A silence. I doubt that gary. We met the irish writer colm toibin while he was in berlin the world renowned author is extremely versatile she writes novels short stories essays place and poetry we spoke with him about his books in his life as well as about ireland and how its changing. Tobin is particularly known for his skill at writing compelling female characters. His bestselling novel brooklyn was adapted for the screen it tells the story of a young woman who cannot find work in ireland and so makes the difficult decision to emigrate. Like so many before and. After her age bored to shit in the hope of finding a better future. She heads to music. There she settles in the boring of brooklyn which is home to a Large Community of irish immigrants. At 1st anxious torn between the 2 cultures and then between to meet tony in new york. And who she meets in ireland on a trip back. To pins compassionate depiction of her heartache for torment and her agonizing decision consolidated his reputation as a writer of. Where does his understanding of women come from. A woman i would say maybe could you just stop that making those exaggerated figures of women you know there are gay versions of it was i think of a very powerful i was brought up by women and other words that they were my mother had sisters were in the house a lot i had to nurse siblings or girls so were always well women talk i was always very interesting what they were saying wheres the man could sort of be very grumpy your tree man talk about some sport i was not if youre a 5 year old is nothing theres nothing. In this or that women upstairs would matter what they say it would be yours for us. It is for me. To be has written 2 books much of his work is autobiographical and ireland plays a major role. Each artist in the great i was tradition has invented and thats what you said in an interview what is your island i come from a sphere if you stray. Its in a small town in the southeast called out of course thats my world and a small stretch of the wexford coast about 10 miles away so im not sure the world is home but its certainly a territory and out of that territory i got a great deal of emotional resonance so because i know those streets and i know that stretch of coast so thats mine in this place with long winters long memories have a lot of grey sky and there i can work from there. To being isnt the only one to have been inspired by the skies of ireland this country in 5000000 has given birth to a disproportionately high number of writers james joyce is arguably the most famous. But the playwright George Bernard shaw. Oscar wilde. Samuel beckett. As well as the poet seamus heaney. Sha beckett and he were awarded the nobel prize for literature while. Thats an impressive place in what led to its size the only way out of poverty was education and the only way into education was literacy so literacy became a sort of fetish almost in poor families books reading and writing and in the long winters that you know one person in the family has to start thinking i could write one of those i could do that. Many of irelands great writers were born in the capital of dublin. The city has a number of museums devoted to the countrys literary heritage. One is the Writers Museum which celebrates centuries of irish literature. And. What about the new generation of writers in ireland. Look at that moment its every season. 2 or 3 young writers have merit youre a very very good this but happening especially drastic 5 years you go surely not another if you read the book you think this is very good at the moment its an extraordinary thing and you thought maybe it wont happen again people become into the software or you know go to work for facebook or something but now theyre writing novels and stories. And. Theres also called mccann. And. Then theres sally whose novel normal people was a runaway success all over the world. When you know youre reading it because its fascinating to see you know the ones who are more experimental and the ones who are writing for womens lives and the ones who write about the city of the country obviously its an absolute fascinating thing you know you want to be a fool not to readers and what literary tradition do you see yourself. Oh im sort of melancholy you know i come out of something thats melancholy. So but the thing is when youre writing when youre working if you start thinking over what literary tradition do i come out of you with then write a terrible sentence which would be filled with selfimportance of sorts of me or my literature titian so your job is not to think like that to say that the sentences do the work and to make the sentences true meaning that if one sentences like this as a rhythm like this the next services to be a variation on that rhythmically and you work almost as though youre a composer working and. Therefore the less you think the better your job is to sort of feel truthfully and find the melody for that is it like music but its like music in that its based on melody its based on rhythm and that is its the nervous system sometimes or it should hit the reader. Nervous system before the reader start to interpret her use their intelligence some other system is happening that causes the reader to turn the page not merely to know whats happening next but to actually follow the rhythm. Tobin is