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 are the links 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.

Is there any more common metaphor than sight in poetry and short fiction? This seems like the kind of statistic that an academic could rhyme off. From my eleventh-grade English teacher’s discussion of Tiresias in Oedipus Rex through the twelfth-grade’s obsession with the etched eyes overlooking the town in Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel, my literary education impressed early, that sight—and, even more so, sightlessness—is a powerful story element.

An Alistair MacLeod story more commonly assigned in the classroom, when it comes to Canadian fiction, is “The Boat” (at least, I believe so), perhaps because it has an incredible closing image, perhaps because it’s not more than forty pages long; there’s a lot of analytical potential for the heavy thematic work in “Vision” though, and because the story covers a lot of time, the structure is complex. This makes for interesting rereading, and a rewarding story for short-fiction devotees, but perhaps not the best introduction to his work for the casual reader.

Still, it’s possible to isolate certain elements in the story that represent his work more broadly, like the east-coast setting. His use of sensory detail is rich but sparing; when there are multiple descriptors, he arranges them in pairs, so that readers receive the information in an easy-to-digest rhythm. (And this reminds me that lobsters mate for life.)

Consider:

“In the crates beside my feet the mottled blue-green lobsters moved and rustled quietly, snapping their tails as they slid over one another with that peculiar dry/wet sound of shell and claws over shell and claws. Their hammer claws had been pegged and fastened shut with rubber bands so they would not mutilate each other and so decrease their value.”

Even more striking, however, is the rhythm of the storyteller’s voice, overall, throughout the layers of storytelling.

Consider this elaboration on the question of some people being ‘gone’ now, and what it means to move between places, and what shifts and what stays:

  “You mean dead?” they asked.
“Well, some of them, yes,” he said, “but I mean gone from there, scattered all over the world. But some of us are here. That is why this place is called Canna and we carry certain things within us. Sometimes there are things within us which we do not know or fully understand and sometimes it is hard to stamp out what you can’t see. It is good that you are here for this while.”

It’s a story about two young boys, who set out to visit a grandparent: the familiar part of the route is what they have seen, but they have only travelled in the company of adults so how they see is different. And, then—things happen.

One of the most satisfying aspects of reading this story is recognizing (seeing!) the different ways that MacLeod is playing with the theme of the unseen and unseeing.

There is a litter of kittens that are not seen, a litter which is so young that the creatures are also unseeing: unseen, unseeing. There is perspective and prophecy, maturity and revelation, narrative and reality.

Some are readily spotted. You could almost use the search feature, if you were reading on a screen:

“Now he has an artificial eye and, as he says, ‘Only a few people know the difference.’”

“When we were boys we would try to catch the slippery spring mackerel in our hands and look into the blindness of their eyes, hoping to see our own reflections.”

Some are slightly obscured:

“If you looked as if you were old enough, no one asked any questions.”

“The story was told in Gaelic, and as the people say, “It is not the same in English,” although the images are true.”

There are some lengthier instances, too, like this one which not only considers the matter of perspective (say, how the view differs when one is on land compared to when one is at sea) but introduces the idea of there being one particular element that can be viewed (in this case, the source) or obscured, a presence or absence which argues for greater or lesser (or differing) importance:

“When they were far enough out to sea to have perspective, one of the men said, ‘It looks like there is a fire back there.’ And when they looked back they could see the billowing smoke, somehow seeming ironic in the rain. It rose in the distance and was carried by the wind but it was difficult to see its source not only because of the smoke but also because of the driving rain. And because the perspective from the water was different from what it was on the land.”

And the observations intersect with broader themes of importance in MacLeod’s work, like faith and belief:

“He told the clergyman he wanted the visions to stop but it did not seem within his power. He and the woman were sitting on two chairs beside each other. The clergyman went for the Bible and prayed over it and then he came and flicked the pages of the Bible before their eyes. He told them the visions would stop but that they would have to give up one another because they were causing a scandal in the community….”

At the heart of the story is the idea of how one’s perspective changes, under the influence of different factors, particularly how the boys come to understand what they saw that day as time passes.

Readers absorb those changes in perspective along the way, as times change and commentary reveals a growth in experience and comprehension, but a single passage, like the following, reminds us that new experience and comprehension not only requires an adjustment of the individual’s perspective in the present and moving into the future or the past, but also affords an opportunity to reflect back on how others’ experiences and comprehension also developed over time, in another time, a time not directly observed.

“Perhaps because of the loss of his leg, my father’s brother became one of those veterans from World War I who spent a lot of their time in the Legion Hall. When he spoke to me he had none of the embarrassment which my father sometimes showed when discussing certain subjects. Perhaps my father, by omitting certain parts of his story, was merely repeating the custom of his parents who did not reveal to him at once everything there was to be shown.”

As is often true, with MacLeod’s stories, however, the reason that I am most intrigued is that constructing and relaying a story ultimately rests with questions of perspective.

“This has been the telling of a story about a story but like most stories it has spun off into others and relied on others and perhaps no story every really stands alone. This began as the story of two children who long ago went to visit their grandparents but who, because of circumstances, did not recognize them when they saw them. As their grandparents did not see them. And this is a story related by a man who is a descendant of those people. The son of a father who never saw his son but knew him only through sound or by the running of his fingers across the features of his face.”

Beneath the boys’ story, in “Vision”, is the recognition of how a writer illuminates—shows, reveals, demonstrates—a particular truth.

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.