William Trevor: A sculptor of words

“I don’t think it’s quite a question of appeal,” he says when asked why he is strongly drawn to the discipline of a short story. “It’s a natural thing, like an athlete – a fella who can run 100 meters but not so good over 220 meters. It’s about finding your length.”

Academics have probed deeply into Trevor’s biography in an effort to reason why he continually explores particular themes. Scholarly theses have been written on whether his sensibilities are informed by the fact that he moved from place to place as a child, his Anglo-Irish background, or whether he was emotionally scarred by his parents’ “absolutely appalling marriage” – he once wrote openly about “their shattered relationship” for The New Yorker magazine.

He remains curious but resistant to further scrutiny. One senses he is even a little bemused by all the attention. “It’s not fair to condemn interpretations outright, but generally speaking, people do read too much into fiction. They go too far and get the wrong end of the stick.”

Instead he delights in referring to Swiss tennis champion Roger Federer or West Indies star cricketer Viv Richards. Sports fans enthralled by their natural brilliance on courts and creases will readily accept that genius does not always invite an explanation.

“It’s a comparison I often use because I’m often asked to analyze the reasons behind a book after writing it,” he begins, preferring to avoid the question whenever he can. “People like Federer playing tennis or Richards playing cricket often say they don’t know how they did what they did. And that’s the same for me. You can analyze these things far too much. You can talk about it and talk about it – actually I think you can talk it out completely. I’m very bad at analyzing how I do anything. I’m a storyteller. I just sit down and write stories. That’s what I do.”

As a tutored observer of life he is prepared, however, to acknowledge that his formative years shaped his own perspective. “I think the advantage for me growing up in so many different towns is that what struck me was the difference rather than the similarity between them,” he reflects. “Something to sharpen up the beady eye of the novelist. I think that changing scene of childhood was very good for me. Nothing was ever settled. Being settled and being happy is probably not the best training for someone who wants to write about the human condition. It’s not much help if it’s too easy.

“At the time as a child you just trundled along happily – or in my case, sometimes unhappily because of my parents’ quarrels and the difficulties they had – and if you put it all together it’s a huge tapestry that’s there in the memory. You will always go back to it.”

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Nster.com