“Tonight’s talk is going to be about what’s true.” These were the opening remarks of the second installment of the Gilbert Lecture Series featuring T.M. McNally, author of “The Gateway,” a collection of short stories concerning the relationship between body, that which we live in, and home, that which we leave. The Gilbert Lecture Series is a gathering held in the DeGolyer Library presented by the SMU department of English, bringing together authors and readers for readings, book singings and question and answer session.
Senior editor of the SMU Press and a colleague of McNally, Kathryn Lang introduced the author as “a heart-strong fiction writer” at the “beginning of his already impressive career.” McNally, who has already written five other works, including three other acclaimed collections of short stories, specializes in a form of writing that brings together both fiction and autobiography.
“People enjoy fiction because it allows us to escape our world yet say something about our own in the process,” he said. “I mean, isn’t that why we all love movies?”
By implementing autobiographical tones, McNally is able to bring a sense of descriptive accuracy that can only be gained from actually being there. During the reception, he commented, “Always write what you know.”
McNally spent a brief amount of time explaining the true accounts of how he originally came to be in the locations talked about in his book, from trendy local bars, to the brightly lit streets of Paris. It was a truly unique and insightful experience to see how the creative process stems from simple life experiences. His first reading, from the first of his short stories entitled “Bastogne,” was the story of the terminally-ill man searching for the battlefield in which his father fought and lost a leg in World War II. This particular story involves the interesting relationship between a man and his father, both the biological parent and the Almighty.
All of his short stories, in fact, have reccurring thematic elements of infidelity, history, legacy and, most importantly, love. McNally excels at taking a simple plot, such as a couple on their wedding anniversary in Paris, and making it warm and engaging with a compulsive attention to detail, a first-person omniscient perspective, undertones of irony and an always progressing narrative; in other words, by making it human. To McNally, though, “these are religious stories,” designed to reflect that spiritually guided nature we find in life and each other.
