The New Yorker once proclaimed William Trevor “the greatest living writer of short stories in English.”  Trevor published twenty novels and novellas, fifteen collections of short stories, and eight plays in his lifetime, but his fiction is not well-known in North America. 

Trevor will not dazzle you with plot and action. “But if you find yourself wondering about the inner lives of the people you see in the street, or the grocery store, or on your commuter train, you will find no better source than Trevor.” Of a typical Trevor story, Julian Barnes comments: “it doesn’t go where we predict…because it has ceased to be a story. It has become life, and life wrongfoots us…we submit to the deep essential truth that Trevor has presented.” Elizabeth Trout says that Trevor taught her these things: “Voice. Class. Details. Place”—and “compassion to all of the characters one writes about.” Jhumpa Lahiri says simply: “I’d be lost without him.” Yiyun Li concurs: “My major influence was and is William Trevor.”

We’ll study eleven Trevor’s stories, reading two for each class–until the last session, when we’ll focus on a single, longer story. In our discussions, we’ll consider such topics as theme, style, setting, language, point of view, and characterization. Differing interpretations and insights are welcome and will make the class interesting!

PDFs of the stories will be provided.

In 1981, Charles Newman and his wife Suzanne  began teaching in Budapest, Hungary, unexpectedly launching thier careers as international educators. Since then, he has taught English, history, humanities, writing, and theory of knowledge courses in New Delhi, Karachi, Tokyo, Moscow, and Gangtok, as well as at the Waring School in Beverly, MA. Charles did his MA in Literature from the Bread Loaf School of English in Middlebury, Vermont and my undergraduate work at St. John’s College—the Great Books School—and at Columbia University.

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