WEBVTT - Read This: The Long Ireland of Colm Tóibín 0:00:00.680 --> 0:00:03.080 Hi there, It's Ruby Jones and I'm back to share 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:07.200 another episode of Read This, Schwartz Media's weekly books podcast, 0:00:07.840 --> 0:00:11.200 hosted by editor of the Monthly Michael Williams. It features 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:14.360 conversations with some of the most talented writers from Australia 0:00:14.400 --> 0:00:17.840 and around the world. In this episode, Michael sits down 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:20.560 for a chat with one of Ireland's most beloved writers, 0:00:21.040 --> 0:00:25.640 Colm Toyben. As usual, I'm joined by Michael to tell 0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:27.360 me a bit more about the episode. 0:00:27.680 --> 0:00:29.600 Hi Michael, Hello Ruby. 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:32.720 So Michael, I know that you have been a big 0:00:32.760 --> 0:00:36.720 fan of Colm Toyben's work for many years. But what 0:00:36.880 --> 0:00:38.839 was the first book that you read by him and 0:00:38.920 --> 0:00:40.600 what made you fall in love with his writing. 0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:44.080 It's true, Ruby, I adore Column Tobin, and I think 0:00:44.200 --> 0:00:47.560 maybe I've read everything he's written. I first read him 0:00:47.760 --> 0:00:51.120 when I was only thirteen, when his book The Heather 0:00:51.159 --> 0:00:54.760 Blazing came out in the early nineties. And even though 0:00:54.800 --> 0:00:56.960 it was a book that was about old age and 0:00:57.000 --> 0:01:00.760 regret and memory and being emotionally repressed from your family 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:02.920 and all of that kind of stuff, for some reason, 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:05.560 thirteen year old me absolutely fell in love with it. 0:01:05.560 --> 0:01:07.880 It was one of those books that opened my teenage 0:01:07.920 --> 0:01:10.760 reading up to adult possibility on the page, and I 0:01:10.800 --> 0:01:13.840 followed him through everything that he's done since, and in 0:01:13.880 --> 0:01:16.600 that period since, he's really built a reputation as one 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:19.959 of the foremost practitioners in the English language. Books like 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:22.760 The Master, which is his telling of Henry James's life, 0:01:23.240 --> 0:01:25.559 or The Magician, which is about Thomas Mann. He writes 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:28.120 his big, kind of sweeping books. But then he also 0:01:28.200 --> 0:01:30.480 returns again and again to the town where he grew up, 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:33.520 a place called Enna Scorthy. It's there and they have 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:36.200 a blazing It's there in his wonderful book Nora a Webster, 0:01:36.560 --> 0:01:38.480 and is there in the book for which maybe his 0:01:38.680 --> 0:01:40.440 most famous, and that's Brooklyn. 0:01:40.959 --> 0:01:43.920 Brooklyn was not only a massive success, but it got 0:01:43.959 --> 0:01:47.720 adapted into an equally acclaimed film of the same name, 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:52.160 sarrying Ssharonan and dom Hall Gleeson. And this new book 0:01:52.280 --> 0:01:54.520 Long Island is a sequel, isn't it. 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:57.920 Yeah, that's right. So Brooklyn was the story of Eilish Lacey. 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:01.560 She was this young woman who leaves island for the US. 0:02:01.600 --> 0:02:03.880 She's kind of finding growing up in small town Island 0:02:03.920 --> 0:02:07.680 incredibly claustrophobic, and so she thinks about the possibility of 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:10.040 the new world and moves to Brooklyn falls in love 0:02:10.040 --> 0:02:13.440 with this guy called Tony Fiorello, a young plumber, and 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:17.400 when she's called back home to Ireland because her sisters died, 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:20.799 she and Tony quickly get married in City Hall before 0:02:20.840 --> 0:02:23.560 she comes back. But the drama of that book is 0:02:23.600 --> 