The William Trevor Reader: “An Evening With John Joe Dempsey”
As previously mentioned, William Trevor is underestimated as a horny writer. Among the titans of the short story form, his perv quotient is probably only matched or exceeded by Updike (Cheever’s work is also very horny, but it’s mostly a diffuse horniness that grades quickly into anxious fabulism). Sex, and the desire for sex, are an animating and surprisingly omnipresent feature in Trevor’s work—surprising given Trevor’s staid reputation, the woolen, dowdy aura of elderly Irishness. Why is this?
Updike is an instructive example. Updike writes directly at and about sex, as Trevor often does, but it
