On reading William Trevor’s Memories of Youghal

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For previous installments of my analysis of William Trevor’s The Collected Stories, please see the side bar. That said, “Memories of Youghal” bears similarities to “Access to the Children” as Trevor explores the past, particularly regrets and loss. Playing out on a resort deck, an introspective private detective by the name of Quillian spills his life story to Miss Ticher while waiting for the couple he is following to finish a romantic tryst. Quillian talks aimlessly about hit past. He dabbles in his trips to Youghal, on black iron bars, and his abusive Aunt and Uncle, surrogate parents in place of Quillian’s own—both drowned in a tragic incident. Quillian is the classic case of a person swimming in a sea of regret. Compounding his predicament is his total lack of self-worth. He doesn’t know who he is or why he is that way and thus constantly dwells on the focal point of his existence: his parents’ death. This focus leads to constant wander and thus constant ponderous regret: “‘Would I be a different type of man if the parents lived?’” (51). Unable to ever know his parents, for the passed away when he was only five months old, he describes them as the parents and not his parents. There is abject space, a space that intrudes on the man’s life and infects each of his interactions throughout the text.

At first Miss Ticher struggles to both stand and tolerate the Quillian, loathing his false teeth bouncing around in his mouth, hating the ill-fitting clothing, and his general garrulous nature. As the time passes and Quillian details his long list of failures, her character turns inward and revealing an unmarried woman who had given her entire life to teaching, a life that also tingles with regrets. Childless and nearing retirement, Miss Ticher vacations with her lifelong friend Miss Grimshaw. In truth only Miss Grimshaw is happy (if she even is), in control, and looking to live the life she wants. Such a life includes embarrassing her friend and controlling her. As she grimaces over her friend’s morning drink with a stranger, she plans out the elaborate teacher’s lounge embarrassment to come. Yet, this haughty victory is never fulfilled and will not be, for Miss Grimshaw observes a character change in her friend. Lacking the disinterest that existed early on in the conversation, by the end, Miss Ticher notes “‘How cruel the world is’” (55). Life does not unfold according to plan. Humans cannot and do not have a choice in every event that happens before them. There will be a break from Miss Grimshaw and perhaps even a finger point of blame for the chain of events in her life.

Closing their conversation, Miss Ticher notes: “‘I’m sorry,’ Miss Ticher said quietly. ‘I’m sorry your parents were drowned. I’m sorry you don’t like the work you do’”(53). This consolation digs into the crux of the problem: despite his past, despite her past, they cannot change the truth. Nor can the woman cheating on her husband who Quillian is following around for the weekend. Facts are facts, the past is the past, and Trevor cements these facts with each passing word.

On Reading William Trevor's The General’s Day Out

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“The General’s Day Out” is the third piece in William Trevor’s The Collected Stories. Much like with “Access to the Children” and “A Meeting in Middle Age,” Trevor uses the space to explore loss. In this piece, we focus on The General. This man holds himself in great esteem and expects those around him to treat him as such, yet at every turn, he is viewed like the unwanted, elderly grandfather. For what it is worth, The General strives for control. As a man of the military, he always seeks a systematic, purposeful existence. He is the man that wakes up and declares to his maid that he is going out to seek a lady and planning to bed that lady. Regardless of his personal desires, The General lacks the ability to carry out his plan or control his life in general: “He was beginning to feel low; the day was not good; the day was getting out of control” (36). A good day was a day he had by the horns, but at his age and current station: living as a single, elderly man in the English countryside with no local connections, these days do not occur often. He is no longer the man he used to be and the present can no longer deal with him: “The General smiled at some little joke. ‘I have not been myself for many years. Today is just another day’” (44). Like all days, he stumbles through, largely ignorant to community distaste and his current station in life.

