Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A novelist, playwright and short story writer whose works explore identity, loss, family and home.
On the island
Eight records
He's added a sort of beauty and a sort of magic to Irish fiddle playing.
Dónal ÓgFavourite
Máiréad Ní Ghráda and Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill
One of the great old Irish love songs in the Irish language.
Lost love seemed more real somehow than anything else you knew.
I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls
I've used it in the novel The Heather Blazing and it was sung at my mother's funeral.
I went into a record shop, and I saw this Kathleen Furrier LP. I had to go back to Katrina, say, can I have more money because I need to pay the rent?
Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye
Before you've had love, before you've been in love, the notion of the melancholy nature of it's all over somehow appeals to you much more.
Au fond du temple saint (The Pearl Fishers Duet)
John McCormack and Mario Samarco
Something new had happened in me. In a way, if you ever want to wean your teenage kids off whatever dreadful music they're listening to, just try them on this duet for The Pearlfishers.
All the old Irish, all the men who built the tunnels and the bridges, have nowhere to go on Christmas Day in Brooklyn... he sings this song, and all the men suddenly light up.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:35Where and when do you write best?
I can write anywhere as long as there's a blank wall in front of me, no great view, and a pretty uncomfortable chair. But I've been working a lot recently in Wexford in the house you mentioned, in the place where we went every summer in the years before my father died. And it's funny, you know, when I'm going down to the Strand, the smell is the same smell. Harvested fields, clover, but even animals, because we were from the town, so it's going right back into the past, which means I'm getting images. And even if I'm not writing directly about it, it's quite emotional, even being there.
Presenter asks
2:51Is it true that you once told a creative writing class that you have to be a monster to write?
Yeah, I I meant that, you know, stop worrying about your grandmother's feelings, your mother's feelings, your girlfriend's feelings, or your own feelings. Your job is to get the thing down. And if you have to use something that belongs to you or to somebody else, write it down. But don't be saying, Oh, you know, when my Auntie Mary finally dies, I'll be able to write the most wonderful story. Write it now and tell your Auntie Mary you're just sorry, but you've told a story that is really quite private and belongs to her. But now it's going to be published and it's coming out next week.
Presenter asks
5:30The keepsakes
The book
Henry James
I notice something new in it all the time. I get infinite pleasure from that book.
The luxury
a pen that won't run out of ink and some paper
I want a pen that won't run out of ink or anything, and I want some paper.
Where were you when you heard the result of the same-sex marriage referendum?
I was actually in Haiwai and I was following it all day, and I was so proud of Ireland in a way that day. It was almost a very conservative campaign because the argument we were making was, what would you do with your son or your daughter? If they tell you look I'm gay. And they told you that at night, and you would stay awake all night worrying, Is there anything I can say to them in the morning? To make sure that it'll be okay. And say they'll be embraced by this society rather than rejected. I went on the radio one day and said, you know, I represent Ireland in various ways, but I don't have rights you have. Like, how come I don't have those rights and why won't you give them to me? Like, what harm would it do to you if I have this right with you? In other words, it wasn't a rejection of anything, it was an embrace of things. We didn't emerge as an angry group demanding rights. We came as somebody's grandson, somebody's brother, and somebody's lover.
Presenter asks
6:34You've been nominated for the Booker three times but never won. Do you dwell on not winning?
Yeah. I mean it's a terribly funny evening if you don't win because you you you really think you're going to win and then when you don't win they turn off all the lights on you. People just don't know quite what to say to you because you're sort of a loser and no one really likes a loser and I didn't mind the last time so much. It was the second time with the master. I was a bit surprised I mean I for the few days a bit surprised. And then I have a psychiatrist who said to me, You really bounce back all the time, don't you? You just bounce back. I thought it was a lovely thing to say to me because it's true, but it was also enabling. It also made me feel free to bounce back. A few days later, I was back working again and I'd forgotten all about it. So while other people talk about losing a year or going into a deep depression, not a hope. I mean, it just didn't happen. I it's fine. It's fine. Probably if I'd won I would have got a big head or something or, you know, actually I would have enjoyed winning and I would have been able to handle it perfectly.
Presenter asks
9:24How was life for you as a little boy?
Well, my mother had two younger sisters who didn't marry until a bit later, and my two nearest siblings were two girls, and my father had a sister who didn't marry. And so the w the house was filled with women, and they could talk clothes for about an hour, even though it was some it might be some winter coat that someone nearly bought and didn't buy, and oh, did you not buy it, and where and what colour? And the problem they had with me was that I remembered everything, that nothing they said escaped me, and even years later I mean I'm talking thirty years later, I would say, No, that wasn't that, it was that and they say, Where? I said, No, I was there, I was listening. So, you know, you should always put children out of the room when you're talking because they'll become novelists later on. And so that story of Brooklyn, they talked about a girl who had gone to Brooklyn and come home and on the boat she'd taken off her wedding ring because she just didn't want to tell them she was married because it would break their hearts because it would mean that she would be going back forever. And that stayed in my head for all the years. I was able to use it eventually.
Presenter asks
23:25How did your family react to your homosexuality?
Oh, um we didn't talk about it. It was simply something that eventually became known. And was not spoken about very much. My mother asked my sister an interesting question at one point: Is he happy? Which is very sweet, but she didn't ask me that, and we didn't talk about it.
“Your job is to get the thing down. And if you have to use something that belongs to you or to somebody else, write it down.”
“We came as somebody's grandson, somebody's brother, and somebody's lover.”
“I have a psychiatrist who said to me, You really bounce back all the time, don't you? You just bounce back.”
“I find with the novels that a novel is going on great, and suddenly I'll have the character being abandoned by somebody. And I'll find that, oh no, not again, here it comes, you know, every time there's someone abandoned.”
“They lured me into a workshop. ... I just became this 12-year-old with my father just died. And it came very quickly and it wouldn't go away.”