Some time ago we
were in Freebird Books, a gotta-check-it-out used bookstore on Columbia Street,
not far from Brooklyn Bridge Park. While browsing there, I found and purchased a
treasure: the “complete stories” by one of my favorite authors, Alistair
MacLeod, published under the title “Island.”
A few months
before I was saddened to read that MacLeod had passed away. It was at least
fifteen years earlier that I’d first heard of MacLeod from my friend Ray Smith,
who with his wife Joyce Carol Oates ran the powerfully good literary journal, Ontario
Review, until his untimely death in 2008.
At that time I
got a copy of “The Last Salt Gift of Blood” and was amazed with the quality of
the stories. I am not alone in thinking this way. In fact, and Colm Toibin and Carmen
Callil included MacLeod in their book “The Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels
in English Since 1950. “Knowing that I could tell other readers about [MacLeod]
was the high point of The Modern Library Project for me,” Toibin said.
What a gift
MacLeod has at describing a boy’s regard of his father: the proud working man. Here’s
a sample, from the story “The Vastness of the Dark” …
“As long as I can remember [Father] has
finished dressing while walking, but he does not handle buttons or buckles so
well since the dynamite stick at the little mine where he used to work ripped
the first two fingers from his scarred right hand. Now the remaining fingers
try to do what is expected of them: to hold, to button, to buckle, to adjust,
but they do so with what seems a sort of groping uncertainty bordering on despair.
As if they realized that there is now just too much for them to do, even though
they try as best they can.”
Alastair MacLeod:
definitely a great who is missed. Get thee to bookstore and find out for
yourself.
Next: Running for Your Life: Back On the
Beam
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