Painters know that the viewer’s gaze can be deceived. Perhaps guided is the better word, as the point of this deception is simply to communicate more effectively. In visual art, this can often mean laying down a single line or mark, rather than spending hours with a hair-thin brush trying to capture detail. The trick, if there is one, is to convey all the detail by suggestion, so that the viewer’s mind believes it and therefore sees it.
Surely the equivalent for writers is the ability to convey meaning effectively and succinctly. But the idea goes further. If we want to describe the life of a character, for example, we cannot and should not seek to include every detail. Finely shaped salient dots provide a complete image. A single word, chosen correctly, can create personality in a way that description alone can never do.
The technique is particularly notable in that widely used but rarely mastered genre, the short story. And William Trevor provides a great example of how it should be done in his Last Stories. These pieces are about people, their lives, loves, losses, hopes and fears. What happens to them is as important as how. And at the end of each story, we feel that we have met the characters, shared their lives for a few pages. But we also feel that we know them individually and in depth.
William Trevor’s technique is beginning. If this were visual, he would present a large canvas, most of which would be blank. Here and there there would be marks, touches, lines, scattered almost randomly across the surface. But when we back up, these would come together and add up to reveal absolutely compelling details, which would then fill out the rest of the image. It’s so easy when creating a short story to focus on the minuscule, concluding that the form is better suited to the containable. Here William Trevor lays this idea to rest, elegantly, succinctly, and with suggested but vivid detail.