Colm Tóibín

Colm Tóibín

Colm Tóibín at the 2006 Texas Book Festival
Born (1955-05-30) 30 May 1955
Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland
Occupation Writer, Journalist
Language English
Nationality Irish
Education B.A., (Hon) D.Litt.
Alma mater University College Dublin (UCD)
Period Late 20th century – Early 21st century
Genre Essay, Novel, Short Story, Play, Poem
Subject Irish society, living abroad, the process of creativity, the preservation of a personal identity
Notable works The Heather Blazing
The Story of the Night
The Blackwater Lightship
The Master
Brooklyn
Website
www.colmtoibin.com

Colm Tóibín (Irish pronunciation: [ˈkɔl̪ˠəmˠ t̪ˠoːˈbʲiːnʲ]; born 30 May 1955) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic and poet.[1][2]

Tóibín is currently Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and succeeded Martin Amis as professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester.[3] He was hailed as a champion of minorities as he collected the 2011 Irish PEN Award.[4] In 2011, he was named one of Britain's Top 300 Intellectuals by The Observer.[5]

Early life

Tóibín was born in 1955 in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, in the southeast of Ireland. Tóibín's parents were Bríd and Michael Tóibín.[6] He is the second youngest of five children. His grandfather, Patrick Tobin, was a member of the IRA, as was his grand-uncle Michael Tobin. Patrick Tobin took part in the 1916 Rebellion in Enniscorthy and was subsequently interned in Frongoch in Wales. Tóibín's father was a teacher who was involved in the Fianna Fáil party in Enniscorthy; he died when Colm was 12 years old.

Tóibín grew up in a home where there was, he said, "a great deal of silence."[7] Unable to read until the age of nine, he was overcome by a stammer.[8] He received his secondary education at St Peter's College, Wexford, where he was a boarder between 1970 and 1972. He later spoke of finding some of the priests attractive.[9]

In July 1972, aged 17, he had a summer job as a barman in the Grand Hotel in Tramore, County Waterford, working from six in the evening to two in the morning. He spent his days on the beach, reading The Essential Hemingway, the copy of which he still professes to have, its "pages stained with seawater." The book developed in him a fascination with Spain, led to a wish to visit that country, and gave him "an idea of prose as something glamorous, smart and shaped, and the idea of character in fiction as something oddly mysterious, worthy of sympathy and admiration, but also elusive. And more than anything, the sheer pleasure of the sentences and their rhythms, and the amount of emotion living in what was not said, what was between the words and the sentences."[10]

He progressed to University College Dublin, graduating in 1975. Immediately after graduation, he left for Barcelona. Tóibín's first novel, 1990's The South, was partly inspired by his time in Barcelona, as was, more directly, his non-fiction Homage to Barcelona (1990). Having returned to Ireland in 1978, he began to study for a master's degree. However, he did not submit his thesis and left academia, at least partly, for a career in journalism.

The early 1980s were an especially bright period in Irish journalism, and the heyday of the monthly news magazine Magill. Tóibín became the magazine's editor in 1982, and remained in the position until 1985. He left due to a dispute with Vincent Browne, Magill's managing director.

Work

The South was followed by The Heather Blazing (1992), The Story of the Night (1996) and The Blackwater Lightship (1999). His fifth novel, The Master (2004), is a fictional account of portions in the life of author Henry James. He is the author of other non-fiction books: Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border (1994), (reprinted from the 1987 original edition) and The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe (1994).

Tóibín has written two short story collections. His first, Mothers and Sons, which as the name suggests explores the relationship between mothers and their sons, was published in 2006, and was reviewed favourably (including by Pico Iyer in The New York Times). His second, broader collection, The Empty Family, was published in 2010,[11] and was shortlisted for the 2011 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.[12]

Tóibín wrote a play, titled Beauty in a Broken Place, which was staged in Dublin in August 2004. He has continued to work as a journalist, both in Ireland and abroad, writing for the London Review of Books among other publications. He has also achieved a reputation as a literary critic: he has edited a book on Paul Durcan, The Kilfenora Teaboy (1997), and The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction (1999); and has written The Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels in English since 1950 (1999), with Carmen Callil. He has also written a collection of essays, Love in a Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodóvar (2002), and a study on Lady Gregory, Lady Gregory's Toothbrush (2002).

