Conversations with Alistair MacLeod , livre ebook

publibook - Christine Evain

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

136 pages

Français

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

This volume, accessible to all of Alistair MacLeod's readers and fans, offers the transcript of an in-depth interview with Alistair MacLeod which took place in Windsor during the Spring of 2009. It is introduced by Douglas Gibson, Alistair MacLeod's long-time editor and trusted friend. Alistair MacLeod has been described as a “quiet literary giant” and there is no better way of encapsulating his talent and character in only three words. He is the recipient of many literary awards, including the IMPAC award and thirteen honorary degrees. In the interview, Alistair MacLeod throws light on the creative process and gives us insight into his craft. As his comments come in response to questions on each individual story as well as on the novel No Great Mischief, the transcript is divided into sections dedicated to each one of the stories and the novel. Quotes from previous interviews have been added and organized thematically in a section entitled “Collected Comments from Previous Interviews”. The last part of this volume includes the summaries of these works. The aim of these summaries is to refresh the reader's memory and guide him through the conversation with Alistair MacLeod and also to provide useful references for all students, academics and enthusiastic readers wishing to embark on a critical analysis of Alistair MacLeod's work.

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

Alistair MacLeod

Informations

Publié par	publibook
Date de parution	08 octobre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782748384468
Langue	Français

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0082€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Conversations with Alistair MacLeod
Christine Evain
Publibook

Le Code de la propriété intellectuelle interdit les copies ou reproductions destinées à une utilisation collective. Toute représentation ou reproduction intégrale ou partielle faite par quelque procédé que ce soit, sans le consentement de l’auteur ou de ses ayants cause, est illicite et constitue une contrefaçon sanctionnée par les articles L 335-2 et suivants du Code de la propriété intellectuelle.

Publibook
14, rue des Volontaires
75015 PARIS – France
Tél. : +33 (0)1 53 69 65 55
Conversations with Alistair MacLeod

To Alistair,
To Douglas and Reena

I would like to thank

Alistair MacLeod, for his precious time and for sharing his experiences as a writer,

Anita MacLeod for her warm welcome and afternoon feast,

Douglas Gibson who allowed this project to materialize and provided a generous introduction to this volume,

Jane Gibson, a wonderful hostess who mapped out the journey to Windsor and even booked dinner on the train,

The reading committee and the Board of Research of the EECN collection,

And last but not least, Reena Khandpur not only for her careful proof-reading of this volume but also for her invaluable help with the preparation for the interviews.

Introduction by Douglas Gibson

I am a friend of both Alistair Macleod and Christine Evain, so I was glad to be able to arrange a first meeting between them in May, 2009.
Christine Evain, I should explain, is a spectacularly bilingual French citizen who teaches at the Ecole Centrale de Nantes, and who knows more about Canadian writers than 99.99% of Canadians. She has co-published a book about Margaret Atwood, with Reena Khandpur for example, and one on Mavis Gallant with Christine Bertail. Her knowledge of the writing scene even encompasses Canadian editors, so that in 2007 she published a series of interviews with me, under the title Douglas Gibson Unedited . In the course of that project we became friends, and our families have exchanged visits between Toronto and Nantes.
As for Alistair MacLeod, he and I have been friends for almost thirty years, and we worked closely together to publish No Great Mischief in 1999, and his collected short stories, Island , the next year. Thanks to the international success of his books Alistair now spends a lot of time travelling to give lectures – instead, graceless people and impatient editors might say, of getting on with completing another book.
So when Christine asked me if I could arrange a meeting with Alistair in Windsor, Ontario, at some point in May, it took a couple of phone calls to arrive at a date when he would definitely be at home, and able to generously devote a whole afternoon to an interview. Christine duly arranged her Canadian visit around that date, and invited me to come along.
On the day in question, we caught the early-morning train to Windsor from Toronto’s Union Station (where I had once waylaid Alistair, hoping to extract from him the manuscript of No Great Mischief ). As we travelled for four hours through the greening countryside full of returned red-winged blackbirds, Christine put the finishing touches to her interview plans, and I relaxed by reading yet again some of the stories in Island . It was a memorable journey.
At Windsor Station we were met by Alistair. True to form, he wore one of his flat tweed caps; according to Irish and Scottish interviewers the cap makes him look either like a friendly local publican, or a farmer come to town to sell cows. With no sign of cows or barstools at hand, he greeted Christine with grave courtesy, and led us towards his car.
There was, of course, far less gravity for me. Our long friendship is an irreverent one (and I am pleased to see that both the affection and the irreverence spills out of the interview recorded here) and every meeting with Alistair is a delight for me.
He took us to a large, quiet bar/restaurant downtown, where we secured a table and ordered a simple lunch. Ignoring the distant muzak in the background, and mindful of the work in store, Christine lost no time in setting up her tape recorder and getting down to the business of interviewing, as other diners occasionally wandered past on their way to bar or washroom.
The scene is memorable. Imagine Christine, a petite dark-haired woman with fine bones, bright eyes and quick, intense gestures sitting opposite Alistair, a solid, thoughtful presence, given to slow, careful consideration of his answers as he studied the table top before looking up, and with a modest reluctance to make grand declarations. The session was conducted very seriously, but, as you will see, laughter was never far away.
The interviews printed here faithfully record what was said. Regrettably, it does seem to be true that, having arranged the meeting, my main role at the event was to insert occasional jokes, and to tease Alistair about the glacial pace of his writing – a teasing that he fully reciprocated, claiming that I repeatedly rejected his attempts to submit the manuscript of No Great Mischief !
The interview, which Christine and Alistair sustained with commendable energy over nearly five hours, was a credit to both of them. The only late addition was the discussion of “The Tuning of Perfection”, which was somehow overlooked in the methodical, story-by-story session in Windsor. A phone conversation the next day filled that particular gap.
I hope that the reader, although less privileged than I was, will be able to catch the good humour of the long-running interview. As a sitting bystander, I was impressed by the careful preparation that Christine – familiar with every sentence in Alistair’s work – had brought to the table. Similarly, I was impressed by Alistair’s stamina throughout a long afternoon, as he grappled with the sort of questions that are always hard for a writer, since they deal with the very origins of their art, so often a matter of instinct, even of genius.
Typically, at the end of the interview, Alistair insisted on taking us home to meet my old friend Anita, who had prepared an afternoon feast for us. There in the room where I had persuaded Alistair to hand over the manuscript of No Great Mischief (beneath the clan shield with its unhelpful motto, “Hold Fast”), we sat over tea and rich cakes, and laughed about past events and the remarkable deeds of our children and grandchildren, not least my grandson Alistair.
Then it was time to catch the train back to Toronto. For Christine it was the start of a long return back to France the next day, but with many fascinating insights into Alistair MacLeod, the man and the artist, safely packed in her bags, making them lighter.

