SOURCE: Wilkshire, Claire. “‘Voice Is Everything’: Reading Mavis Gallant's ‘The Pegnitz Junction.’” University of Toronto Quarterly 69, no. 4 (fall 2000): 891-916.

In the following essay, Wilkshire analyzes the point of view and characterization of the story “The Pegnitz Junction,” surveying the critical response to other narrators of Gallant's stories and positing an archetypal voice that highlights the centrality of voice in short fiction.

Voice is everything. If I don't hear the voice, I can't write the story. One has to find the exact tone, and it has to hold from beginning to end if it is to be true.

Mavis Gallant

Mavis Gallant has written plays, novels, and non-fiction, but the short story remains her most important genre. While it is impossible to characterize the entire body of any writer's work, Gallant's short fictions lend themselves to description more readily than some. Gallant is a writer's writer, which is to...