0:02:26.639 that on returning home, she finds herself slipping back into 0:02:26.639 --> 0:02:29.920 her old life. The old rhythms are possible. New romance 0:02:30.000 --> 0:02:33.440 with this guy called Jim Farrell, her friendship with Nancy, 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:35.919 her fraught relationship with her mother, all of that kind 0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:39.239 of takes hold again. And so Brooklyn's about that decision 0:02:39.280 --> 0:02:41.160 she has to make about whether to return to the 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:44.120 new world and her new life with Tony or whether 0:02:44.160 --> 0:02:48.160 to stick with the old. Long Island is set decades later, 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:52.600 and we see Eilish Lacey living in Long Island with Tony. 0:02:52.880 --> 0:02:55.280 She's an American now, she's a mother with a couple 0:02:55.280 --> 0:02:58.280 of kids. But when the action picks up, it opens 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:01.800 with Eilish being accosted by an angry neighbor whose wife 0:03:01.919 --> 0:03:06.240 is pregnant to Tony. It's a gripping raid and I 0:03:06.400 --> 0:03:08.400 just adored and adore talking to. 0:03:08.440 --> 0:03:12.800 Common coming up in just a moment the Long Island 0:03:12.880 --> 0:03:13.840 of Colmtoymen. 0:03:22.280 --> 0:03:26.160 Yeah, I was having thoughts or I was having something 0:03:26.200 --> 0:03:29.959 about four that the idea of writing a novel which 0:03:30.000 --> 0:03:33.640 would be plot led plot lead means that every single 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:36.920 thing must move as an arrow moves towards some sort 0:03:36.960 --> 0:03:40.120 of point, and that if you're not doing that, it 0:03:40.160 --> 0:03:43.560 would the scene you will attempt to write, For example, 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:46.440 if you deviate for a second and give people extra 0:03:46.560 --> 0:03:51.440 feelings or extra scenes or moments between two characters, that 0:03:51.520 --> 0:03:55.040 will fall away as you the author reads the book, 0:03:55.320 --> 0:03:59.520 but it's not needed that you're following what normally has 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:01.880 been reading taken over, I suppose, but the detective writer 0:04:02.520 --> 0:04:08.040 that everything really must move, even if ingeniously or not directly, 0:04:08.080 --> 0:04:11.840 but it must move towards a point. And so that 0:04:11.840 --> 0:04:15.600 that was really the aim in Long Island. And you see, 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:17.920 the word sequel only came up when the book was 0:04:17.960 --> 0:04:20.880 delivered and people were trying to work out how we're 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:23.000 going to place this book, what's going to the jacket 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:26.720 was and the word sequel started And I hadn't really 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:28.480 put a thought into it in the way that you 0:04:28.560 --> 0:04:31.360 often don't put it thought into something for good reasons, 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:34.880 because you're avoiding thinking about it. And the problem is 0:04:34.920 --> 0:04:37.960 that this has been the most successful book of my commercially. 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:42.080 So here am I jumping on the bandwagon and riding 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:44.239 it was a retired horse to death. 0:04:44.880 --> 0:04:45.400 I suppose. 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:47.440 The first thing is that I got a lot of 0:04:47.600 --> 0:04:50.120 energy from the film. And I know that a lot 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:53.120 of writers have had nightmares of having their work completely 0:04:53.160 --> 0:04:57.480 destroyed by some awful script writer and director. And I 0:04:57.520 --> 0:05:00.760 saw the film a lot in a short sp of time, 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:02.400 and I had to grow up at the stage and 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:04.600 say something about it. So I would always just sit 0:05:04.640 --> 0:05:07.480 in the centiment and watch it. And those things end 0:05:07.560 --> 0:05:09.400 up having a big effect on you, because of course 0:05:09.400 --> 0:05:13.400 it's your own emotions to start with, taking over by 0:05:13.400 --> 0:05:16.520 someone and then given back to you, and that's a 0:05:16.600 --> 0:05:17.720 very powerful business. 