Toronto, July 2009

Chronology

1936 Alistair MacLeod born on July 20 in North Battleford, Saskatchewan.
1946 family moves to a farm in Dunvegan, Inverness County on Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island.
1954-57 Alistair MacLeod completes high school, attends teacher’s college in Truro and then teaches school.
1.60studies at St. Francis Xavier University and graduates with a BA and B.Ed.
1960 receives his MA from the University of New Brunswick.
1961-63 teaches college.
1966-69 teaches English at Indiana University.
1968 receives his PhD from the University of Notre Dame.
publishes “The Boat” in The Massachusetts Review ; Best American Short Stories , 1969.
1969 in the summer, resides in Cape Breton Island with his family, where he spends mornings "writing in a cliff-top cabin looking west towards Prince Edward Island."
1969 accepts a post at the University of Windsor as professor of English and creative writing; edits the University of Windsor Review .
1971 publishes “The Vastness of the Dark” in Fiddlehead , Winter 1971.
“The Golden Gift of Grey”: Twigs , VII.
“The Return”: The Atlantic Advocate , November 1971.
1973 “In the Fall”: Tamarack Review , October 1973.
1974 “The Lost Salt Gift of Blood”: The Southern Review , Winter 1974; Best American Short Stories , 1975.
1976 “The Road to Rankin’s Point”: Tamarack Review , Winter 1976.
Short story collection The Lost Salt Gift of Blood in which Alistair MacLeod outlines social and economic realities, relationships of family and community in Cape Breton against the mythic backdrop of natural cycles and folklore. 1 The collection includes the seven stories published from “The Boat” to “The Road to Rankin’s Point”.
1976 “The Closing Down of Summer”: Fiddlehead , Fall 1976.
1977“To Everything There is a Season”: Globe and Mail, December 24, 1977.
1980 “Second Spring”: Canadian Fiction Magazine .
1981 “Winter Dog”: Canadian Fiction Magazine .
1984 “The Tuning of Perfection”: The Cape Breton Collection , Pottersfield Press, Nova Scotia, 1984.
1985 “As Birds Bring Forth the Sun”: event magazine, 1985.
1986“Vision”.
short story collection As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories . The volume contains the seven stories published since “The Closing Down of Summer” up to “Vision”.
1987honorary degree from St. Francis Xavier University.
1988 “Island”: The Ontario Review , 1988: Thistledown Press Limited Edition, 1989.
1991honorary degree from University College of Cape Breton.
1999 publishes novel No Great Mischief in which the narrator outlines the history of his family from its 18th-century emigration from Scotland to Nova Scotia until the 1980s.
“Clearances”: “Festival of Fiction,” CBC Radio/Canada Council for the Arts, 1999.
2000 publishes short story collection Island which brings into one volume all previous stories as well as “Island” and “Clearances”.
wins Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award – Fiction Book of the Year.
Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award – Author of the Year.
honorary degree from the University of W