The novel imitates life, where the short story is bony, & cannot wander.

November 21, 2016 4:22 PM

William Trevor, Watchful Master of the Short Story, Dies Aged 88. [The Guardian] “The Irish author William Trevor [wiki], one of the greatest short story writers of the last century, has died at the age of 88. Trevor, the author of more than 15 novels and many more short stories, was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize four times, most recently for The Story of Lucy Gault in 2002, the same year he was awarded an honorary knighthood for his services to literature. He also won the Whitbread prize three times and frequently contributed short stories to The New Yorker magazine.”

Tragedy in Ireland [The Atlantic]

“A wise reader will approach William Trevor's new novel as an allegory, or a political treatise, or perhaps a meditation on the role of the exile in the history of the Irish people during the twentieth century. A wise reader, in other words, will hold this beautiful and devastating tale at a kind of emotional arm's length. Heartache, regret, the stunned accommodations we make to fate and to history, and also our patient pursuit of redemption have been at the center of much of Trevor's fiction, and in The Story of Lucy Gault, his thirteenth novel, he brings these themes to a nearly unbearable pitch. It is perhaps the saddest story he has ever told, although even here redemption is possible—as in all his best work, quotidian acts of grace, and the language with which he describes them, trump fate and misfortune and loss.”

William Trevor, The Art of Fiction No. 108 [The Paris Review]

Interviewer: What is your definition of a short story?

Trevor: I think it is the art of the glimpse. If the novel is like an intricate Renaissance painting, the short story is an impressionist painting. It should be an explosion of truth. Its strength lies in what it leaves out just as much as what it puts in, if not more. It is concerned with the total exclusion of meaninglessness. Life, on the other hand, is meaningless most of the time. The novel imitates life, where the short story is bony, and cannot wander. It is essential art.

Interviewer: You’ve said that when you start a story, rather than starting with language, the story often begins with a physical event, something you see or overhear which ignites something in you.

Trevor: Often it does occur like that, but the truth is that stories begin in all kinds of ways. With a remembered schoolteacher, or someone who might later have had something to do with your life, or some unimportant occurrence. You begin to write and in the process of writing it is often the case that whatever it was that started you off gets lost. On other occasions, stories simply come out of nowhere: You never discover the source. I remember being on a train and I was perhaps walking down to the bar when I noticed a woman and a boy traveling together. He was in his school uniform and she was clearly in charge of him. I can remember now the fatigue on her face. Afterwards—probably years afterwards—I wrote a story called “Going Home.”

William Trevor on His "Un-Cozy" Writer's Life [CBC: Writers & Company with Eleanor Wachtel]

“I've always rejected the dictum that young writers are, I think, most falsely told: that they should write about what they know. I think that is nonsense. I think young writers should write about what they don't know, and try it and see. If you can make something of what you don't know, then you can go on afterwards to combine what you don't know with what you know well. Writing's a much messier business than people imagine it is. You've got to create raw material in the first place, and out of the raw material you've got to cut your way into a short story or a novel, leaving huge swathes of it absolutely unused. But you've got to know it all.”

John Banville, Anne Enright, Colm Tóibín, Joseph O’Connor, Kevin Barry,Yiyun Li, John Boyne, Donal Ryan, Roddy Doyle and Many Others Pay Tribute to the Late Author [The Irish Times]

“Years ago, when I was in my early 20s and before I started writing, I was killing time in Hodges Figges when I overheard a conversation between a man selling books for Penguin and a man who worked there. ‘Talk to me about William Trevor,’ said the Hodges Figges man. ‘Big houses – angst,’ said the Penguin rep. I waited for more. But there was no more. I eventually read William Trevor – I think I’ve read all of his novels and published stories – and I know now that there was a lot more. The man – the work - was brilliant, elegant, surprising, reliable, precise, stark, often sad, sometimes funny, shocking and even frightening. His big houses were great; his small ones were wonderful too. The angst was bang-on, and so were all the other emotions and states. Every word mattered, every sentence was its own big house. I met him once, very briefly. He smiled and told me he’d liked The Van, and left me feeling very special. ” ~ Roddy Doyle

“We salute a great writer, elegiast and chronicler of those in-between worlds of Irish and English psyches, like his contemporary Jennifer Johnston. Devon-based like Sean O'Casey for most of his working life, where he tuned in to RTE Radio One every day, he truly merits that over-burdened adjective Chekhovian. Lilliput laments his passing.” ~ Antony Farrell

posted by Fizz (16 comments total)

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posted by Fizz at 4:23 PM on November 21, 2016

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posted by drezdn at 4:24 PM on November 21, 2016

Beyond the Pale is one of my favourite collections. I even have the posh Folio Society edition.

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posted by Kitteh at 4:43 PM on November 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

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posted by Doktor Zed at 4:53 PM on November 21, 2016

(And fuck the fuck off, 2016.)
posted by Doktor Zed at 4:54 PM on November 21, 2016

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posted by Lyme Drop at 5:05 PM on November 21, 2016

To be honest, like Joan Didion, I've been holding my breath about this one for a long, long time. Devastating nonetheless. Trevor was unfamiliar to me when I began my undergraduate degree, but he blew the doors off the short story in a way that no one ever had for me before. His Collected Stories remains one of my treasured books.
posted by mykescipark at 5:29 PM on November 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

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posted by .kobayashi. at 5:38 PM on November 21, 2016

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Family Sins. Felicia's Journey.
posted by kneecapped at 7:40 PM on November 21, 2016

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posted by thivaia at 8:08 PM on November 21, 2016

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Just as I was getting to know his work...I'm always late to the party.
posted by kozad at 8:12 PM on November 21, 2016

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posted by Iridic at 8:48 PM on November 21, 2016

ordered my first william trevor book - "The story of Lucy Gault" xx hardly read fiction these days
posted by paradise at 11:48 PM on November 21, 2016

Lionel Shriver on William Trevor via The Millions
posted by chavenet at 4:07 AM on November 22, 2016

The entire Collected Stories free online (at least for now).
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:02 AM on November 22, 2016

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posted by newdaddy at 7:29 AM on November 22, 2016