passionate about music. In the last Chamber Music especially baroque he divides his time between ireland the United States and spain but he says home is where his records are do you listen to music while you have right now i know i know i think that were being a steak it would bring in so the eat a lot of music easier motion thats very satisfying but when youre working you need something much more austere such a silence and also i think you need to face in words youre having a big view out the window would distract you just looked in or its all in word and thats all silent no music no fear just no comfortable just just right you know just work along. Wonderful books of emerged from the selfimposed austerity the blackwater lightship tells of 3 generations of women discussing homosexuality hiv aids and changes an irish society. The master is a fictional account of the life of the us writer henry james. Mothers and sons is a collection of short stories in which each story explores an aspect of the mother son relationship. Nora websters unforgettable protagonist struggles with grief and finds a way to emancipation in 1906 ireland. House of means is a retelling of a classic greek tragedy. Tobins over shows his compassion and intelligence yet he wasnt always an avid reader he struggled at school as a boy. When he was 12 his father died and toby began to start or. You did start reading at the age of 9 and you started writing poems its the age of 12. Was the death of your father as a trigger to write or something ah i imagine so because it came very soon afterwards but it was also that in my family study was very important and that when you went to secondary school you should going to ruin your own every evening and you know you might be reading the last month or learning side so i was writing poems you know and so just being left alone in a room like that with paper was the 1st thing i did instead of studying. What to look for the literary world the extra. Which to be read to us tells of unexplained absence of recurring motif in his words. The time we were left by our mother you know. Has no drama attached to it it was all grayness strangeness arent dealt with us in her own distracted way her husband was mild distant almost good humored and all i know is that our mother did not get in touch with us once not once during this time there were no letter there was no letter or phone call or visit our father was in hospital we did not know how long we were going to be left there in the years that followed our mother never explained her absence and we never asked her if shed ever wondered how we were or how we felt during those months. What you describe in this book and ignore bob so thats what you experienced yourself when your father was dying a muslim left you alone with relatives i mean how did that influence you. You know life you know writing. All that was more or less what happened it doesnt mean its autobiography because you change things and the way you remember changes things anyway so its not a sort of slice of memory as much as a sort of literary form that uses memory events things that happened as a way of sort of sickening the plot or or anchoring everything in in what you might call fact or at least in things that i remember as a happy that i think were true i think that had enormous influence and you learn to look after yourself and you get the notion that nothing is ever certain or secure i suppose you learn not to trust people. Im not sure any of this is useful to being a writer but it certainly has helped me in some books to have a subject that i had not fully worked. You know in psychoanalysis or in any other way that it was like the not that needs to be untied and so it became a pressing matter to write this down and to find a form for her to find a way off communicating it without sounding self pitying or sentimental. These days is a citizen. But he remains drawn to the landscapes of his childhood. And to the atmosphere in the country for so many centuries by the rigid codes of the Catholic Church. Conservative catholic nationalistic there whats that was your family background today what youre just the opposite what happened ireland changed everyone in every family slowly change themselves i mean it wasnt you know it began perhaps with the Womens Movement but i mean women who werent part of the Womens Movement just slowly in their own houses became more powerful became you know became more powerful less interested in being being made feel small and out of that group other movements about how to treat children about gay people or people for example who didnt feel great religious feeling so the society became slowly sometimes imperceptibly and then quickly. Very liberal place to live and in easy place to move. Yet for a long time the Catholic Church did have a Strong Influence in ireland around 80 percent of the irish population is catholic. A series of sex abuse scandals has tarnished the churchs reputation but the priests and nuns toby depicts are likeable. In the last 2 decades a couple of few scandals in the Catholic Church also india and in all over the world but became public but including the irish county where you are from what all this garage looking back to you see your own experience in a different light i do because i was in a boarding school where a good number