Tóibín sent a photograph of Borges to Don DeLillo, who described it as "the face of Borges against a dark background—Borges fierce, blind, his nostrils gaping, his skin stretched taut, his mouth amazingly vivid; his mouth looks painted; he's like a shaman painted for visions, and the whole face has a kind of steely rapture". DeLillo often seeks inspiration from it.[13]

In 2011, The Times Literary Supplement published his poem "Cush Gap, 2007".[1] 2012 brought the publication of The Testament of Mary. In 2014, he released his first full-length novel since Brooklyn (2009), a portrait of a recently widowed mother of four in Wexford struggling through a period of grief, entitled Nora Webster.[2]

In 2015, ahead of the Marriage Equality referendum, Tóibín delivered a talk titled "The Embrace of Love: Being Gay in Ireland Now" in Trinity Hall, featuring Roger Casement's diaries, the work of Oscar Wilde, John Broderick and Kate O'Brien, and Senator David Norris's 1980s High Court battles.[14] In the same year, he released On Elizabeth Bishop, a novel which made The Guardian's Best Books of 2015 list twice.[15]

Style

Tóibín has said his writing comes out of silence. He does not favour story and does not view himself as storyteller. He has said, "Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep – it can't be done abruptly."[2]

Tóibín works in the most extreme, severe, austere conditions. He sits on a hard, uncomfortable chair which causes him pain. When working on a first draft he covers the right-hand side only of the page; later he carries out some rewriting on the left-hand side of the page. He keeps a word processor in another room on which to transfer writing at a later time.[16]

Themes

Tóibín's work explores several main lines: the depiction of Irish society, living abroad, the process of creativity, and the preservation of a personal identity, focusing especially on homosexual identities, but also on identity when confronted with loss. The "Wexford" novels, The Heather Blazing and The Blackwater Lightship, use Enniscorthy, the town of Tóibín's birth, as narrative material, together with the history of Ireland and the death of his father. An autobiographical account and reflection on this episode can be found in the non-fiction book, The Sign of the Cross. In 2009, he published Brooklyn, a tale of a woman emigrating to Brooklyn from Enniscorthy.

Two other novels, The Story of the Night and The Master, revolve around characters who have to deal with a homosexual identity and take place outside Ireland for the most part, with a character having to cope with living abroad. His first novel, The South, seems to have ingredients of both lines of work. It can be read together with The Heather Blazing as a diptych of Protestant and Catholic heritages in County Wexford, or it can be grouped with the "living abroad" novels. A third topic that links The South and The Heather Blazing is that of creation, of painting in the first case and of the careful wording of a judge's verdict in the second. This third thematic line culminated in The Master, a study on identity, preceded by a non-fiction book on the same subject, Love in a Dark Time. The book of short stories "Mothers and Sons" deals with family themes, both in Ireland and Catalonia, and homosexuality.

Tóibín has written about gay sex in several novels, though Brooklyn contains a heterosexual sex scene in which the heroine loses her virginity.[17] In his 2012 essay collection New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers and Their Families he studies the biographies of James Baldwin, J. M. Synge and W. B. Yeats, among others.[18]

His personal notes and work books reside at the National Library of Ireland.[19]

Tóibín is a member of Aosdána and has been visiting professor at Stanford University, The University of Texas at Austin and Princeton University. He has also lectured at several other universities, including Middlebury College, Boston College, New York University, Loyola University Maryland, and The College of the Holy Cross. He was a professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester, succeeding Martin Amis in that post,[3] and currently teaches at Columbia University.

Personal life

Tóibín is openly gay.[20] He refrains from watching television, admitting to having experienced confusion between the politicians Ed Miliband and Ed Balls.[21] He has expounded on the delights of a greasy fry-up in the morning.[21]

Tóibín's 50th-birthday celebrations in Dublin featured a fracas between the playwright Tom Murphy and theatre impresario Michael Colgan. Murphy smashed his plate of curry down on Colgan's head.[22]

Awards and honours

Bibliography

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Fiction

Short fiction

Title Year First published Reprinted/collected
Summer of '38 2013 Tóibín, Colm (March 4, 2013). "Summer of '38". The New Yorker 89 (3): 58–65. Retrieved 2015-05-08. 

