by Rosalind Brackenbury
Listening to Colm Toibìn begin to speak is like hearing an orchestra tuning up, preparing to deliver its satisfying resonant chords. He described himself first, to Schwartz and to us, as ‘a cross between a monk and a performing flea’ and warned us that it was the flea we were seeing this morning. But his words settled on us, weighty, well-chosen, not flea-like at all.
He focused less on a reader’s attention to a novel than on the writer’s attention to the world – he did not say, as he might have, that when a writer really pays attention, the reader does too. Our minds spark at the stimulus of surprising and delightful detail and we pay attention because it’s a pleasure to do so. Listening to him this morning was just such a pleasure. Our attention was sharpened by expectation and by his delivery.
Toibìn clutched his massive head from time to time as if to be sure his brains were not about to burst out. It was a joy to follow him, but a challenge too. Happiness is no good in a novel, he told us; we have to give up the dream. Levin and Kitty’s romance becomes marriage in ‘Anna Karenina’ and fades into mediocrity; in ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ Darcy is revealed in the end to be an often irritating husband.
Toibìn gave us, as an example of writerly brilliance and concision, the moment of Kitty’s baby’s sudden sneeze in ‘Anna Karenina’ – the moment when Levin feels all the fear and joy of parenthood. Don’t explain, Toibìn said, don’t summarize feelings – ‘just show us the sneeze.’ That sneeze became a byword for the Seminar, from then on.
Who would he most like to interview? Schwartz asked. Toibìn said it would be Robert Caro, because of his ability to focus on detail and bring his great biographies to life: Caro hones in on the moment when Robert Kennedy brushed past Lyndon Johnson without speaking, intent to get to his sister-in-law after his brother’s violent end. The greatness, once again, is in the details.
He talked about his short stories, and how sometimes a detail for a story would take years to appear. Of meeting Margaret Atwood at an event and asking her an urgent question about vultures, how they eat. She knew, of course. And it fed into the gap in a story, where vultures had to be.
What about the other arts – music, painting? Cézanne, Toibìn said, is the touchstone, with his building of a painting from brush-strokes. In music, it’s the song, not the singer. In fiction, the novelist has similarly to get out of his own way – it’s the novel that matters, not the novelist. And, how do you start? Like a painter, by making a mark. ‘A gray light over the sea’ – one of Toibìn’s own ‘marks.’ You set something down, and move from there.
Writing for the stage? He experiences theatre as ‘chaos’ – a director and actors, all telling him, the writer, what his writing is about. But, he said, it’s a necessary chaos, gets you outside your own habits of control.
And finally, what about opera? ‘No more tragic opera, please.’ And he clutched his head again.
Rosalind Brackenbury is an English writer of fiction, poetry and short stories, who lives in Key West.
