My
first entry on William Trevor was last December when I began to savor his huge The Collected Stories (1992), but that
was a thousand pages ago.I’m
still reading the book! His stories
require close reading, even a second reading, as there is the story itself and
then the meaning along with all the underlying emotions. There are also the settings and cultural
references, typically UK and Irish or along the Amalfi coast or Tuscany, that often
requires some additional research by me.
The further he strays from London and its environs which I’m familiar
with to a degree, the more demanding the task becomes. What did we do before Google?
However
in the end, it’s almost unnecessary to understand all those references as
Trevor primarily deals with universal truths mostly borne by the experiences of
everyday people. As John Updike noted in
his 1981 review of one of Trevor’s collections, “Mr. Trevor knows, and
dramatizes, two principal truths about low life: it never utterly lies down,
but persists in asserting claims and values of its own derivation; and it cannot
be fenced off and disowned by the fortunate.”
Trevor’s1989 interview in The Paris Review is very revealing (one of his rare interviews).
I was particularly struck by Trevor’s answer to the following question
by the Interviewer, Mira Stout, as it reveals the mind of the writer:
I read somewhere
that you describe yourself as a melancholic; how does this manifest itself? Is
it a state, a temperament through which you write?
TREVOR
I don’t ever recall
referring to myself as a melancholic—I would rephrase that, with the chicken
farming too. A melancholic chicken farmer suggests suicide to me. I don’t think
you can write fiction unless you know something about happiness,
melancholy—almost everything that human nature touches. I doubt that an
overwhelmingly jolly, optimistic person has ever been an artist of any sort.
You are made melancholy, more than anything, by the struggle you have with
words—the struggle you have with trying to express what sometimes resists
expression. It can be a melancholy business. As a fiction writer, every time
you go out into the day you’ve also got to experience the bleakness of night.
If I were purely a melancholic I don’t think I’d write at all. I don’t think
writers can allow themselves the luxury of being depressives for long. Writers are
far less interesting than everyone would have them. They have typewriters and
will travel. They sit at desks in a clerklike way. What may or may not be
interesting is what we write. The same applies to any artist; we are the tools
and instruments of our talent. We are outsiders; we have no place in society
because society is what we’re watching, and dealing with. Other people make
their way in the world. They climb up ladders and get to the top. They know
ambition, they seek power. I certainly don’t have any ambitions, nor am I in
the least interested in power. I don’t think fiction writers tend to be.
Certainly not as a civil servant may be, or an engineer. Fiction writers don’t
want in the same way; their needs are different. Personally, I like not being
noticed. I like to hang about the shadows of the world both as a writer and as
a person; I dislike limelight, and the center of things is a place to watch
rather than become involved in. I dwell upon it rather than in it; I wonder
about what occurs there and record what I see because that seems to be my role.
I get matters down onto paper and impose a pattern, and all of that is a fairly
ordinary activity, or so it seems to be. If I could analyze all this, if I
could really talk about it, I don’t think I’d be writing at all. It’s invading
the gray-haired woman, the child, the elderly man, that keeps me going and
delights me; but I don’t know how I do it. And I believe that mystery is
essential. Again, if you now ask me why, I won’t be able to tell you.
The
heart of the interview, where he refers to fiction writers as “outsiders,” ones
who have no place in society because society is what we’re watching” and that
he “hang[s] about the shadows of the world, that he “likes to dwell upon it
rather than in it,” can be seen in each and every one of his short
stories.
Here
are widows and widowers, miscreants and innocents, the travails of the elderly juxtaposed
to the innocence of youth, the dilemmas of the middle aged and the divorced, so
often lonely people trying to connect with someone who is inappropriate, and
people from all economic stations of life. His characters are victims of their
own actions, sometimes “imagining” (the number of times Trevor says, “he [or]
she imagined” is countless) different outcomes and different realities. There is a Pinteresque quality to many of the
stories, showing humanity, some humor, and a hint of the absurd.
We
identify with his characters, perhaps their taking the wrong fork in the road
as we might be prone to do, and the consequences of their actions. He spotlights that inherent loneliness we
sometimes feel at social gatherings, or in our everyday relationships. The mistakes of our lives add up but so do
our little victories, our justifications of our actions making things seem
alright.
Sometimes
I sense the shadow of Thomas Hardy reading Trevor, Hardy’s sense of realism,
even suffering. And a few stories slightly reminded me of Edgar Allan Poe, not
that Trevor delves into horror, but there is a mysterious quality to many of
his stories and tension. I also suspect he is a “fan” of A.J. Cronin, a popular
English storyteller of the 1930’s and 40’s, who wrote in a similar style. He mentions A.J. Cronin in a couple of
stories and even one of his characters is named “Cronin.” I read Cronin’s The Citadel in high school, a book I
read for pleasure, and remarkably it held my attention (at the time I read
mostly science fiction for my pleasure reading). Perhaps Cronin merits a revisit.
Trevor’s
stories take place in boarding schools, social gatherings, the office, small
towns, dance ballrooms, and hotels and pensiones making them central scenes for
these mostly melancholy, moving tales to play out. Here he can observe his characters while he
moves them about like pieces on a chessboard, his detailed descriptions always
precise. Humiliation seems to run
through his stories as a leitmotif.
Interestingly
he seems to find women, not the men, the most interesting subjects simply
because, as he’s said, "I write out of curiosity more than anything else.
That's why I write about women, because I'm not a woman and I don't know what
it's like. The excitement of it is to know more about something that I'm not
and can't be."
In
spite of the foibles of his characters, Trevor mostly manages to demand our empathy
for them. We’ve all known people such as
Trevor describes or recognize ourselves, sharing similar emotions. On the other
hand, there are also hints of misanthropy, a sense that to be human is to be imperfect,
even a species to be deplored. Always,
his stories are memorable and haunting, people who are as real as your best
friend. They are unforgettable.
I’m
tempted to write about some of the specific stories in this collection, as I began
to do in my last entry on Trevor, but to do so, without revealing key turns in
character and plot is next to impossible.
A short story is not like a novel; it’s about (as Trevor said), a
“glimpse” and to describe the glimpse is to, well, ruin another reader’s
enjoyment of the story. Perhaps I’ll
visit some specific stories (trying to avoid spoilers) in this blog when I
reread my so called favorite ones (there are many)