Non-fiction

Further reading

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Colm Tóibín

References

  1. 1 2 "Toibin tries his hand at poetry . . .". Irish Independent. 18 June 2011. Irish Independent. Retrieved on 18 June 2011.
  2. 1 2 3 Barnett, Laura (19 February 2013). "Colm Tóibín, novelist – portrait of the artist". The Guardian (London: Guardian Media Group). Retrieved 19 February 2013.
  3. 1 2 3 Walsh, Caroline (4 February 2011). "Colm Tóibín wins Irish Pen award". The Irish Times (Irish Times Trust). Retrieved 4 February 2011.
  4. ↑ Boland, Rosita (12 February 2011). "Tóibín on song as he pick up Irish Pen award". The Irish Times (Irish Times Trust). Retrieved 12 February 2011.
  5. ↑ Naughton, John (8 May 2011). "Britain's top 300 intellectuals". The Observer (London: Guardian Media Group). Retrieved 8 May 2011.
  6. ↑ Salter, Jessica (27 February 2012). "The World of Colm Tóibín". The Daily Telegraph (London). The Telegraph, 27 February 2012.
  7. ↑ Tóibín, Colm (17 February 2012). "Colm Tóibín: writers and their families". The Guardian (London: Guardian Media Group). Retrieved 17 February 2012.
  8. ↑ "Colm Toibin: By the Book". The New York Times (New York). 1 October 2015. Retrieved 1 October 2015.
  9. ↑ "Austen was a woeful speller . . .". Irish Independent. 30 October 2010. Irish Independent. 30 October 2010. 'Although not abused by priests in the Wexford school he attended, he positively fancied some of them. "Aged 15 or 16," he tells interviewer Susanna Rustin, "I found some of the priests sexually attractive, they had a way about them . . . a sexual allure which is a difficult thing to talk about because it's usually meant to be the opposite way round"'.
  10. ↑ "The best holiday reads: Colm Tóibín". The Guardian (London: Guardian Media Group). 17 June 2011. Retrieved 17 June 2011.
  11. ↑ "The Empty Family Stories". Retrieved 21 March 2011.
  12. ↑ Cullen, Conor. "Tóibín in line for major prize". Enniscorthy Guardian. 12 July 2011.
  13. ↑ Begley, Adam. "Don DeLillo, The Art of Fiction No. 135". Paris Review.
  14. ↑ Blake Knox, Kirsty (15 May 2015). "'Gay people have a right to ritualise and copper-fasten their love' - Tóibín". Irish Independent.
  15. ↑ "On Elizabeth Bishop Colm Tóibín". Princeton University Press. Retrieved 28 December 2015.
  16. ↑ Tóibín, Colm (13 July 2007). "Writers' rooms: Colm Tóibín". The Guardian (London: Guardian Media Group). Retrieved 13 July 2007.
  17. ↑ Rustin, Susanna (16 October 2010). "Let's not talk about sex – why passion is waning in British books". The Guardian (London: Guardian Media Group). Retrieved 16 October 2010.
  18. ↑ Hadley, Tessa (22 February 2012). "New Ways to Kill Your Mother by Colm Tóibín – review". The Guardian (London: Guardian Media Group). Retrieved 27 March 2012.
  19. ↑ Telford, Lyndsey (21 December 2011). "Seamus Heaney declutters home and donates personal notes to National Library". Irish Independent (Independent News & Media). Retrieved 21 December 2011.
  20. ↑ Kaplan, James (6 June 2004). "A Subtle Play of Relations Reveals Henry James in Full". The Observer (Guardian Media Group). Retrieved 16 November 2015.
  21. 1 2 "Colm Tóibín on the allure of the breakfast fry-up". 25 May 2015.
  22. ↑ Sheridan, Kathy (27 September 2014). "Colm Tóibín: I start and I finish". The Irish Times.
  23. 1 2 3 "Colm is an author of formidable talent". Wexford People. 29 June 2011.
  24. ↑ "Royal Society of Literature All Fellows". Royal Society of Literature. Retrieved 10 August 2010.
  25. ↑ Brown, Mark (28 July 2009). "Heavyweights clash on Booker longlist". The Guardian (London: Guardian Media Group). Retrieved 28 July 2009.
  26. ↑ "Tóibín wins Costa Novel Award". RTÉ Arts (RTÉ). 4 January 2010. Retrieved 4 January 2010.
  27. ↑ "William Trevor makes an Impac". The Irish Times (Irish Times Trust). 12 April 2011. Retrieved 12 April 2011.
  28. ↑ Cullen, Conor (12 July 2011). "Tóibín in line for major prize". Enniscorthy Guardian. Retrieved 12 July 2011.
  29. ↑ Walsh, Caroline (9 July 2011). "Two Irish authors make awards shortlist". The Irish Times (Irish Times Trust). Retrieved 9 July 2011.
  30. ↑ Flood, Alison (9 July 2011). "Strong showing for Irish writers on Frank O'Connor shortlist". The Guardian (London: Guardian Media Group). Retrieved 9 July 2011.
  31. ↑ . 7 August 2013 http://www.themanbookerprize.com/man-booker-prize-2013. Retrieved 2 December 2014. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  32. ↑ . 23 July 2015 http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/colm-t%C3%B3ib%C3%ADn-wins-hawthornden-prize-for-nora-webster-1.2294019. Retrieved 23 July 2015. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  33. ↑ http://www.panmacmillan.com/Titles/displayPage.asp?PageTitle=Individual%20Title&BookID=386178
  34. ↑ http://www.thamesandhudson.com/Sean_Scully_-_Walls_of_Aran/9780500543399
  35. ↑ http://www.colmtoibin.com/content/guest-feast-memoir
Sources

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Wednesday, April 06, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.