A Generation of Leaves

A Tribute to Alistair MacLeod

Alistair MacLeod will be laid to rest today—April 26, 2014. A funeral Mass will be celebrated at 11 at Saint Margaret of Scotland Church, Broad Cove in Cape Breton with burial following in the parish cemetery. Here, on Peaks Island, Maine where I am writing this brief tribute on lined yellow paper with a ball-point pen—a tribute in itself to Alistair MacLeod—the day is misty and gray. Whatever the weather in Cape Breton, whatever the sun, or cloud or toss of sea on the shore when Alistair MacLeod is laid to rest, he would have seen it before and written of it better than anyone. He was a consummate writer. In my mind, the consummate writers’ writer as his own work illustrates and as lore has it—

“What? He doesn’t move on to the next sentence until he is satisfied with the previous one? No. It can’t be!”

“That’s why he doesn’t have to revise! No it can’t…..etc.”

But it seems it was true and having read his work over and over, I can’t find a stray hair in that amazingly unfussy prose.

But, that is not the story I want to tell. The story I want to tell is about a question Alistair MacLeod asked me once and my surprised but simple answer—an answer that contained its own continuing lesson. At the time the question was asked, I was living in San Francisco during an important but troubled period of my life. I had been reading his short stories collected in the newly published book, Island, and had learned that he was giving a reading at Clean Well Lighted Place, a popular bookstore in San Francisco. I was going to the reading that afternoon and also wanted to have my book signed. That morning in the sunny kitchen where I sat reading, one of his stories had moved me to tears. His stories were and are raw and lyric and true and I knew the kinds of people, their land and sea and work that he wrote of and no one to my mind had told their story as well.

It was an amiable, if small, group at the reading that afternoon—maybe 25-30 people—many with books already in hand to be signed. We applauded when the author was introduced. He looked like the photo on the book jacket, which to me said something right there and was wearing a tweed jacket and had a slight burr to his voice. He apologized for having a bit of a cold. He had selected a story to read but stood holding the book at his side and began by reciting from memory the story’s opening paragraph. I don’t know how others felt at that moment but writing about this now, some thirteen years later, I remember being taken immediately to that place, that sea, those people and when he did open the book and resume the reading, the image of him simply standing there and telling us the story remains a deep impress.

After the formal reading, I joined the line of people wishing their books signed. He chatted with each person. It did not seemed rushed as many of these affairs are and when it came my turn, I put my book before him and said that I spent my summers in our family home in Pubnico, Nova Scotia. He said that he knew the Pubnicos and that they drove through them every summer on their way to Cape Breton and, of course, I immediately felt a kinship. I knew that road and all that it entailed. I told him I loved his work and that just that morning had been reading one of his stories that had made me cry. He looked at me and smiled, saying, “Well and that’s not a bad thing is it now, Lassie?” And I, who often prevaricate when asked a question, immediately said, “No, it’s not,” surprised equally by the question and by how swiftly, definitively and truly the answer came. He signed my book and I have it here with me. This summer it will return to Nova Scotia as well as his novel, No Great Mischief, and I will again read Alistair MacLeod’s words. They will give me great joy and they will deeply grieve me. They will do what great literature is meant to do and that’s not a bad thing, is it? It may even be redemptive.

Rest in Peace, Alistair MacLeod.

A Generation of Leaves was written in Pubnico, Nova Scotia and Peaks Island, Maine. Both of these small, independent communities afforded me the time and space and, most importantly, the silent affirmation that writing is an honorable and worthy endeavor. That is no small gift in a fast paced world. I owe my friends and family in both locations my gratitude for their forbearance as I kept my head in a book, my fingers poised over a keyboard and my thoughts in a distracted ether for more days than I can count.

This past Tuesday, the book had its official launch sponsored by the Peaks Island Branch of the Portland Public Library. I couldn’t have asked for a more wonderful and responsive audience to send this book out into the world.

I’ll keep the good wishes of all who have cheered us along the way close to my heart.  Next stop, New York City and a benefit reading at The Catholic Worker on March 21.