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:20.960 Yeah, I can only imagine. I mean, one of the 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:23.720 things that struck me about the film as an adaptation 0:05:24.720 --> 0:05:27.440 is the end hits a couple of different beats or 0:05:27.520 --> 0:05:29.520 a couple of different notes to the ones that you 0:05:29.560 --> 0:05:33.400 did yourself in the novel, And mainly about Elisha and 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:39.039 her decisions, mainly about how active and how clear she 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:41.320 is on the decision to go with Tony and be 0:05:41.400 --> 0:05:44.120 back in Brooklyn and gives that kind of gives that 0:05:44.200 --> 0:05:46.599 much more solid idea about this is where I belong to. 0:05:46.600 --> 0:05:49.800 This is whereas the novel, as I remember it, is 0:05:49.920 --> 0:05:53.560 far more elliptical about how she's feeling about all of that. 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:55.680 Oh, and it is kind of ambivuous. She doesn't really 0:05:55.760 --> 0:05:58.400 know how to do. She drifts and she's forced back 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:02.039 in the novel. The film wanted to give her more agency, 0:06:02.240 --> 0:06:04.360 as they call it, than I wanted to give her. 0:06:05.160 --> 0:06:07.640 But I'm a sucker for that very last scene, which 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:11.200 I didn't write. Nick Hornby wrote it, where she's across 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:13.680 the road and Tony comes out of it a shop. 0:06:13.760 --> 0:06:15.200 They've been doing some work with his brother. 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:18.920 His brothers sees her first, and then they see each other, 0:06:19.000 --> 0:06:21.719 and I just cheer up, because, you know, because I 0:06:21.760 --> 0:06:23.160 couldn't write that. 0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:27.919 That question of Eilish's agency is kind of central to 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:30.760 the ways in which she has changed and grown as 0:06:30.800 --> 0:06:34.160 a character in the intervening decades between the two books. 0:06:34.760 --> 0:06:38.159 Some of the readings of her as a protagonist in 0:06:38.200 --> 0:06:41.279 Brooklyn would have it that she was passive. I don't 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:45.200 think that's quite right, but she was certainly circumspect, and 0:06:45.440 --> 0:06:49.480 as we find her in Long Island. She has more grit, 0:06:49.600 --> 0:06:54.000 She is sharper, she is far more directive in her life. 0:06:54.279 --> 0:06:57.640 Was that a deliberate decision in terms of how you 0:06:57.680 --> 0:06:59.400 were going to characterize her twenty years on? 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:02.360 Yea that, in other words, she can't be dreamy. 0:07:02.920 --> 0:07:06.960 In the previous book, she drifted along, she went with things, 0:07:06.960 --> 0:07:08.960 she went with the flow, and people liked her and 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:11.280 looked after her. But she didn't come to America to 0:07:11.360 --> 0:07:14.240 take New York. But now she's built a castle in 0:07:14.240 --> 0:07:16.960 the sense she's made a family. She's had two children, 0:07:17.400 --> 0:07:19.760 and even though you know there are a problem, but 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:21.480 the in laws, they're not great problems. 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:23.920 She's got a wonderful relationship with her children. 0:07:24.120 --> 0:07:27.240 And just before the opening of the book, he realized that, well, 0:07:27.280 --> 0:07:29.040 she has just built her world. 0:07:29.280 --> 0:07:34.360 There's this wonderful early scene where, having been too forthright 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:37.440 at one of her in law's big family lunches, kind 0:07:37.440 --> 0:07:40.920 of horrifyingly, there is an outsider watching people talk all 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:44.720 over each other, watching these rituals to which she barely belongs. 