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 Andre Dubus, Bernard Malamud, Joyce Carol Oates and Isaac Bashevis Singer.