SOURCE: "Stuck in the Slot," in London Review of Books, Vol. 14, No. 19, October 8, 1992, pp. 9-10.

Enright is an English man of letters who has spent most of his career abroad, teaching English literature at universities in Egypt, Japan, Berlin, Thailand, and Singapore, The author of critically respected works in a variety of genres, he is best known for his poetry, which is conversational in style and often reflects his humanistic values through portraits of Far Eastern life. According to William Walsh, "Enright is a poet with a bias toward light and intelligibility," and his critical essays are frequently marked by sardonic treatment of what he considers the culturally pretentious in literature. Below, he offers a stylistic and thematic analysis of the short fiction in McGaherns The Collected Stories.

One of John McGahern's stories begins thus: There are times when we see the small events we look forward to...