLeod story many times, and quickly found the emotional weight of it overwhelming. But its astute handling of this sense of feeling both part of things and apart of things is actually perfectly tuned to my own recent experience. Where and how we belong: this is a theme that resonates with many readers and, as usual, MacLeod finds a way to explore it that is both moving and entertaining.

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.