When William Trevor was interviewed by the Paris Review in 1989, he was asked to share his thoughts on the craft of the short story. ‘I think it is the art of the glimpse’, he replied. ‘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’.
This course offers opportunities to study a wide variety of illuminating and entertaining texts by outstanding practitioners of the genre, some famous, others relatively little-known. A common theme throughout many of these stories are the profound emotional and psychological crises they depict, and the contemporaneous social and political concerns they reflect. The first half of the course includes pieces by George Egerton and James Joyce, which address the politics of gender in the late nineteenth-and early twentieth century. Male unease at burgeoning female assertiveness surfaces again in Doris Lessing's tale set in 1950s Africa, in which an over-possessive grandfather attempts in vain to intervene in his grand-daughter's relationship.
Interspersed with these fictions are others, such as George Orwell's 'Shooting an Elephant' and John Montague's 'The Cry' which depict prejudice and injustice and their effects in a range of different continents. The middle weeks include very different narratives by two Northern Irish writers, Bernard Mac Laverty and Anne Devlin; whereas his early Belfast-based stories, 'Secrets' and 'The Exercise', are essentially family-focused, hers addresses the terrible impact of the Troubles on a young woman's life. The selection from Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber revisit and revitalise myths and fairy tales, infusing them with contemporary resonances.
The closing weeks will present the group with an opportunity to engage with the work of a long-acclaimed and a rising star. William Trevor's stories have been described by Roddy Doyle as consistently 'brilliant', 'elegant', 'precise' and 'surprising', praise that might equally apply to Claire Keegan's fiction. The narratives selected to illustrate her work are the title story from her first collection published in 1999 and her most recent publication, So Late in the Day, a novella from 2023. Last but not least, we will discuss 'Chemistry' by Graham Swift which depicts a youngster's pain at losing his father, contrasting that with Jackie Kay's wry depiction of a woman who deludes herself that her relationship with a former partner can be revived.
The course has been designed to present students with a varied, extensive range of material, working in a form that has often been given insufficient attention.