In his opinion, military life had been kind to him, offered him a safe space, and a place to flourish. But in retirement he finds an existence devoid of both structure and glory. Thus he bounces around and expects the local populace to both revere and support him, something it is unwilling to do. In truth, they find the man to burdensome, irksome, and something that they strive to be rid of. In part, The General notices his awkwardness, his fall from grace, and even stares at it through his nakedness every morning, but then he puts his shell on, a shell he perceives to project excellence but only yields annoyance: “‘I do not like to offend people. I do not like to be a nuisance. You should have stopped me, sir’” (41).  He offends people left and right, chasing them off at each and every turn while maintaining his overall ignorance to his actions.

So The General demonstrates the hazards of aging and the loss of dignity. He will never be the man of his past again, he is now the man that Frobisher cannot stand: “‘Get the hell off my premises, you bloody old fool! ‘Go on, Suffolk, hop it’” (43). This man does not woo the women he encounters, he frightens them. He cannot instruct tennis at a girls’ school, because he had urges to instruct the girls in other matters. No one wants him, he is fully washed up and put out to pasture, only he has yet to come to grips with his new reality and where he will go from here.

Matt Bell's Scrapper: A Book Review

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Matt Bell has a way of setting the scene and bringing said setting to life. One of the more inventive and creative texts I have read in a while comes in the form of his text In The House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods, a narrative that bends all the rules and dazzles the reader with complex, mind bending prose (see my review here). Bell’s most recent novel Scrapper explores a different angle entirely while still focusing on the setting of life more than the characters therein.

At the most basic level, Scrapper details a city in shambles, a city that is fading away one block at a time, and the collective elements responsible for this death. While the main physical character is the middle aged man Kelly, the true focal point is the city of Detroit itself. Published in 2015, the novel grapples with the reality of the world: it moves on. Detroit, a once shinning city of automotive greatness, has fallen from said precipice. In the wake of both manufacturing and fiscal collapse, men like Kelly are stripping the city to rubble. Thus the novel details rusting of the rust belt and the men aiding the oxidation.

Like Detroit, life was not always so hard for Kelly. He was the all-star wrestler with a college scholarship. He was the man who women lusted after, the man who eventually found love and cared for a son. But Kelly is the man with the jagged paternal relationship, and like with many broken souls, the pangs of this paternal past haunt Kelly to the present day, even as he seeks out a redemptive salvation within his sagging, aging experience.  

Kelly is the epitome of both the city and those who have faced similar economic plights. He lacks a college education, has a storied, complex past, and he does what he can to get by. As the novel begins, this getting by is characterized by going into abandoned homes and buildings and stealing anything metal. Cooper pipes and wire, light fixtures, whatever he can, and selling it for scrap. As Kelly journeys from place to place, he finds love in a woman with multiple sclerosis and, while scrapping a house, he discovers a boy imprisoned in a basement. Kelly seems dedicated to the preservation of these broken characters, for they, like himself, are struggling to get by. They, just like their home, have problems, and these problems are on full display whether through a limp or a kidnapping. He wants to save them, only they may not need saving, if they can be saved at all.  

Dark and dreary, at times Bell’s writing can make your skin crawl, at others he can inspire. While Scrapper does a bit of both, it tells a touching, if not tragic, story of American collapse. Kelly does not seek exceptionalism; he only wants to get by—his entire adoptive home follows suit. Perhaps in some sense, while we all want to be great, we really are following a similar path to the novel’s heart: plugging forward, day-by-day.

Favorite Lines:

• “Anything he took from someone else’s life wouldn’t work forever but if he kept acquiring more maybe the feelings might remain, transferred across the overlap” (21)
• “In the back of a child’s closet he found a scrawl of crayon reading I’LL BE BACK FOR YOU, written to the house, to whatever the child thought a house was” (23)
• “Even if his parents had lived forever he would have found a way to orphan himself” (31)
• “The last white family living in what used to be a white neighborhood. The last black family living in what used to be a black neighborhood. After both families were gone, only ghosts would remain. And what color were ghosts.” (104-105)