This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Bill Burton: "Long Island" is something of a sequel to your 2009 book, "Brooklyn." What made you want to revisit the characters from that book?
Colm Toibin: I mean, there was no theory. I didn't say I need to write a sequel. It's just that about 10 or 12 years later, after I published Brooklyn, an idea came to me, and the idea was with these same characters, but a different sort of novel which is more plot led. It's 25 years later, so it's 1976 and I wanted to have a very good reason why Eilis Lacey from Brooklyn would need to go back to Ireland. I worked out the math. Her mother could still be alive. She could be 80 years old. So she's going home for a birthday. She's also going home for a wedding. So there are all those ceremonies she's going home for, but of course, she's going home with a secret, and when she arrives home, there's another secret waiting for her. So it's a novel, in a way, about how little the characters know of what's really going on, but the reader knows everything. So the reader turns the page thinking, "Oh, my God, she should really, really know this, and she doesn't." So it's a much more plot led novel. You know, I've been writing novels with a lot of atmosphere, you know, just creating character, just working on an overall texture. But this one was an effort for once, to write a novel where the reader would turn the page hoping to know what would happen next.
BB: Brooklyn was made into a film that was nominated for three Academy Awards. What was the experience like for you in letting go of those characters to some extent and having someone else write the screenplay for the film?
CT: It was great. I signed the contract, and once you do that and someone else is writing the screenplay, you have a duty and a responsibility to leave that person alone. So Nick Hornby wrote the screenplay. I wanted him to do it. I did not have an email address for him or a phone number. I did not seek them. He did not contact me, and by the time he had three drafts written, I'd written another book. I read his draft, third draft, I think, and were just one or two words I worried about about Irish usage. But honestly, I think if you live in the real world, you can start moaning once you sign the contract. Obviously, if they mess up your script, you can go into spasm. But they didn't do that. I mean, Nick Hornby has, if he needs to write a novel, he can write one of his own. So in other words, he was very faithful. He represented what I did with extreme skill, and there was, and it was absolutely no downside, because we got a great group of actors. I mean, we got Saoirse Ronan, for God's sake.
BB: You've been a writer for many years. I would say you've had a career as a writer. But I know you've said that you don't like to say that you have a career as a writer. Why?
CT: Well, I think that with each novel, you've got to go into it very specially. You think I'm a writer, I have a career. It's a step in a career. You lose something which, oddly enough, might be called the sort of spiritual element, the element which you're still seeking. So I mean, maybe it's a vocation, not a vocation for the priesthood, but it's a vocation as much as it's a career, probably more.
BB: Hemingway was one of the writers that inspired you to start writing. What inspires you now to keep writing?
CT: An idea comes into my head and I realize, if I don't do this by Christmas, A. No one else will do it and B. If it's not done by Christmas, why not?
And I had a student who was talking about a novel he was going to write, and he said, "You know, I have the summer free, so I'll do some work on it over the summer," I said, "What are you talking about? The summer is June, July and August. That's three months. That's 90 days, like surely, he'll write the book in those three months."
But so Hemingway was good like that. He worked every day. And he had a very real vocation where, you know, the absolute urge, not only to get it right, but to get it, but to make it new.
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