For a glimpse of the launch and a look at some of the evocative sketches that Jamie Hogan did before we settled on the final jacket design, please click this link  http://jamiehogan.com/a-generation-of-leaves/

We all do it. The Reading.  We wrote the book.  It’s published.  It’s in boxes upstairs or sitting on the floor beside us.  It’s the kid all dressed up and ready to go.  Time to meet the teacher.  Time to slick back the hair, put on the new shirt.  Time to remember how to spell your first name.  It’s the public time not consonant with all the alone time it took to write the book.

I  once went to a reading in San Francisco when I was living there that stands out for me.  The writer was Alistair MacLeod.  He is one of Canada’s most distinguished writers.  He was raised in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia and is the author of two volumes of short stories and one novel. His work has been translated into 27 different languages yet my hunch is that he is still not widely recognized in the United States. He composes his work in longhand and the legend goes that he will not proceed to a new sentence unless totally satisfied with the preceding one.

The reading was probably held in 2001 and the attendance was slight. His book Island, a compilation of his short stories, had recently been published in its First American edition by W.W. Norton and Company.  I had a copy with me and wanted to have it signed.  MacLeod was introduced.  He is not a tall man but stood erect and with a reserved demeanor and with what I thought then and now in recollection, a rather bemused expression looking out at the group before him.  He apologized for having a bit of a cold.  He held his book by his side and then began his reading by reciting from memory the first paragraph of the story he had selected to read.  He writes beautifully crafted stories and has a Gaelic roll to his intonation so that you were swept away to that place by both the curl of the language and the story. He seemed completely relaxed and in his element and he took us with him.  Perhaps that is what a reading should be without the glare, the thought of platforms or networking or sales but the joy of sharing a story with people gathered together who have come to hear it.

The Obligation to Imagine

When a writer enters into a world of historical fiction, he/she enters, as completely as possible, that historical time-frame.  If that world means the trenches of WWI, as in the case of A Generation of Leaves, then the writer must be there and summon the words to create that world. The characters must eat, sleep, and breathe that world and if it proves too much for human endurance, the characters escape literally or figuratively.  But, what right did I have at this remove, never having experienced the WWI reality, to imagine those  situations, those reactions, that dialogue? While I was writing, sometimes, those doubts would intrude, sometimes they would give me pause.  They never ultimately stopped me because, what can I say, I was on the trail.  I had caught the scent.  I had some blind faith, ultimately, in the truth of my imagination.

Recently I read an amazing essay in the New York Times written by Phil Klay, a former Marine who served in Iraq entitled, “After War, a Failure of the Imagination”.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/opinion/sunday/after-war-a-failure-of-the-imagination.html

In his moving and bold opinion piece, Klay states bluntly that you don’t honor someone by telling them, “I can never imagine what you’ve been through.” He makes a compelling case for neither civilians or soldiers being excused or excluded from discussion of war.

The imagination provides an empathic and stubborn ground for truths that we often too busily overlook or are afraid to face whether it be the horror of war or the shocking beauty of an ordinary gesture.

Peaks Island Press just published Tip #3 on writing an Historical Novel.  Check it out!http://peaksislandpress.com/

Raymond Carver is like an old friend I call up every so often just for the conversation.  I see him as rumpled and kind of uh huh-ing into the phone’s receiver. He never disappoints. His is often one of the books I pick up—either poetry or short story—late at night if I cannot sleep.  His people are real and often up against it but somehow even in the most dire of circumstances, there is humor and gritty hope. Toward the end of his life, he received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree in May of 1988 from the University of Hartford.  At the Commencement ceremony, he offered a meditation on a line from Saint Teresa.  It was his last-written work of prose and I offer a part of it here—it’s good to think about at night when you cannot sleep.

“Words lead to deeds….They prepare the soul, make it ready, and move it to tenderness.”  Carver comments that, “There is clarity and beauty in that thought expressed in just that way.  I’ll say it again, because there is something a little foreign in this sentiment coming to our attention at this remove, in a time certainly less supportive of the important connection between what we say and what we do:  Words lead to deeds….They prepare the soul, make it ready, and move it to tenderness.” Not a bad thought for a writer any time of the day or night.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/raymond-carver