Wednesday 22 September 2010

Seanchaí


Over the years I’ve derived so much enjoyment from short stories, in some ways my favourite literary genre alongside the critical essay. I really began when I was little with myths and folktales, a tradition for which I still retain considerable affection. By the age of ten or so I was reading Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination. From there, in successive stages, I discovered such wonderful story tellers as William Somerset Maugham (his Far Eastern stories are a particular favourite), Isaac Bashevis Singer (a magician in words), Nikolai Gogol (my favourite Russian writer in the medium), Graham Greene (who writes extensively in this genre though he is better known as a novelist), Anton Chekhov, Alphonse Daudet, James Joyce, Ambrose Bierce, Franz Kafka, H. H. Munro (better known as ‘Saki’), William Porter (better known as ‘O Henry’) along with so many others, including Balzac and Dickens, not generally associated with this literary form.

Now I’ve discovered William Trevor, an Irish writer, having not long finished The Collected Stories, published by Penguin Books. I suppose it’s not quite true to say that his work is a totally new discovery because I came across him previously, one story, I think, in an anthology of Irish writing, but not enough to form a proper impression. Now I have and there is no doubt in my mind that he will last as one of the great masters of the medium. He writes with such amazing fluency, beautiful limpid prose with a simple realism that reminds me so much of Chekhov. His work is rich in gentle irony with slight overtones of sadness, of empty lives and frustrated hopes.

His stories are mostly set in England or Ireland, often among the most marginal people, those on the edges of society, people often buffeted by an uncertain fate, unsure of who they are and where they are going. Yes, there are elements of pathos and melancholy, offset quite often by an undercurrent of humour. This is the thing about life, something the best writers have always understood: comedy is never that far removed from tragedy.

Some of his female characters caused me to laugh out loud at points, including the impossible Mrs da Tanka in A Meeting in Middle Age, the first in the collection, who teams up with the unfortunate Mr Mileson, a sort of agency detective, in a hotel together to spend the night, thereby providing grounds for a divorce in the days when such matters were complicated. Yes, they team up together in a way that a lion teams up with a gazelle!

In general Trevor shapes characters, in complexity or simplicity, who are totally believable. He is there as a narrator, as a third presence, only in the lightest possible way. He does not ‘create’ his people; he allows them to create themselves, to build themselves up through their own words and actions. There is little in the way of a narrator’s prologue; this is life unfolding as we go along, as fate works away.

The language, the use of words, is quite delicious: precise, beautiful, simple and elegant. There is nothing in the least artificial about Trevor’s prose style, which has directness and a sense of realism that I so admire, largely free of a tangled undergrowth of adjectives, something that only the very best writers can command. For the most part these are small and intimate dramas, not covering a huge range of possible situations, and yet paradoxically immense. In over eighty stories at no point did I feel that I was going over the same ground: each situation seemed unique and fresh.

Did I have any favourites? Well, yes, I suppose I did, though I find it immensely difficult to make a distinction in that having favourites seems to suggest that those not selected were somehow less worthy. At over 1200 pages long this is a compendium of favourites. I should make special mention, though, of Beyond the Pale, where a woman is confronted with the tragedy of Irish history, confronted by a legacy of love, loss and terrible bitterness. The tale she tells destroys a lying idyll. And then there is Matilda’s England, a story in three parts, an enchanting and poignant narrative of time and tide and fortune, of happy highways where people went and can never come again.

I sit here in here now in her drawing-room, and may perhaps become as old as she was. Sometimes I walk up to the meadows where the path to school was, but the meadow isn’t there any more. There are rows of coloured caravans, and motor-cars and shacks. In the garden I can hear the voices of people drifting down to me, and the sound of music from their wireless sets. Nothing is like it was.

This is immediately followed by Torridge, quite different in tone, with a bitingly humorous ending, one that completely dismantles the comforting illusions of a nauseatingly self-satisfied group of old school chums.

These are just a few examples. I could go on and on but there is really not much point. I can only pay proper tribute to Trevor by retelling his tales one by one. You can do justice, if you are minded to, in reading them for yourselves.

15 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Adam. I should also tell you that Graham Greene's story The Destructors features in Donnie Darko, where it is a cause of some controversy after the school is vandalised. Apparently when it was first published in the States there really was an outcry against it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  4. If you go to a site called Project Free TV(there are other options also) you can watch it in two parts. Just don't select the download option, then you are not breaking any law.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Now I thought I was a fairly avid reader being referred to as a "walking wikipedia" by some - a nickname I dearly took to heart. But then I started reading your blog and it has left me feeling somewhat inadequate. What do you do in between all the reading, watching of films and going to exhibitions?

    My first thought was that were must be more people behind this blog, but there really only seems to be one. Hence I say with a slight touch of despair: what the fuck?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Generally taking life by the balls, Spitfire! It was said of Clive James that he is a "brilliant bunch of guys". Maybe I'm just a brilliant bunch of girls. :-))

    ReplyDelete
  8. I had the same thought as 13th Spitfire about who was behind this blog. I just hope she doesn't feel she has to keep up the pace. I'm sure your readers would forgive you for slowing down a bit, Ana, in the interests of longevity. Or are you not interested in that?

    And like Adam I'm pleased to see a number of my favourite authors mentioned. For me its Somerset Maugham (yes the far Eastern stories) and Chekhov above all.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Mark, I know I shall burn out like a supernova - perhaps soon - and then collapse into a black hole, emitting no light at all!

    I started this blog a year last April as a sort of intellectual safety valve, a way of releasing all my pent up energy. I had no idea that anyone else would take an interest and for ages I blogged away without any comments at all. Indeed, the first comment took me by complete surprise! I get pleasure from this; I just love to write about anything and everything that catches my attention or my imagination. If other people take pleasure from my thoughts that's a wonderful bonus. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Seanchaí ... a nice word, not one I expected to see. :-)

    Good blog. It's a long time since I read any Trevor.

    I remember something he said in an interview ... 'write about what you don't know' (the opposite of the usual advice). He felt that this would fire the imagination.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I have a feeling that he is being disingenuous here, Brendano, either that or his imagination is a furnace. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Hi Ana,
    Great post! Isn't it wodnerful when one makes these "discoveries" of unknown or previously under-appreciated authors? For me, not being scholarly in regards to writing and literature (or anything else, I suppose!), it is one of the great joys of being an amateur that I often just - seemingly by chance - stumble upon authors that later joint the ranks of my favorites.

    I am going to look into Trevor, now that you have "done my research" for me... :)

    -Jay

    ReplyDelete
  13. Thanks, Jay. :-) Do you have a page on Goodreads? If not I think you might enjoy the place.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Thanks for the tip, Ana. I've registered on Goodreads now and have been browsing around there for a couple days - to the exclusion of more productive things I should be doing. :-)
    -Jay

    ReplyDelete
  15. Oh, don't we all! Look out for me there. We can hook up as friends.

    ReplyDelete