Colm Toibin wraps up Galway’s literary affair

Colm Toibin, at GAF 2011

The final literary event as part of the 2011 Galway Arts Festival was certainly a resounding way in which to draw a truly amazing Festival to a close. The IMPAC award winner and Booker prize nominee Colm Toibin did not disappoint the sell-out crowd that filled the Meyrick Hotel on a sun-filled Saturday on the final weekend of the Galway Arts Festival. While the thousands were enjoying the festivities on the thronged Galway streets, those with a ticket for Toibin certainly would not swap for any prize.

Toibin was in warm and open form as he took to the lectern on stage in the Connemara Suite of the Meyrick. He started into a story recounting his experiences of regional arts festivals in Ireland. Toibin outlined how the Gorey Arts Festival , founded by his late friend Paul Funge, opened up such opportunities throughout the early 1970’s and onwards as it afforded the locals to see amazing works of theatre, hear great writers read their works and to see the works of great artists.

He talked in particular about visit to the Gorey Arts Festival by Patrick MaGee and Jack McGowran, both renowned acquaintances of Samuel Beckett and also famous actors of his work, so much so that Krapp’s Last Tape actually had a working title of ‘Monologue for Magee’. Toibin spoke of these characters, Beckett, Magee and McGowran as if he was with old friends sharing a drink and a story. This affability, genuine warmth and connection with his readers as well as with the people he is writing on paper about makes Toibin one of Ireland’s most loved and successful of contemporary writers.

Toibin read from his latest work, his collection of short stories the Empty Family (Read my review of this here ) Reading the story Two Women, Toibin presented one of the most memorable stories from the collection. Set in present-day Ireland, a divorced and middle-aged TV producer who has put all of her strength and passion into her career is brought to relive her past lost love when she encounters a woman from the past: a woman she has never met but with him she shares so much experience and people.

The Empty Family

Following this the floor was opened up for questions for Toibin. No shortage of willing volunteers as question after question were ably taken by the guest of honour. When asked about his setting out to write his IMPAC-winning work, The Master, Toibin answered he wanted to really get to know the man, Henry James, and not the outward character which people may have known. To Toibin, James was a mysterious character, often proving to be the opposite of what you thought. James was gay but loved the company of women as well as men, he was often reclusive but ate out every evening in large company. James’ writing, Toibin, described, is full of winding and snaking sentences, full of sub-clauses. You don’t get to know the Henry James, the man, from his writing, as you would be able to know James Joyce from reading his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Toibin was also asked about his inspiration about his Costa Prize-winning novel, Brooklyn. Again delving into his rich personal memory, he talks of the scene at his father’s wake. Colm Tobin is a twelve-year-old and bewildered by the streams of people calling to the house, stayed so long and talked and talked with his family. One woman in particular stood out, even after all these years. She had a pile of letters in her hand, all from Brooklyn: not from U.S.A., not from New York, but from Brooklyn. “That’s the woman whose daughter went to America but came home”, Colm heard people whisper. He never forgot this woman, even over the following forty years or so, and so Brooklyn came to be.

Speaking about the books ending (no spoilers will be given!) Toibin simply outlined how he ended the book the way he wanted to end it but crucially, he got their convincingly. He had conceived other endings but would do a disservice by inserting radical changes that would arrive at a contrived ending.

Finally, Toibin was asked about what contemporary writers he is currently reading. His first response was an American writer who actually also read at this year’s Galway Arts Festival – Willy Vlautin. Vlautin (nearly if not fully) stole the show when he shared the bill with Roddy Doyle. (read review here ) Upstaging Doyle is no easy feat but Vlautin made a new home from home for himself in Galway with his fantastic writing and engaging and humorous personality. Toibin hailed Vlautin as “a real discovery. He writes in beautiful American tones and with an absolute knowledge of rhythm, coming as no surprise that he (Vlautin) is an accomplished musician. Also singled out by Toibin were the Austrian short-story writer, Tim Wenton, Welsh writer Tessa Hadley and of course Canadian Alice Munroe.

It was a fascinating evening and a great if also rare opportunity for an intimate evening with the one and only Toibin. Evening like these are exactly what Arts Festivals are made for –probably along the lines of what Toibin felt like attending the Gorey Arts Festival all those years ago.

 

Cover Story – Translating The Image

Browsing around your local book shop may well be an art in decline. Scrolling around your e-book site and pressing ‘click to buy’ is a relatively new trend and if recent details of the decline in sales in on-street book shops are taken into the account then the turn to digital format books will only increase. (See recent article by Bob Johnston, owner of the Gutter Bookshop in Dublin, published on the Bookseller blog here )

When deciding how best to part with your cash for a decent new read, what is it that attracts you to a particular book and how does it grab your attention? You may pay attention to recent reviews in the papers or recommendations from friends, colleagues, and favourite bloggers or from your book club. Others hit the streets and dedicate some time to pacing up and down the aisles and rows of their local book seller, waiting for inspiration or for that book to catch their eye, like a old friend in a crowded street.