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:48.960 She's too forthright, and then by mutual agreement no longer 0:07:49.000 --> 0:07:52.280 attends them, and there's a wonderful scene that comes out 0:07:52.320 --> 0:07:56.080 of that where she gets the Sunday New York Times 0:07:56.120 --> 0:08:00.000 for herself, and that opens up this entirely different existence. 0:08:00.480 --> 0:08:04.520 Yeah, there's a funny thing happened in suburbs and in 0:08:04.680 --> 0:08:08.560 provincial places in the late sixties early seventies is that 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:13.840 women who were not involved actively and openly with feminism, feminism. 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:17.360 Swept in under their doors in some way. You know. 0:08:17.560 --> 0:08:20.040 It came in the letter box, it came through the television, 0:08:20.040 --> 0:08:22.440 of course, the radio, but it happened at home. 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:24.120 It happened in our house where my. 0:08:24.040 --> 0:08:27.560 Mother moved from a newspaper called The arsh Press, which 0:08:27.560 --> 0:08:30.600 really wasn't very good to the Irish Times, which was 0:08:30.600 --> 0:08:34.320 considered sort of Protestant liberal newspaper in Ireland and had 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:37.080 really good coverage of the arts and really very well 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:40.640 written articles, and it was obviously it was the intellectual paper. 0:08:40.800 --> 0:08:43.360 And my mother started to first well, swap it with 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:45.800 the neighbor, but then she decided to get it herself. 0:08:45.800 --> 0:08:48.120 It was a very big move and I think it 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:51.600 changed things in the house. And it's almost unimaginable now 0:08:51.679 --> 0:08:55.120 because of course people can just go online and find everything. 0:08:55.160 --> 0:08:58.920 But those things were very big changes that occurred families 0:08:58.920 --> 0:09:00.160 in the nineteen seventies. 0:09:00.520 --> 0:09:04.880 I'm interested in what you're saying about the castle that 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:07.880 Alish has created in the family. One of the things 0:09:07.880 --> 0:09:11.679 that's so touching in those early scenes, even though we 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:15.640 see them filtered through the animating disaster that sets the 0:09:15.840 --> 0:09:19.280 plot into sequence, is that not just Elish, but Tony's 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:21.559 also a really good parent. Like the two of them 0:09:21.600 --> 0:09:26.120 have what seems to be very lovely relationships with their 0:09:26.400 --> 0:09:29.800 very nice children. All of that is delivered in a 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:32.959 way that is devoid of kind of false drama or 0:09:33.520 --> 0:09:34.520 friction or tension. 0:09:34.920 --> 0:09:38.320 Yeah, you see, it was Tony's already been demonized at 0:09:38.320 --> 0:09:39.959 the opening of the books. You'd be very careful not 0:09:40.080 --> 0:09:41.920 to go on with that, not to kick him when 0:09:41.920 --> 0:09:44.840 he's down, as it were. So therefore, he particularly has 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:47.200 a relationship with his daughter, and he's had since she 0:09:47.280 --> 0:09:49.640 was a baby. And he's one of those fathers, you know, 0:09:49.640 --> 0:09:52.600 who just can't stop looking at their chatter daughter. So 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:56.079 you know, that's very important that that that bond is there. 0:09:56.640 --> 0:09:58.400 You know what happens that the openly that I was 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:01.920 a big blow simply because we're tak he about simple happiness, 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:05.000 but a simple happiness that agis has created very, very carefully, 0:10:05.600 --> 0:10:08.000 and sorry, yeah, I was interested in all that. 