Luck of the Irish

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Critics compare William Trevor to the James Joyce of “Dubliners” with great regularity, and it is an apt comparison. Both bring to their Irish characters an intimacy that is also astringent, both make the lives of the sentimental glow with an unsentimental brightness. But the Joyce comparison communicates something else, about how Mr. Trevor would never be the author of a “Ulysses,” about how he has gone on, through 12 collections now, in a line that Joyce abandoned after emitting a single spark of perfection.

In the title story of the new collection, “Cheating at Canasta” (Viking, 240 pages, $24.95), an Englishman looks across a restaurant in Venice and wonders if the diners at the next table are “Scott Fitzgerald people.” That writer, like Joyce, shared Mr. Trevor’s familiarity with the Roman Catholic church, and with almost physical manipulations of guilt and hope. Especially in early Trevor, there is an unearned vigor that reminds me of Fitzgerald. Mr. Trevor is an ominous writer, but he has occasionally worked in tragicomic pastels. In “The Day We Got Drunk on Cake” (1967) a young man dragged out of his office and into a pointless afternoon drink with miscellaneous hussies persists in phoning another girl, a girl with class, named Lucy. Lucy tries to be nice, but the man makes it hard. He calls and calls. In the end, he calculates that Lucy will not be the love of his life, anyway. His pursuit of her has been a distraction and a performance. “Not the day of my desperate bidding,” he admits.

Mr. Trevor’s characters are not introverts but they think hard about their feelings. Mallory, the Englishman in the restaurant — can’t help but eavesdrop on the Scott Fitzgerald people. When they get up to go, Mallory waves goodbye. They stop, realizing that he is English and would have understood their conversation — they have been arguing.

“There was a moment of disbelief, and then acceptance. This registered in their features, and shame crept in before the stylishness that had dissipated in the course of their quarrel returned to come to their rescue.”

Mr. Trevor is increasingly an abstract writer, but his abstractions — shame, stylishness — are themselves almost palpable, like gases, creeping and dissipating. In another story, “The Children,” an agrarian widower fails to guide his daughter very far toward accepting her future stepmother. He puzzles over the problem; he stays up drinking and takes long walks and tries to listen to his daughter’s silent pleading. He never reaches a definite conclusion, but what his fiancée says sums up the situation best: “They had been clumsy and had not known it.” It is a common expression, but it befits Mr. Trevor’s handling. Guilt is “scattered”; feelings in general are treated as tangible, dynamic phenomena. They can occasionally be grasped.

This is not just a linguistic point, but an observation that signals what is most interesting about Mr. Trevor’s recent work. Most writers change over time; Mr. Trevor improves, and that makes sense, given the pace and consistency of his output. His stories, appearing regularly in American magazines, are a steady source of what nutrition fiction uniquely provides: personal reflection loosened from the author’s autobiographical facts. In Mr. Trevor’s case, fiction becomes a chorus; he speaks through many different types of characters. When you read a Trevor collection through, this variety becomes immediately impressive, and perhaps distracting. “Cheating at Canasta” speaks through a young Irish mechanic, a middle-class wife, an Irish panhandler, an Irish priest, the Englishman Mallory, several violent Irish youths, an Irish pedophile, an Irish landowner, a night school instructor, and others. But all of these different people are telling one story, about Mr. Trevor’s still-developing way of living in the world.

Universally respected and frequently beloved, Mr. Trevor is nonetheless ill-served by readers who enjoy his consistency while ignoring his career-long evolution. The key development, in this collection, is Mr. Trevor’s increased subtlety. It would be misleading and sensational to compare his career to that of Henry James, but it is useful to think of late James when noticing the complexity that sends you back over Mr. Trevor’s gentle diction, rereading for sense. Witness this paragraph, at the very end of “A Perfect Relationship”:

Prosper didn’t want the night to end. He loved her, she gave him back what she could: he had never not known that. Her voice, still reminiscing, was soft, and when it sounded tired he talked himself and, being with her, found the courage she had found and lost. His it was to order now what must be, to say what must be said. There had been no silliness, there wasn’t a mistake.

This is a writer who deserves to be free of “Dubliners.”

blytal@nysun.com


The New York Sun

© 2025 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

or
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use