Colm Tóibín | |
|---|---|
 Tóibín in 2006 | |
| Chancellor of theUniversity of Liverpool | |
| In office 2 February 2017 – 2022 | |
| Succeeded by | Wendy Beetlestone |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1955-05-30)30 May 1955 (age 69) Enniscorthy,County Wexford, Ireland |
| Alma mater | UCD |
| Occupation |
|
| Website | colmtoibin |
| Writing career | |
| Language | English (Hiberno-English) |
| Genre | Essay, Novel, Short Story, Play, Poem |
| Subject | Irish society, living abroad, creativity, personal identity |
| Notable works | |
| Notable awards | Encore Award 1993 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction 2004 International Dublin Literary Award 2006 Irish PEN Award 2011 Hawthornden Prize 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award in Irish Literature 2019 David Cohen Prize 2021 Folio Prize 2022 |
Colm TóibínFRSL (/ˈkʌləmtoʊˈbiːn/KUL-əm toh-BEEN,[1]Irish:[ˈkɔl̪ˠəmˠt̪ˠoːˈbʲiːnʲ]; born 30 May 1955) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet.[2][3]
His first novel,The South, was published in 1990.The Blackwater Lightship was shortlisted for theBooker Prize.The Master (a fictionalised version of the inner life ofHenry James) was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the 2006International Dublin Literary Award, securing for Toíbín a bounty of thousands ofeuro as it is one of the richest literary awards in the world.Nora Webster won theHawthornden Prize, whilstThe Magician (a fictionalised version of the life ofThomas Mann) won theFolio Prize. His fellow artists elected him toAosdána and he won thebiennial "UK and Ireland Nobel"[4]David Cohen Prize in 2021.
He succeededMartin Amis as professor of creative writing at theUniversity of Manchester. He wasChancellor of theUniversity of Liverpool in 2017–2022. He is now Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities atColumbia University inManhattan.
Tóibín was born in 1955 inEnniscorthy,County Wexford, in the southeast of Ireland.[1] He is the fourth of five children.[5] He was reared in Parnell Avenue.[6] His parents were Bríd and Michael Tóibín.[7] He is one of the two youngest children in his family, alongside his brother Niall.[1][8]
His grandfather, Patrick Tobin, participated in theEaster Rising in April 1916, and was subsequently interned atFrongoch in Wales, while an uncle was involved in theIRB during theIrish Civil War.[1] Following the foundation of theIrish Free State in 1922, Tóibín's family favoured theFianna Fáil political party.[1]
Tóibín grew up in a home where there was, he said, "a great deal of silence".[9] Unable to read until the age of nine, he also developed astammer.[10] When he was eight years of age, in 1963, his father became ill and his mother sent her two youngest sons to stay with an aunt inCounty Kildare for three months so that she could take their father to Dublin for medical care; she did not call or write to her two youngest sons while tending their father.[1] Tóibín traces the stammer he developed to this time – a stammer which would often leave him unable to speak his own name, and which he retained throughout his life.[1] Tóibín's father – who was a schoolteacher – died in 1967, when his son was twelve years of age.[1]
Tóibín received his secondary education atSt Peter's College, Wexford, where he was aboarder between 1970 and 1972. He later spoke of finding some of the priests attractive.[11] He was also analtar boy in his youth.[8]
Tóibín went toUniversity College Dublin (UCD), first attending history and English lectures there in 1972,[1] before graduating with a BA in 1975. He thought about becoming a civil servant but decided against this.[1] Instead, he left Ireland forBarcelona in 1975, later commenting: "I arrive the 24th of September 1975.Franco dies 20th November".[1] The city would later feature in some of Tóibín's early work: his first novel, 1990'sThe South, has two characters meeting in Barcelona.[1] His 1990 non-fiction workHomage to Barcelona also references the city in its title.
Tóibín left Barcelona in 1978 and came back to Ireland.[1] He began writing forIn Dublin.[1] Tóibín became editor of the monthly news magazineMagill[6] in 1982, and remained in the position until 1985. He left due to a dispute withVincent Browne,Magill's managing director. In 1997, whenThe New Yorker asked Tóibín to write aboutSeamus Heaney becomingPresident of Ireland, Tóibín noted that Heaney's popularity could survive the "kiss of death" of an endorsement byConor Cruise O'Brien.The New Yorker telephoned Conor Cruise O'Brien to confirm that this was so, but Cruise O'Brien disagreed and the statement could not be corroborated.[12]
Tóibín isgay.[13] Sincec. 2012, Tóibín has been in a relationship withHedi El Kholti, an editor of the literary pressSemiotext(e). They share a home in theHighland Park neighborhood ofLos Angeles.[14][1] He has served as a curator of exhibits for the Manhattan-basedMorgan Library & Museum.[1] He has judged both theGriffin Poetry Prize and theGiller Prize.[15] Tóibín does not watch television, and his awareness of British parliamentary politics can be summed up by his admission that he thoughtEd Balls was a nickname for the thenLabour Party leaderEd Miliband.[16] He is interested intennis and plays the game for leisure; upon meetingRoger Federer, Tóibín enquired as to his opinion on the secondserve.[1]
As of 2008, he had family in Enniscorthy, including two sisters (Barbara and Nuala) and a brother (Brendan).[6]
Tóibín lives inSouthside Dublin City's Upper Pembroke Street, where on occasions his friends — such as playwrightTom Murphy and formerGate Theatre directorMichael Colgan — assembled for social interaction and entertainment.[17][18]Tóibín spent his prize money from his 2006 International Dublin Literary Award on building a house nearBlackwater, County Wexford, where he holidayed as a child.[1] He filled this house with artwork and expensive furniture.[1] He possesses a personal key to the private gated park at Dublin'sFitzwilliam Square, which is shut to ordinary members of the public.[1]
In 2019, Tóibín spoke about having survived testicular cancer, which spread to multiple organs, including a lung, liver, andlymph node.[19][20]
Tóibin callsHenry James his favourite novelist; he is especially fond ofThe Portrait of a Lady,The Wings of the Dove,The Ambassadors, andThe Golden Bowl.[21] Tóibin fictionalized James in his novelThe Master.