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:11.800 How important is it that the bearer of the news 0:10:11.920 --> 0:10:16.719 about Tony's infidelity is an Irishman rather than an American 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:20.200 or an Italian? Or how much does it matter that 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:22.760 it's a shouting Irishman who sets the thing off? 0:10:23.120 --> 0:10:27.360 It matters enormously because I can't write American dialogue and 0:10:27.520 --> 0:10:28.840 there we are. You know what I mean? 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:32.200 In other words, what would an American's anger be like? 0:10:33.040 --> 0:10:36.319 What words would he use? And also what's his own background? 0:10:36.320 --> 0:10:39.400 Because it would matter enormously. Is he, for example, is 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:41.400 he from the Midwest? Is he local? 0:10:41.559 --> 0:10:44.360 Is he? What is he? I would have no idea. 0:10:44.679 --> 0:10:46.880 I would get one word wrong, and in getting one 0:10:46.920 --> 0:10:48.760 word wrong, I would get the sort of grammar of 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:51.760 the moment wrong. The important thing is she has to 0:10:51.760 --> 0:10:54.480 be able to judge is he saying something he means? 0:10:54.600 --> 0:10:58.480 Is he saying something true? Is he threatening? Are his 0:10:58.559 --> 0:11:01.800 threats empty? She has to be able to read that. Now, 0:11:02.360 --> 0:11:04.680 how do you read that? If you're in such a 0:11:04.720 --> 0:11:07.360 foreign country, It's very hard to interpret all that. 0:11:07.360 --> 0:11:11.280 That question of foreignness and of speaking a different language 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:13.600 runs right through this book, as it did with Brooklyn. 0:11:13.720 --> 0:11:17.480 You know, you've named both of these novels after the 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:22.880 tellosmanic place where she makes a new home in America. 0:11:22.920 --> 0:11:26.760 But actually, weirdly, Brooklyn is quite absent from Brooklyn, and 0:11:26.880 --> 0:11:31.480 Long Island is largely absent from Long Island. Why did 0:11:31.480 --> 0:11:34.480 you send her those places in the naming of the books. 0:11:35.280 --> 0:11:38.640 Yes, she doesn't experience Brooklyn, you know. In other words, 0:11:38.640 --> 0:11:41.640 it's happened. It's happened with so many people. The emigrant 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:44.920 experience is so much about missing things, not just missing 0:11:44.960 --> 0:11:47.600 home that that's an easy thing to work out. 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:48.480 Yeah, they miss home. 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:51.760 But missing what's actually happening in this sort of texture 0:11:51.760 --> 0:11:53.680 and flavor of the place. I think it happens with 0:11:53.720 --> 0:11:56.760 a young woman more because she's not going to be 0:11:56.800 --> 0:11:59.640 feel free in the streets or the bars or the 0:11:59.679 --> 0:12:03.040 steams in the same way. But Long Island's what Tony 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:05.600 promised her, And it happened where I was in the 0:12:05.679 --> 0:12:08.719 choir in a Catholic the Catholic church, I think it 0:12:08.840 --> 0:12:11.520 was the upper west Side around eighty sixth Street on 0:12:11.559 --> 0:12:14.760 the west side, and the church was completely Irish Catholic, 0:12:14.800 --> 0:12:16.720 except there were no there were no Irish people left. 0:12:16.840 --> 0:12:18.640 I said that the priest to, of course, was Hispanic. 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:21.319 And where did all the Irish go? Ho? 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:23.640 They went out of the island, out of Long Island, 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:28.920 you know, in the in the Greats, those funny migrations 0:12:28.960 --> 0:12:31.720 in cities. People might have gone from the Upper West 0:12:31.720 --> 0:12:35.040 Side to Brooklyn, and the next generation wanted a garden, 0:12:35.559 --> 0:12:37.320 and they went, they went to Long Island. 0:12:38.840 --> 0:12:42.640 It's also significant that she's in a culder sac that 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:47.280 in many ways mirrors the curtain twitching kind of existence 0:12:47.280 --> 0:12:50.319 that she was so keen to escape. They scrutinized every 0:12:50.360 --> 0:12:53.120 time you step out the front door, her sisters in 0:12:53.200 --> 0:12:55.560 law standing in the doorway one at a time, so 0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:57.959 they're not making up the numbers that they'll be noticed. 