That 'Capacity To Create'

“There is an element of autobiography in all fiction in that pain or distress, or pleasure, is based on the author's own. But in my case that is as far as it goes. “ – William Trevor

Born on this date in 1928, Trevor was an Irish novelist, playwright, and widely regarded as one of the greatest contemporary writers of short stories in English language history.  And, while he was Irish through and through, he made his home in Southwest England for over 50 years, dying there in 2016.

Trevor was a three-time winner of the coveted Whitbread Prize and was nominated five times for the Booker Prize.  In his final decade he was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature, particularly after his final novel Love and Summer not only garnered rave reviews but also was an international best seller.  

He was such a prolific writer of short stories that he had a remarkable 20volumes of them published during the time he also was producing 16 novels, 6 plays, and a number of nonfiction works and major essays.   He attributed his output to an intangible capacity to create.

“The capacity you're thinking of is imagination,” he clarified.  “Without it there can be no understanding, indeed no fiction.”

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