He would later fictionalizeThomas Mann inThe Magician. He is especially fond ofBuddenbrooks — which he first read in his late teens — and has also readThe Magic Mountain,Doctor Faustus and the novellaDeath in Venice.[1]
Tóibin's non-fiction was influenced byJoan Didion andNorman Mailer.[1] He said decades after the publication of his debut novel,The South, "If you look at it, you see that the sentence structure is more or less taken from Didion", and expressed reservations about its quality.[1]
In July 1972, aged 17, he had a summer job as a barman in the Grand Hotel inTramore,County Waterford, working from six in the evening to two in the morning. He spent his days on the beach, readingThe 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."[22]
Eavan Boland introduced him to the poetry ofLouise Glück while Boland and Tóibín were atStanford together in the 2000s.[23] Tóibín stated in 2017 that "there are a few books of mine that I have written since then that I don't think I could have written had it not been for that encounter".[23] When Glück was awarded the 2020Nobel Prize in Literature, Tóibín immediately wrote an article in praise of her and had it published.[24]
Tóibín has said his writing comes out of silence. He does not favour stories and does not view himself as a storyteller. He has said, "Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep – it can't be done abruptly".[3] When working on a first draft he covers only the right-hand side 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.[25]
He writes in great discomfort, saying in 2017: "When you're writing, you should be bent over, and you need to be in pain and your shoulders should be bent — you need to be pulling things up from within yourself. You can't be too comfortable."[23]
Tóibín's 1990 novelThe South was followed byThe Heather Blazing (1992),The Story of the Night (1996), andThe Blackwater Lightship (1999). His fifth novel,The Master (2004), is a fictional account of the inner life ofHenry James. U.S. writerCynthia Ozick said that his "rendering of the first hints, or sensations, of the tales as they form in James's thoughts is itself an instance of writer's wizardry".[1] In 2009, he publishedBrooklyn, which was made into amovie in 2015. Its protagonist is Eilis Lacey, who emigrates from Ireland to Brooklyn. In 2012 Tóibín publishedThe Testament of Mary, and in 2014 he publishedNora Webster, a portrait of a recently widowed mother of four in Wexford struggling through a period of grief.[3] A sequel toBrooklyn titledLong Island was released in May 2024, described by a review inGuardian as "a masterclass in subtlety and intelligence". The novel follows Eilis Lacey as she returns to Enniscorthy.[26][27]
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 byPico Iyer inThe New York Times). His second collection, titledThe Empty Family, was published in 2010.[28] It was shortlisted for the 2011Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.[29]
Tóibín has written many non-fiction books, includingBad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border (1994) (reprinted from the 1987 original edition) andThe Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe (1994). He has written for theLondon Review of Books,The New York Review of Books andThe Dublin Review, among other publications. Asked in 2021 how many articles he had written, Tóibín was uncertain: "I suppose thousands might be accurate".[1] His article writing also contributed to his reputation as a literary critic; he edited a book onPaul Durcan,The Kilfenora Teaboy (1997), as well asThe Penguin Book of Irish Fiction (1999), and withCarmen Callil he wroteThe Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels in English Since 1950 (1999). He wrote a collection of essays,Love in a Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodóvar (2002), and a study onLady Gregory,Lady Gregory's Toothbrush (2002). In his 2012 essay collectionNew Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers and Their Families he studies the biographies ofJames Baldwin,J. M. Synge, andW. B. Yeats, among others.[30] In 2015, he releasedOn Elizabeth Bishop, a critical study that madeThe Guardian's Best Books of 2015 list twice.[31] In June 2016, Tóibín visitedIsrael, as part of a project by the "Breaking the Silence" organization, to write an article for a book on theIsraeli occupation, to mark the 50th anniversary of theSix-Day War.[32][33] The book was edited byMichael Chabon andAyelet Waldman, and was published in June 2017 under the titleKingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation.[34]
Tóibín's play,Beauty in a Broken Place, was staged in Dublin in August 2004. He first wrote poetry while attending secondary school in Wexford.[1] In 2011,The Times Literary Supplement published his poem "Cush Gap, 2007".[2] The December 2021 issue ofThe New York Review of Books included his poem "Father & Son",[35] which may be autobiographical, as the description of the son's developing a stammer in the second stanza—particularly on hard consonants—is similar to Tóibín's description of his own stammer.[36]
His personal notes and workbooks are deposited at theNational Library of Ireland.[37]
