Reading Challenge Launch: The Trevor vs. Moore Chekhov Challenge

It was only a short time ago that I added The Collected Stories of Lorrie Moore (Faber. ISBN: 9780571239368) to my bookshelves. I remember how excited I was at getting my hands on this collection at the time; so much so that I gave it the honour that day of featuring it in a Daily Bookshot. In that post I mentioned that the back cover of the collection had a quote from author Alison Lurie, proclaiming Moore as being the nearest thing that we have to a modern-day Chekhov. I may have just nodded my head at that comment but Lit blogger Tom Cunliffe (A Common Reader) was quick to respond to Lurie’s Chekhovian epithet to Moore, arguing that short story aficionado William Trevor (currently standing proud in this year’s Man Booker longlist with his latest novel Love and Summer), with his penchant for small staging and intense relationships in his stories, was more akin to the Russian story-telling supremo. Tom’s comment had planted a seed in my brain.

Rather than withering and dying, the ‘seed’ that Tom had planted, has flourished over this past month. And like an itch that I can’t quite reach, the question of which one of two profilic short storytellers is more the modern Chekhov has niggled me. Of late that ‘itch’ has become almost unbearable. And so to put a stop to it I’ve decided to launch a William Trevor vs. Lorrie Moore reading challenge in the hope that I can discover once and for all who out of the two is more like Chekhov.

So how does the Trevor vs. Moore Chekhov Challenge work then? Well fundamentally it’s simply a case of reading the short stories of both writers and deciding who’s the most Chekhovian. Simple as! Sourcing the stories is no problem. As I’ve already mentioned I have a copy of Lorrie Moore’s The Collected Stories on my shelves, and, as also featured in a recent Daily Bookshot, I also have a copy of The Collected Stories of William Trevor (Penguin. ISBN: 9780140232455). However therein does lie one small problem. The Lorrie Moore collection amounts to a total of thirty eight stories, while the William Trevor collection contains more than twice that amount, eighty five to be exact. Originally I thought I’d overcome this issue by just picking out thirty eight William Trevor shorts to match the total of Moore. However not knowing if I’d be picking out the best or worst of Trevor Moore in that thirty eight, this would be a bit unfair for the purpose of comparison. A better solution was called for.

The solution I ended up coming up with in the end involves reading all thirty eight of the Lorrie Moore shorts, and all eighty five from William Trevor. Once read I will pick the best ten from each (‘best’ will also include a consideration of how Chekhovian the stories are), and make a final decision based on these top choices. It does mean, aside from the extra work, that I’m exposing myself a lot more to Trevor than I am to Moore, but ultimately I don’t think that’s too much of a problem given that my final decision on who’s the more Chekhovian will be based solely on that final top ten.

So that’s about all I can really say about the Trevor vs. Moore Chekhov Challenge for the time being. It’s now down to the reading of the stories themselves, and picking out the top ten from each author. As I don’t want to impact on my other reading commitments I’ve left myself an open-ended deadline for completing this challenge, which allows me to fit in the reading of the stories as and when I can without the pressure of a deadline. That said I am going to try to read a story from each author each day (now I’ve finished the Ox-Tales series there’s a morning slot going free), so we’ll see how that goes. As always you’ll be able to follow my progress in my reading journal, and through any challenge specific posts.

OK, so now I’m expecting a torrent of comments telling me that I should have brought other short story writers into the mix i.e. Carver, Updike etc., but where does one draw the line my good friends? Better I stick to just the two for now.