The snobbier readers among us will flatly deny that a book cover is what first grabs your eye and will refute that a cover can influence a sale, judging a book by its cover and all that. But let’s face it; a creative, interesting and artistic cover is a hugely important factor. Getting that book into your hand to read the blurb, even if you don’t buy, is success for a book jacket designer. Looking at the design of the cover reveals a lot about how the book is marketed as well as what it tries to express about the book it happily encloses.

Look at what dominates the cover? Is it the authors name or the title of the book? Is it accolades previously won by the book or snippets of blurb from reviews? Is it a particular image that represents a central character or theme from the book? Whatever it is, there is always a major draw to the book jacket that must catch the readers eye. This is an aspect of sales that e-books can never have. They are essentially invisible until you type in your search for that particular book or author. Browsing virtual book stores is not nearly as satisfying!

Translating a book is a sure sign of success for an author. Sending that work to an international audience is a test of the writing and the ability for a non-native audience to react and engage with a particular issue or story.  When it comes to translating a particular book, the language is obviously a strikingly difficult prospect and challenge for a translator. An understanding and relationship with the author is important is establishing control on the tone and translation of a particular book. Translating the text is one aspect but how does translating the book cover and cover image reflect this international translation? What works as a cover image in reflecting the book in one country perhaps will not engage readers in other cultures. It is interesting to look at international examples of translated Irish novels and see how the covers are treated in the international perspective.

The slideshow below features some international translations of works by Irish authors based in Ireland and also in America and also includes examples of works written by international authors which are also translated into various languages. If you can think of works translated and have interesting translations of covers as well as the text, do leave a comment!

 

Colm Toibin’s ‘The Empty Family’

The Empty Family

Moving aside from writing his last few novels, Colm Toibin has produced a new collection of short stories. The form of the short story is incredibly challenging to master as it requires a huge discipline and economy of language from the author to convey a wealth of imagery in a confined space. With his new collection The Empty Family, Colm Toibin has produced a new volume of stories that confirms his mastery of this form to match his reputation with the novel.

The Empty Family is an engrossing collection that is tender yet often heart wrenching in its depiction of families, relationships, places and dreams. The settings move from rural Ireland to Dublin City to the beach-side resorts of Spain and narrow streets of Barcelona, all of which hold a personal affinity to Toibin. With this fact in mind, Toibin holds his personal distance and refuses to be self-serving though still keeping the themes of post-Boom Ireland and Europe to the fore making the work extremely relevant and timely.

Throughout the collection the idea of “the empty family” resonates as families and loved ones drift apart, remain lost to one another with reconciliation coming after decades or sometimes not at all.

The opening story One Minus One depicts a son that must return to his dying mother and to a parish he left behind long ago. This realm of locality and idea of home is forceful in Toibin’s stories, reminding people that in those years of constant building and development that the blocks of the family and elements of human connection were left uncultivated. The families that Toibin describes are now like ghost estates, empty, undeveloped and devoid of life.

In the title story of the collection, the character opens with the line “I have come back here”.

Colm Toibin

 Like an absentee landlord, he ensured the home-place was habitable but still devoid of connection. “Home was two houses that they left me when they died and that I sold at the very height of the boom in this small strange country when prices rose as if they were Icarus, the son of Daedalus” Toibin is unapologetic in his disquiet at the loss of connection to a place and nation by so many Irish when a property and prices were all consuming to a people that long forget themselves.

The New Spain is a searing and powerful piece, further lamenting the loss of connection to its true place and identity, blinded by political failings, familial disputes and monetary greed. Nuria returns to her home after eight years in London to find her locality barely recognisable, people, houses, pathways, politics, government – all foreign to her memory of when she left.

The final story, The Street wraps up the collection with Toibin’s language and characters becoming ever clearer and expertly produced. Emotion and love is, in this collection, often met with violence by others who do not understand or seek to understand but who stand over it with blind defiance. This tension is evident on the shoulders of so many of Toibin’s characters but who yet seek to defy the odds and defy a society which consciously creates a framework which does not allow these relationships to grow or endure without hardship. This flaunts the idea of ‘the family’ leaving it hollow. The family is without love and is left empty.

This collection is one of the best reads of 2010 and will not leave readers disappointed. It is simply compelling from the first page to the last. Perhaps the best Toibin has yet produced.