Imagine a librarian who adores books. Seems ordinary, right? But, he actually doesn’t enjoy reading, he only likes the texture and look of the books he holds so dear. But a simple sentence like this one can be tossed into the “ordinary” bin of readers’ minds.
Author Douglas Trevor, a former UI English Department faculty member, stirs up a spice-filled brew of fairly lighthearted short stories called The Book of Wonders.
Located in the midst of book shelves and warm coffee, Prairie Lights hosted Trevor and his interested readers and colleagues on Thursday.
Trevor read clips of each of his nine short stories, each with a wide range of plots and very interesting, very human, characters. From a Shakespearean scholar to professors as felons to librarians who never read, each quirky story orbits a similar theme.
“These stories are about the ridiculous and the not-so-ridiculous ways that people try to get out of ruts. Many of the stories look at people who are emerging from disastrous relationships,” Trevor said. “And a number of the stories think about the relationships that people have with books and with other people they connect with through books.”
All bookworms enjoy comparing their interactions and thoughts to their beloved, bound stories. For instance, one story tells of a woman with writer’s block, and the twist of her writer’s block ending may give present and future writers the jitters.
Trevor also asks the following questions.
“How dependent is storytelling on the medium in which stories are told? What does it mean to read a story on the page, as opposed to hearing a story, or dreaming a narrative? How is technology changing storytelling? What is the future of narrative?”
Trevor began reading from the first part of his book, which narrows into a New England town with a curious adult daughter and an elderly mother whose tense aura radiates the household on Thanksgiving Day.
The Book of Wonders, as she calls it, sits atop a dresser, holding all her precious antique transactions, is at risk when her daughter’s husband asks to take a look. With Anabelle’s obsession for antiques, and two toddler grandchildren rambling about the house, her mind begins revolves around the ’60s, her golden days.
In the story presenting the failed Shakespeare scholar, interested readers comment on the themes of the story.
“In some ways, it’s facing a failure, but he is finally able to shake off his allusion of who he thought he was going to be,” said Miriam Gilbert, a UI professor emerita of English. “It’s about losing who you thought you were, but in a way, you’re free to become somebody new.”
At the age of 6, Trevor began writing his first short stories. Even at that young age, he hired an “illustrator,” his sister. Once in college, he started writing fiction seriously and was published at 23 years old.
Trevor has had many of his works published, including his books Girls I Know, and The Thin Tear in the Fabric of Space (winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award). He said he is excited to be back in Iowa City after having been deprived of the City of Literature for so long. At present, he teaches creative writing and directs the writing program at the University of Michigan and lives in Ann Arbor.