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:00.440 It's kind of very funny the way all of that 0:13:00.480 --> 0:13:01.360 stuff is observed. 0:13:02.040 --> 0:13:03.920 Yeah, again, it's suited by darker purpose. 0:13:04.240 --> 0:13:06.880 Tony promises her this, they're going to build four houses, 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:08.040 and that's what they do. 0:13:08.040 --> 0:13:09.040 They build four houses. 0:13:09.280 --> 0:13:11.719 But of course it meets means for me, and don't 0:13:11.760 --> 0:13:13.280 have to worry too much about it, you know, and 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:15.280 like what day does she visit her mother? And none 0:13:15.320 --> 0:13:19.120 of they're all gathered together, so it just made it 0:13:19.320 --> 0:13:22.080 much easier if they were all living there, so they 0:13:22.080 --> 0:13:25.120 could all encroach on her at various times and not others. 0:13:25.720 --> 0:13:28.120 You see, the problem with the Long Island thing is 0:13:28.160 --> 0:13:31.480 that it's very thin in the sense that she's married, 0:13:31.559 --> 0:13:32.360 she's got two kids. 0:13:32.400 --> 0:13:35.440 That's her world. She doesn't go to arsh bar, she. 0:13:35.920 --> 0:13:39.679 Isn't involved in lookal politics. It's just even in the library. 0:13:40.200 --> 0:13:42.920 She goes to work. But again, you can only get 0:13:42.920 --> 0:13:45.840 a certain amount out of the job or the house. 0:13:46.559 --> 0:13:47.800 So I needed one more drama. 0:13:48.280 --> 0:13:50.319 And the drama course is the drama of Tony's family 0:13:50.400 --> 0:13:53.520 is the drama of another enclave. 0:13:54.440 --> 0:13:56.320 Again, it has to come. I feel careful with it. 0:13:56.320 --> 0:13:57.960 Her mother in law has to be very kind and 0:13:58.000 --> 0:14:01.000 decent in a whole lot of different ways. And you 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:03.000 know there's nobody in making her an over. But the 0:14:03.040 --> 0:14:05.880 two women do have a particular problem over what issue. 0:14:06.520 --> 0:14:13.160 And alishcomes from this nonchalant, drifting, passive circuspect figure. 0:14:13.240 --> 0:14:16.480 She becomes right stubborn on one matter. 0:14:17.200 --> 0:14:19.680 From a craft perspective, one of the things that's so 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:23.720 astonished me in Long Island is how well you manage 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:27.560 to create a sense of her purpose and of her 0:14:27.640 --> 0:14:32.359 character while at the same time denying us too much interiority. 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:35.720 And maybe it's a function of the way in which 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:38.080 you approach plot in this book, or maybe it's a 0:14:38.120 --> 0:14:41.320 function of the fact that once she does get back 0:14:41.360 --> 0:14:44.560 to Ireland, you move into a kind of polyphonic mode 0:14:44.600 --> 0:14:49.880 where we get different perspectives driving the narrative at different times. 0:14:50.040 --> 0:14:53.000 But was that a very deliberate decision not to have 0:14:53.200 --> 0:14:58.160 us in her head wallowing with the kind of the 0:14:58.240 --> 0:14:59.920 angst and the personal dilemma. 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:01.800 The problem is that if you do that, you can 0:15:01.840 --> 0:15:05.120 do it once. You can't then do it twice. You 0:15:05.160 --> 0:15:07.160 can't have it again and again and again. You know, 0:15:07.240 --> 0:15:10.560 on Monday she felt this thing towards Tony. She went 0:15:10.600 --> 0:15:13.000 over in her mind what she knew, Well, what did 0:15:13.040 --> 0:15:15.440 she do on Tuesday? And so you can have that 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:18.680 to a certain extent, but what she does becomes more 0:15:18.720 --> 0:15:21.840 important than what she thinks. But I had to soften 0:15:21.880 --> 0:15:23.520 that a bit because there's a moment where she goes 0:15:23.560 --> 0:15:25.880 out onto Jones Beach and she goes for a walk 0:15:25.920 --> 0:15:29.160 and suddenly she realizes that or the reader realizes that 