of the priests ended up in jail and so i think if youre a novelist but if youre anybody but just their knowledge and youre looking at think i know when that happened and how it happened but at the time i missed. I didnt realize what was going on right in front of me and i think for a novelist its a tremendously interesting idea that all the time perhaps in all of our lives in our characters lives theres something going on thats maybe obvious except if they dont notice us. In a landmark referendum of 2015 a majority of irish citizens voted in favor of recognizing same sex marriage calling to believe its openly gay and played an Important Role in the campaign and is proud of irelands development. You were brought up in a kind of dark time certainly saw homosexuality had no name in the country which doesnt didnt recognize gay rights. It was it was being gay was seen as a form of perversion and suffering when did this when did you realize you were gay and when did you decide to go public. Probably realize that early on and i think it was a very common thing in our lives or you would tell one or 2 people one or 2 people would guess and then no one else would know so you would compartmentalize everything so that you know he lived it felt easy it felt natural but when i went to live in spraying when i was 2975. Boston i was wild i thought time. There were no gay bars which meant that the streets certain streets were just filled up not with gay men wandering about and it might have seemed there was repression but it didnt feel like that in spain felt much more open people were much more ready to enjoy their lives and arlen there was always guilt or. To be described as skilled very well he honors his characters in the struggles many of which are universal. Even if for instance fled poverty and suffered Emotional Turmoil as did millions of immigrants. To be in thinks its important to get the setting right its usually depicts the times in which is characters are living. I almost think if you know in a painting or portray the work done behind the brush work just to make it color behind often does a great deal of work even though it seems like background i think if youre writing a novel set in time no matter what you do what going on in that in the either background or deep background of the society has to make its way into the novel even if you try and keep it out it will come in somewhere other doesnt need to foreground this project to know it if you know what year because it matters enormously. The characters in tobins novels tend to be ordinary men and women teachers accountants merchants all from rural ireland. As the heroes and heroines of his novels also his readers yes how did this become a good its become a good audience. Books and. You get a sense that a book a novel a new novel isnt it is some sort of intervention. Imagine this with imaginatively in the society that somehow or other book clubs or women who for example havent had a great chances or education will could take a book open to the book and up meaning a lot of them to this because theyre in a way i think the society is so filled with still i think with silences with things theyre just not mentioned much that its its if you dont talk often about things that really matter to you so that for example if theres if you lose somebody and after death people often just go quiet just just so a book that deals with that becomes a way of breaking aside. Brooklyn list tobins most successful novel to teens it was adapted to a screenplay too though he didnt write it he did however write the screenplay for return to montauk together with german jew better focus she learned the screenplay of brooklyn was written by many kong the after that german director fuck us a little asked you to to help him to be the cove writer for the screenplay of return to montauk. How did that happen and can you imagine today. Writing the screenplay for one of your own novels no i think its if youve written a novel what you dont want to do that is go back and make changes in it that you would never have made when you were writing it and find with a producer or a new producer or a group of people telling you on oh we dont want her to go you know we want her to grow to not go home or you know go to brooklyn much earlier so they had said and youre suddenly actually you know. Destroying your own work so i didnt want to do that i liked what nick did but i didnt want to do it for a book or stronger or a. I was ready i probably i had just written a movie a novel too i was sort of free. He and the idea of working with him and learning something and actually looking at the form of screenplay and thinking about actors and we had a very good time both of us doing this a lot of the time we wrote together i mean literally together i mean we would be opposite one another to talk or no not listen to this he said no no no youre actually right this right this to try this and i was just kind of at that for hours and people were stranded. People were staying with me say she just matters because there how youre not even listening to each other. So far returned to montauk has been tobins only foray into the world hes currently working on a new novel that one of the 1st also says youve read when you were young was too much money and now he told me that youre writing a novel about too