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Alistair MacLeod, (July 20, 1936 – April 20, 2014) was a Canadian novelist, short story writer and academic. His powerful and moving stories vividly evoke the beauty of Cape Breton Island's rugged landscape and the resilient character of many of its inhabitants, the descendants of Scottish immigrants, who are haunted by ancestral memories and who struggle to reconcile the past and the present.〔Joan Thomas. "Alistair MacLeod's expressible island." ''The Globe and Mail'', April 15, 2000, p.D16〕 MacLeod has been praised for his verbal precision, his lyric intensity and his use of simple, direct language that seems rooted in an oral tradition.〔〔Jane Urquhart. (2001) "The Vision of Alistair MacLeod" in ''Alistair MacLeod: Essays on His Works'' ed. Irene Guilford. Toronto: Guernica Editions.〕 Although he is known as a master of the short story, MacLeod's 1999 novel ''No Great Mischief'' was voted Atlantic Canada's greatest book of all time.〔Adams, Trevor J. and Clare, Stephen Patrick. (2009) Atlantic Canada's 100 Greatest Books. Halifax: Nimbus Publishing Limited, pp.9-11.〕 The novel also won several literary prizes including the 2001 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. In 2000, MacLeod's two books of short stories, ''The Lost Salt Gift of Blood'' (1976) and ''As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories'' (1986), were re-published in the volume ''Island: The Collected Stories''. MacLeod compared his fiction writing to playing an accordion. "When I pull it out like this," he explained, "it becomes a novel, and when I compress it like this, it becomes this intense short story."〔Wayne Grady. "Complexity graces MacLeod's stories: Short works soar with details worthy of a novel." ''Calgary Herald'', May 13, 2000, p.E10.〕 MacLeod taught English and creative writing for more than three decades at the University of Windsor, but returned every summer to the Cape Breton cabin on the MacLeod homestead where he did much of his writing.〔(Alistair MacLeod ) at The Canadian Encyclopedia.〕〔("Alistair MacLeod author of No Great Mischief, dies at age 77" ). ''National Post'', April 20, 2014.〕 In the introduction to a book of essays on his work, editor Irene Guilford concluded: "Alistair MacLeod's birthplace is Canadian, his emotional heartland is Cape Breton, his heritage Scottish, but his writing is of the world."〔Irene Guilford, ed. (2001) ''Alistair MacLeod, Essays on His Works'', Toronto: Guernica Editions Inc., p.10.〕 ==Early life and education== MacLeod's Scottish ancestors emigrated to Cumberland County, Nova Scotia from the Isle of Eigg in the 1790s. They settled at Cape d'Or on the Bay of Fundy where it appears they leased farmland. In 1808, the parents with their seven daughters and two sons walked from Cape d'Or to Inverness County, Cape Breton, a distance of 362 kilometres, after hearing they could become landowners there. An account of the journey, written by MacLeod himself, says the family took their possessions with them, six head of cattle and a horse. He adds there were few roads at the time, so his great-great-great-grandparents followed the shoreline.〔Alistair MacLeod. "My favourite place: Deep roots on Cape Breton." ''Toronto Star'', June 30, 2012.〕 MacLeod was born in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. His parents, whose first language was Gaelic, had migrated to Saskatchewan from Cape Breton to homestead during the Great Depression.〔 The family moved on to Edmonton when MacLeod was five and then to the town of Mercoal, Alberta where his father worked in a coal mine. However, the MacLeods suffered from homesickness and when Alistair was 10, they returned to Cape Breton and the farmhouse in Dunvegan, Inverness County that his great-grandfather had built in the 1860s.〔Christopher Shulgan. "The Reluctant Scribe: Alistair MacLeod's first novel has been eagerly awaited since 1969 when he wrote a short story that had critics hailing him as Canada's greatest living writer. Thirty years later, No Great Mischief is finally in the bookstores. What took him so long?" ''The Ottawa Citizen'', November 7, 1999, p.C6.〕〔 MacLeod enjoyed attending school and apparently did well there.〔 He told a CBC Radio interviewer that as a student, he liked to read and write adding, "I was the kind of person who won the English prize in grade twelve."〔Shelagh Rogers. "An interview with Alistair MacLeod," in ''Alistair MacLeod Essays on His Works Irene Guilford ed. (2001) Toronto: Guernica Editions Inc.〕 After graduating from high school in 1954, MacLeod moved to Edmonton where he delivered milk for a year from a horse-drawn wagon.〔 In 1956, MacLeod furthered his education by attending the Nova Scotia Teachers College in Truro and then taught school for a year on Port Hood Island off Cape Breton's west coast.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=People: Scots of Windsor Today )〕〔Christine Evain. (2010) ''Conversations with Alistair MacLeod''. Paris: Éditions Publibook, p.17.〕 To finance his university education, he worked summers drilling and blasting in mines in British Columbia, the Northwest Territories and, in the uranium mines of northern Ontario. At some point, he also worked at a logging camp on Vancouver Island rising rapidly through the ranks because he was physically able to climb the tallest trees and rig cables to their tops.〔 Between 1957 and 1960, MacLeod studied at St. Francis Xavier University earning a BA and B.Ed.〔 He then went on to receive his MA in 1961 from the University of New Brunswick.〔 He decided to study for a PhD at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana because Frank O'Malley taught creative writing there. MacLeod said he was used to analyzing the work of other authors, but wanted to start writing himself. That wouldn't have happened, he added, if he had not attended such a "creative, imaginative university."〔 He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the English novelist Thomas Hardy whom he admired. "I especially liked the idea," he told an interviewer years later, "that his novels were usually about people who lived outdoors and were greatly affected by the forces of nature."〔 MacLeod was awarded his PhD in 1968, the same year he published ''The Boat'' in ''The Massachusetts Review''.〔 The story appeared in the 1969 edition of ''The Best American Short Stories'' along with ones by Bernard Malamud, Joyce Carol Oates and Isaac Bashevis Singer. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Alistair MacLeod」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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