0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:30.840 her own life has become a sort of set of 0:15:30.880 --> 0:15:34.280 memories that it isn't merely a new experience after new experience, 0:15:34.480 --> 0:15:37.720 that the business of being on that beach with those 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:40.440 kids when they were small, with Tony, when they were 0:15:40.480 --> 0:15:43.480 just married, that all of that has become very soft 0:15:44.080 --> 0:15:47.640 and now suddenly sharp memory for her. She suddenly has 0:15:47.720 --> 0:15:51.000 put down roots in memory on Long Island, which she 0:15:51.040 --> 0:15:53.480 certainly wasn't where she'd done before. So I thought that 0:15:53.600 --> 0:15:57.040 was what I would do, rather than have her constantly 0:15:57.480 --> 0:16:01.040 going into her thoughts for two pages, because I felt 0:16:01.040 --> 0:16:03.400 that those tots are pretty circumscribed in the book in 0:16:03.400 --> 0:16:05.520 the sense that she is recovering from what she's heard 0:16:05.560 --> 0:16:09.120 about Tony. She is remembering various things that happened with 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:13.520 Tony's family to see piecing together how she has ended 0:16:13.600 --> 0:16:14.080 like this. 0:16:14.240 --> 0:16:15.720 On Long Island before she. 0:16:15.720 --> 0:16:17.920 Will go just so that when she's back in Ireland, 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:20.680 you have an extra underplot, which is not merely what 0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:22.720 she sees in Ireland, but that there is a past 0:16:23.120 --> 0:16:28.040 now that will some way pull her back towards American. 0:16:29.440 --> 0:16:32.600 Coming up after the break column shares the American cultural 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:36.920 forces that have shaped his work, from James Baldwin to well, 0:16:37.240 --> 0:16:50.400 You're not going to guess the second one. Toybin has 0:16:50.520 --> 0:16:55.360 in other interviews expressed this fear that sequels are typically disappointing. 0:16:56.040 --> 0:16:59.160 To my mind. Long Island escapes that curves very effectively 0:17:00.320 --> 0:17:03.200 because it stands on its own as a propulsive, charming, 0:17:03.400 --> 0:17:07.399 thoughtful novel, but more importantly for the legions of fans 0:17:07.400 --> 0:17:11.679 of Brooklyn, because it's not a retread. When Ailish returns 0:17:11.720 --> 0:17:14.680 to Ireland, the characters from Brooklyn who she left behind 0:17:15.040 --> 0:17:17.520 have built on their own lives and moved on in 0:17:17.600 --> 0:17:21.840 different ways. More crucially, given that Brooklyn culminated in a 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:25.080 love triangle of sorts, Jim, the other man who she 0:17:25.160 --> 0:17:27.720 might have ended up with, has pieced together his life 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:31.080 after being left behind, running a bar and beginning a 0:17:31.119 --> 0:17:35.800 relationship with Ailish's old friend Nancy, and a big part 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:38.840 of how toy Bin departs from Brooklyn in Long Island 0:17:39.240 --> 0:17:41.840 is is decision to give sections of the novel to 0:17:41.920 --> 0:17:44.960 both Jim and Nancy so that we might hear their 0:17:45.000 --> 0:17:48.919 perspective on events and understand what they have at stake. 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:52.639 Because she's been away, there's so many things she doesn't know, 0:17:53.320 --> 0:17:55.159 And how do you work with the reader when the 0:17:55.200 --> 0:17:59.080 reader needs to know something that Edie doesn't know. Now 0:17:59.119 --> 0:18:01.280 you can tell the reader as the author, and this 0:18:01.359 --> 0:18:03.879 doesn't work. The reader gets tired of being told things. 0:18:04.520 --> 0:18:07.119 So therefore I realize the best way to try this 0:18:07.320 --> 0:18:09.640 was to try it from three sides. In other words, 0:18:09.640 --> 0:18:11.159 you would have a big chunk at the beginning from 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:14.280 Alien's respective. You would move then to part two and 0:18:14.320 --> 0:18:17.280 you would have Oh, someone called Nancy, and the reader, 0:18:17.359 --> 0:18:20.080 I would hope, seems oddly satisfied. Oh, I know Aleish, 0:18:20.119 --> 0:18:22.159 I know why she's home. I know the whole story. 