much money can you tell me a little bit more about it you know when i was a teenager you were nobody in my world if you know youve heard watching grounds films and reading the Magic Mountain and you know that they were the sort of necessary things but part of that world of being. An art student or literature student. In the early 19th seventies and hes been on my mind as a figure of great ambiguity. That nothing about him is fully clear from his sexuality to his relationship to his family to his political beliefs to his response to various public things that occurred to the great difference between his life of the 1st world war and life in the 2nd world war his relation to his brother to his mother to his son 3 daughters as theres nothing stable in all that theres nothing everything has to be investigated and dramatize so its a very interesting story a lot of it centers on the writing at dr faustus. So. Looking as a show. Of having a rich time really trying to invoke him not as a bargain for my product would help him fully as a character and. To be was hardly able to write for almost 2 years he was diagnosed with cancer in 20 underwent chemotherapy prolonged stays in the hospital it left him exhausted. In an essay for the london review of books youve wrote about it dealing with the diagnosis and the treatment of cancer why did you feel the need to write about it look i promised i wouldnt write it you know i hate people writing about their illnesses and i just its awful and i really thought i wouldnt do it at all so no one asked me to do it there is no demand for this and then one day i just sentence came into my head and the sentence was it all started with my balls its like the sentence you know all of a ball of war start and then once i wrote that i just for a month or so just what i had to it regularly other things that happened. That i had you know but a 1000 words and i thought well you know i read it over again and i just laughed a bit and thought ive actually almost got rid of some of the anguish around you know some of it was all. Task put to a vote youve writing about balls yeah it was the experience was grotesque and i thought if i published this whole sort of it was free me in some way that it would be really over and it didnt work so i sent it to the london review as i remember the note to say im not sure this is any use. And then they they said that publishers and then of course everybody you know because i hadnt told people i went back to teach without telling anybody and i was trying to behave like a normal i was really sick you have like a normal person i was doing all my work and i was coming to be mean but i mean i had no eyebrows. So the policy of the piece was sort of father you know i also thought i was trying not to feel sorry for myself. Even during his Cancer Treatment tobin continued to shuttle between ireland and the u. S. He continued teaching at new yorks Columbia University. I love Columbia University i love having a big library i love the Upper West Side of new york where nothing ever happens people talk about the city the doesnt sleep everything close about 9930 up there i mean a really has a sleepy that the place. Its either it looks like a University Village you know and i teach on monday and tuesday and graduate seminar on oscar wilde. To do an undergraduate 7 are on the to say that people talk about things changing and young people not being like they were on the internet thats all just rubbish its all just rubbish that someone 18 year old reading a book can actually find that in the booklet that little fire in har are in him and i see that and i witness a. Books continue to light a fire in toby and he brings that passion to his work as a writer and as a teacher. Calling tobin is a man who can forever lose himself in literature even if he never forgets his irish roots. 6 feet. 6 feet. Do you have experience with range anxiety these 2 electric cars should ease your concerns. On the red challenge the curate so no i wouldnt be drawn to. Compound the metro s. U. V. Against a heavy cruiser. Is the comparison unfair or just david versus goliath read. 30 minutes of d. W. High flyer. High culture. High hair. Superman. Superfood stylish dialogue on the lead a. Lifestyle 0. 0. 16. W. Ws crime fighters are back africas most successful radio drama series continues this season the stories focus on hate speech color of prevention and sustainable charcoal production. All of a sows are available online. And of course you can share and discuss on africas Facebook Page and other social media platforms for. Crime fighters tune in now. Get. Played. A free to any solace to try as it moved on. To some tips on being hit in the footsteps of the great please click in your. Town the fleet street place. For a time if i wanted. To marry my fellow. Chalo flute guy to such a good club. Where exactly. Was fun the turn the last hours culture history in. Detail travel extremely worth a visit. To. The to play. Play play. Play. Play this is news live from berlin the Us Federal Reserve cut Interest Rates in a bid to boost the economy during the Coronavirus CrisisPresident Donald Trump welcomes what he describes as a terrific move he also tells americans to stop panic buying well go live to washington also coming up. Germany closed its borders with some of its neighbors travel to