I am reading Ancestors, by William Maxwell. Or I should confess I am skimming a lot of it, because it does get boring. It is about Maxwell’s family genealogy, and likely only published in 1971 because he was a celebrated author and fiction editor of the New Yorker Magazine for thirty-nine years. Wikipedia lists his genre as domestic realism. That hooked me, because that is my favorite thing to read and to write about.
I started on Maxwell when I found on my own bookshelf a book of his short stories that had belonged to my mother–Over By The River. This collection would be considered ‘literary’ fiction. I would not call the short pieces stories. I would call them vignettes.
A story is to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and within that framework the character is changed in some way. Maxwell’s collection is a style of fiction popular in the first half of the past century– vignettes, which are brief evocative character pieces that are more like snapshot photographs of people and places. The characters in these pieces are finely and expertly drawn. In a few instances we feel what they feel as we read. But the characters do not change. They simply are shown as they are.
I think, though, taken as a whole, both the short story collection and the collection of his family stories, maybe all that Maxwell wrote, make up one grand plot line–that of the story of people being people.
It is Maxwell’s superb writing and command of language, his turn of phrase and occasional pithy observations of people and of life that captivate me. I’ll be getting bored and about to shut the book, when off the page jumps a delight. Here are a few from Ancestors:
“…everything Scottish…produces a mysterious, unthinking pleasure in me.”
“…pulled the house down on her head.”
“…several kinds of trouble at once.”
“Neither side of my family has ever had the slightest difficulty in entertaining two contradictory ideas at once.”
I could so identify with each of those observations. And the truthfulness of them makes me laugh. Who hasn’t experienced those observations and feelings?
“Knowing your generational story firms the ground upon which you stand. It makes your life, your struggles, and triumphs, bigger than your lone existence. It connects you to a grand plotline.” ― Cicely Tyson.
Maxwell’s telling his family’s genealogy story encourages me in my own writing of my family stories, their struggles and victories, where they did grow and change. I’m writing it not for publication but for my son and grandchildren, who may want to know someday. Probably I am mostly writing it for myself, to remember, to celebrate the understanding that comes through the years, and to see if I can get down in lively words the people and places and family plot line that goes on and on.
Blessings,
Curtiss Ann Matlock 
3 responses to “A Grand Plotline”
I’m glad you are getting something from this, Curtiss Ann, because when you said you were skimming much of it, I thought, ‘She’ll never get that time back.’ Happy reading and writing. 💖📚
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I’m a descendant of the Maxwell clan. Not sure if William and I are related but will have to check out his work. According to mom, our branch of the Maxwell clan is related to a Presbyterian minister who got himself kicked out of Scotland.
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You are very likely related to him. I do FamilySearch.com, and on there in your family tree, you can search a name, and your relationship to that person will be traced, if there is one. I am related to William Maxwell through his wife. Something like 10th cousin two times removed. If your family came early to this country, you’re related to a whole lot of people you never imagined.
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