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:25.160 Nancy doesn't know the whole story. And then you realize, 0:18:25.400 --> 0:18:28.040 but what you've told about Nancy, Alish doesn't know. So 0:18:28.080 --> 0:18:30.919 his business of not knowing becomes I think almost the 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:33.399 subject of the book, or the effort to make a 0:18:33.440 --> 0:18:35.800 secret energy in the book is who knows what but 0:18:35.920 --> 0:18:38.919 mainly who doesn't know what but the reader always knows. 0:18:39.240 --> 0:18:42.680 How important is that structurally as a way to approach 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:48.600 characters who, for one reason or another are repressing both 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:52.680 their feelings and their desires. 0:18:53.240 --> 0:18:55.800 Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure there's that much repression 0:18:55.840 --> 0:18:59.040 in the sense that you're dealing with ninety seventy six, 0:18:59.160 --> 0:19:00.920 so you're dealing with theid in Ireland where you could 0:19:00.920 --> 0:19:04.800 still have a long engagement when people got engaged before 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:07.960 they got married, and so you're dealing with the whole 0:19:07.960 --> 0:19:10.960 business that since Nancy's daughter is engaged, Nancy doesn't want 0:19:10.960 --> 0:19:13.280 to announce her engagement because we're cut across her daughter. 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:16.280 So then a novel depends on that secret, which is 0:19:16.320 --> 0:19:18.439 really done out of good manners. It's done out of 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:20.840 just not wanting to upset the daughter, rather than being 0:19:20.920 --> 0:19:23.840 done out of any sort of you know, repression. For example, 0:19:23.880 --> 0:19:26.200 the Catholic Church plays almost no part in the book. 0:19:27.000 --> 0:19:29.400 There's a nice priest, he just helped people get married 0:19:29.440 --> 0:19:33.160 and does those things waves and you know, everyone goes 0:19:33.160 --> 0:19:36.880 to Mass, but there's no big Catholic sort of repression 0:19:36.920 --> 0:19:37.320 in the world. 0:19:37.680 --> 0:19:40.560 You're right, maybe repression is too loaded a word, particularly 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:43.480 in an Irish context, but I guess I mean kind 0:19:43.480 --> 0:19:47.200 of stifled, you know. Jim. Jim is a man who 0:19:47.280 --> 0:19:51.560 has lived his life kind of bettening down big feelings 0:19:51.640 --> 0:19:55.520 because he's kind of in a constant state of mortification. 0:19:56.160 --> 0:19:57.800 Yeah, but it's also that he owns a bar. 0:19:58.040 --> 0:19:59.359 Because if you own a bar and you've got a 0:19:59.400 --> 0:20:03.600 reputation a gossip, people wouldn't like that. So you behind 0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:06.359 the bar, you hear everything. You're moving back and forth. 0:20:06.840 --> 0:20:08.479 He's been there all his life. He's father was there 0:20:08.520 --> 0:20:12.119 before him, just watching everything, making sure that everything's okay, 0:20:12.160 --> 0:20:14.879 but saying nothing. What I've got to do with them, 0:20:14.920 --> 0:20:17.520 then is to treat him like a character from Jane Austen. 0:20:18.080 --> 0:20:20.840 So he has all that stuff in the bar downstairs. 0:20:20.359 --> 0:20:21.919 But he goes upstairs at night, and he's on his 0:20:21.960 --> 0:20:23.680 own in that big house, and he's got a big 0:20:23.760 --> 0:20:25.080 room to sit, and he can drink and any amount 0:20:25.080 --> 0:20:28.600 of gin he wants, and he's uneasy in his solitude. 0:20:28.800 --> 0:20:31.320 And what he really wants is he's a man who 0:20:31.359 --> 0:20:33.359 wants to get married, who should be sharing his bed 0:20:33.400 --> 0:20:33.920 with the woman. 0:20:34.359 --> 0:20:36.720 And therefore it's not a problem. 0:20:36.520 --> 0:20:39.520 When Nancy comes along, even though they've known another other lives, 0:20:40.000 --> 0:20:42.080 but she seems so lively and so ready for life 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:45.560 and so filled with things, and so there's absolutely no problem. 0:20:45.600 --> 0:20:47.280 They're in their forties, they're going to get married, and 0:20:47.280 --> 0:20:51.440