Tóibín has been a visiting professor atStanford University,[6]The University of Texas at Austin[6] andPrinceton University. He has also lectured at several other universities, includingMiddlebury College,Boston College,[6]New York University,[6]Loyola University Maryland, andThe College of the Holy Cross. In 2017 he lectured in Athens, Georgia as theUniversity of Georgia Chair for Global Understanding.[38] He was a professor of creative writing at theUniversity of Manchester, succeedingMartin Amis in that post,[39] and currently teaches atColumbia University.[citation needed]
Commenting on the absence of gay students from his lectures, Tóibín said: "Whatever aura I have, it's not as a gay guru—I'm notEdmund White. 'My mother's reading your book'—I get that a lot".[1]
In 2015, ahead ofa referendum on marriage in Ireland, Tóibín delivered a talk titled "The Embrace of Love: Being Gay in Ireland Now" inTrinity Hall, featuringRoger Casement's diaries, the work ofOscar Wilde,John Broderick,Kate O'Brien, andSenator David Norris's 1980s High Court battles.[40]
He was appointedChancellor of theUniversity of Liverpool in 2017.[41]
Tóibín founded the Dublin-based publishing imprint, Tuskar Rock Press, with his agentPeter Straus.[1]
Tóibín's work explores a number of main themes: the depiction of Irish society, living in exile, the legacy ofCatholicism, the process of creativity, and the preservation of a personal identity, masculinity, fatherhood and homosexual identity, and on personal identity when confronted by loss. The "Wexford" novels (The Heather Blazing andThe Blackwater Lightship) useEnniscorthy, 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 publishedBrooklyn, a tale of a woman emigrating toBrooklyn from Enniscorthy; characters from that novel also appear inNora Webster, in which the young character of Donal seems to have been part-based on Colm's childhood. Two other novels,The Story of the Night andThe 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 for both lines of work. It can be read together withThe Heather Blazing as adiptych ofProtestant and Catholic heritages inCounty Wexford, or it can be grouped with the "living abroad" novels. A third topic that linksThe South andThe 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 inThe Master, a study on identity, preceded by a non-fiction book on the same subject,Love in a Dark Time. The book of short storiesMothers and Sons deals with family themes, both in Ireland andCatalonia, and homosexuality. As described byThe New Yorker in 2021, his characters are "careful in conversation, each utterance fraught with importance... [his] novels typically depict an unfinished battle between those who know what they feel and those who don't, between those who have found a taut peace within themselves and those who remain unsettled. His prose relies on economical gestures and moments of listening and is largely shorn of metaphor and explanation".[1]
Tóibín has written gay sex into several novels, andBrooklyn contains a heterosexual sex scene in which the heroine loses her virginity.[42]
Bernard Schwartz informed Tóibin afterThe Magician was published that eight of his novels feature "someone tak[ing] a swim in cold water and hesitat[ing] before they go in" –Thomas Mann, the protagonist inThe Magician, is sent swimming in theBaltic Sea.[1] Tóibín had not previously noticed this.[1]
Tóibín's fellow artists elected him toAosdána, which is supported by theArts Council.[43]
Arts Council director Mary Cloake called Tóibín "a champion of minorities" as he collected the 2011Irish PEN Award.[44]
In 2017, Tóibin objected to the wording of an Arts Council letter, which was attempting to regulate artists and force them to produce a constant supply of work if they wanted to be paid a basic income (which would also be withdrawn if they were "temporarily incapacitated due to ill-health").[45] Tóibín wrote: "The first problem with this, as I'm sure you will agree, is that the phrase 'working artists engaged in productive practice' sounds oddly North Korean, or is like a phrase that could have been used by Stalin about recalcitrant farmers in the Soviet Union."[45] Tóibín noted thatW. B. Yeats had heart disease which incapacitated him in later life, yet days before his death, he wrote his poem "Cuchulain Comforted", which Tóibín called "one of the greatest poems in the English language."[45] Tóibín also enquired of the Arts Council: "In the case ofJames Joyce, who 'produced' nothing between 1922 and 1939, what would you have done?"[45] He referred to his personal experience with another writer: "I draw your attention to the fact thatJohn McGahern published no novel between 1979 and 1990. I know, because I was in regular touch with him during some of those years, how much he struggled, but he 'produced' no novel... would you really have sent 'auditors' down toLeitrim to do 'a sample audit' of what he was doing?"[45]
In 2011,John Naughton, ofThe Observer, included Tóibín in his list of Britain's three hundred "public figures leading our cultural discourse" — despite Tóibín, like Naughton, being Irish:[46]
Tóibín has published 11 novels.
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'.
Mr Toibin has had ongoing treatment for the cancer which also showed up in his lung and liver.
A week later the phone rang and I was told that I had a cancer of the testicles that had spread to a lymph node and to one lung.
