February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
What is your latest book about?
Specifically, about the fate of Willie Dunne, the son in a play of mine called “The Steward of Christendom;” more generally, about the experiences of the Irish soldiers in the Great War. Many of the Irish men who went out to fight did so in the belief that it might secure Home Rule, not an ignoble aspiration. But the 1916 Rising intervened, of course, and by the time the war was over, attitudes to Irish men in British uniforms had changed radically and understandably; but veterans were thought of as traitors at home, or shunned, even shot; families had to do their mourning in private. All the survivors themselves have died; not one of them remaining; I hoped that I might bring Willie Dunne at least back from the cold hand of history, or try to.
What is your writing routine? Are there ideal conditions?
I do as much reading as I can. I haunt my workroom. It’s an odd process, and you probably couldn’t bake good bread like that. I try to write when something seems ‘to want to begin’. Ideal conditions: a room of your own, time and a peaceful mind, and merciful children.
What advice to you have for aspiring writers?
Write if you have to and the devil take the hindmost; don’t write if you don’t feel you have to. It’s a curious profession. As Woody Allen said, there aren’t many professions where you are setting yourself up for possible public humiliation in the morning newspaper… You need to be open to everything, so criticism is sometimes experienced as a disturbance more in the realm of childhood than adulthood. A writer is like a soldier going out without gun or sword, against a pretty formidable foe, not the least of which is time. You might be wasting your time. But as wasting your time goes, as Woody Allen might have said, it’s one of the best ways to do it…
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Name three books that are memorable in terms of your reading pleasure?
“Victory” by Joseph Conrad. This is not considered his best book, butsomehow as a young man of 20 is seemed to me overwhelming. “Mr Norris Changes Trains” by Christopher Isherwood, just because it’s word perfect, a very hard thing to achieve and not always necessary or even desirable. “Paddy and Mr Punch” by Roy Foster. Revelatory Irish book written by a supreme stylist on the Roman model.
What book are you currently reading?
“The Family on Paradise Pier” by Dermot Bolger. This comes out in Ireland two days after “A Long Long Way” so I thought I should have a look at the other horse and rider. It is a fantastically interesting novel about families and history and transcendence.
Is there a book you wish you had written?
“Disgrace” by J.M. Coetzee. This is a modern book, of course, that won the
Booker Prize. It is one of the few books that have you wondering how he could possibly have done it. Every so often there is a sentence that seems to lift up and reveal a huge unsuspected world of light beneath. It is a sort of wonderfully celebratory philosophy, but also harsh and infinitely grown-up. I don’t know if I really and truly wish I had written it, because I couldn’t have; but I am deeply grateful that such books can be written in the modern age.
Name a book that you were pleasantly surprised by?
“The Diaries of Hans Christian Andersen.” I wrote a libretto for a musical
about him, and was a little put off by his autobiographies, which are a little sweet and false in a peculiar old-fashioned way. But his diaries are darkly honest, about himself, about even his faltering body at the end of his life. I would suspect the real Andersen is entirely different than our understanding of him even so. A most curious, admonitory figure indeed who continues to haunt me.
If you could meet one author, living or dead, who would it be?
John Clare. First of all, who can explain the poems? They are as fresh as
living things, first fruits, they breathe on the page in a way so many of the poems of his time do not. He is the origin of so many fine Irish poets, Patrick Kavanagh, Seamus Heaney. He was mad, of course, now and then, but I would still like simply to have a view of him, to ask him how he is, and shake his hand.
What book changed your life?
“Collected Shorter Poems of Ezra Pound.” I carried the old Faber edition of
this book everywhere when I was a young writer. I had no real idea how beleaguered he had been in his last years, because that is the under-story of the Cantos. Pound has suffered a strange decline in fortunes and I believe few people read him. But the shorter poems are a kind of intellectual autobiography, and the book was a great friend to a lonesome Irish writer in Paris, age 22.
What is your favorite spot in Ireland?
Cuillonaghtan, by the lakes of Callow, North Mayo. I have a little house there. It rains most of the time. But even the rain walking across the lower plain is heartening. The people of North Mayo are exceptional, maybe from a long history of difficulties. From my little hill Croagh Patrick looks exactly like a huge manmade pyramid — no wonder a holy mountain.
You’re Irish if . . .
You say you are. If you have stood on Irish ground a moment, and felt what
that means. If you cannot exist without being Irish. If the dark and bright
song of Irishness is in you.