The William Trevor Reader: “Autumn Sunshine”
Sometimes I think I ask too much of short stories. I will forgive a lot of flaws in novels, for novels are an essentially imperfectible artform. Novels are, almost in their DNA, meant to be baggy, digressive, overlong, and even to some extent incoherent thematically. They are too long and unwieldy to support formal perfection, and the “perfect” ones that spring to mind give cause for suspicion. , for example, is completely perfect but also really a long short story. , on the other, in his unapproachable greatness, had a self-defeating way of strangling the life out of his novels. I think of ’s useful dictum that (paraphrasing here) plot and character are always at odds. The , i.e. the demands of formal structure, deform character to its needs. And likewise the demands of character usually enervate and diminish action and structure, so novels almost always perch awkward and unbalanced on this seesaw. The pleasure in reading a novel, really, is more about spending time with an author’s particular style and intellect.
