Interestingly, the actual short story canon of Alistair MacLeod plays out as a living embodiment of the prevailing themes and narratives which dominate that body of work. Like the mining towns, fishing villages and rural regions in which MacLeod sets his stories, his cast of characters is not densely populated. MacLeod was never accused of profligate promiscuity of his talent. A big fan of his—Joyce Carol Oates—probably wrote more short stories in one year than MacLeod published in his entire life.
That small cast of characters deal with generational gaps that bring into the relief the changing ways of progress. The very fact that MacLeod was not prolific when writing in the age that saw the transition from typewriter to word processing software makes him kind of out of place. His stories are constructed with great deliberation with an aim toward perfection of the work itself rather than merely capitalizing on that success. Like the coal miners and fishermen who have grown old and watched technology both within production and consumption alter their lives and livelihoods, MacLeod is a writer that seems to belong to another age.
Those coal miners and their sons who leave home looking for better opportunities and those farmers forced to sacrifice to keep the business going are not sophisticates who share a $75 bottle of wine while they discuss Wittgenstein and Godard. They are simple, plain-spoken people who probably have a sense of déjà vu over conversation several times a week. Readers may get that same sense of déjà vu when reading a MacLeod story that once again pits generational change at the center of a story about people living lives of quiet desperation. And when they get that sense of déjà vu it will come two-fold. First, because just a few pages back there was another story about similar chargers facing similar concerns. Secondly, because MacLeod often opens his stories with language borrowed from fairy tale, folk stories, legend and myth. A lot of times there is a “once upon a time” sensibility in the opening paragraph and this comfortingly simple—though never simplistics—style effectively seduces the reader into going deeper into the story even though it may seem like just a riff on a previously explored theme.
MacLeod did not write millions and millions of words and his basic foundation altered little. He is not the kind of writer who terrorizes with horror in one story, gets the pulse pumping with a thriller in the next and allows you to drift off to sleep with a romance. He is not the kind of writer who can only be fully understood by reading his short story collections with internet access nearby to catch all the abstruse allusions. Like the characters in his stories, he understands that people living in a community are to be expected to share common aspirations, tragedies, financial difficulties, profound moments and long stretches of nothing going on but life. Five stories about coal miners does not mean one story told five times. Go to a coal mining community, find five people who have lived there all their lives and, yes, the stories you will hear will eventually give a sense of déjà vu, but the details will never be identical. This is the power of MacLeod and what makes him one towering figures appearing near what appears likely to be the slow death of what was once one of the most important literary forms of the 20th century.
MacLeod is a genuine and authentic representative of the “regional writer.” He unapologetically writes stories about people who live within and embody the character of a certain geographical area. The regional writer used to be almost the standard or model of master of the short story and he ranges from the authentically true spirit of William Faulkner to the postmodern incarnation of Stephen King. King writes a lot—a LOT—about Maine. But he is not so exclusive to Maine as Faulkner is to Mississippi. So while Stephen King is kind of a regional writer, he is more kinda not. And, truth be told, many of the stories that are set in Maine by King could just as equally well be set nearly anywhere else without losing much of their literary texture.
This is the difference between Faulkner and King as examples of regional writers and it is the difference between King and MacLeod. You can take MacLeod’s characters away from his settings and plop them down elsewhere, but the decision on where to plop them represents a fraction of the universe into which King’s characters could be sent. As the internet opens opportunities for writers to get real, hard-fact research about places other than where they live, the impact of regional writing will continue to reduce. The time-honored advice given to writers—“write what you know”—is no longer confined to that area seen through the window. The internet has afforded a window onto the world and MacLeod was still writing when this became so.
It was his decision to write about what was going on through that smaller window. And the world of literature is almost certainly the better off for it. His like may be seen again in our lifetimes, but almost certainly not as often.
