Colm Toibin in SF for Nora Webster and for Caryl Perloff's "Testament of Mary"

Janet Roberts and Colm Toibin 

Irish Society a sponsor

I said hello to Colm Toibin.  I reminded him we met at Fudan University and M in Shanghai; he said “you are living here now?” I remarked that he is looking especially well, that America must be agreeing with him(he has been a year at Princeton, then Stanford and now Columbia University).  He replies with a laugh, that he thinks a good shower is key to appearance, especially at his age; being really clean goes a long way!  He humorously rubs his bald head, which is shining. 

The book, "Brooklyn" which he was touring in Shanghai, when he judged the First Asian Booker prize,  is being made into a movie.  I told him I participated in a book discussion about Brooklyn, a week after his reading, in Beijing.  I tell him that I remember his lecture about always knowing the house in your story, that it is central to a convincing narrative in that you know  where the boards creak on a stairs,  had influence with me.....

Engaged in a conversation with the journalist, about travels in the SW, he says,  Read Willa Cather, “Death of the Archbishop” about Taos, and Santa Fe...it is very revealing.  He  visited Agnes Martin. He says her model for retirement is his own; she lives in an assisted living place, goes out to her Mercedes each morning and drives to her studio.  She eats out, and gives scholarships to waitresses, asking them, Why doing you get a college education?  He says, Of course, she chooses the right waitresses. He describes her, as does these very minimalist canvasses, and thinks her  better than Georgia O Keefe. He visited Mabel Dodge's home museum, the chapel, etc. ...  

....He is asking about Santa Barbara...and is told that it is not a great place for an “interior life”. 

  When asked about society today, and whether people deserve what they have in a government, he remarks, they say get rid of the people  Get a new people!  This is in response to the remark by the journalist about corrupt governments.  Toibin says he is hopeful, but then he may remain hopeful forever.  He refers, by example,  to Stendahl the author  of The Charterhouse of Palma ...where he is going on about his love and the reader wants to know what is going to happen, and he realizes that he  may have been presented at  the Battle of Waterloo.  He did not pay it any mind.  He was absorbed in his own space, his own feelings, his own world.  So, the novelist

With regard to his artistry, this evening, colors, tones and gradaitions, along with ambiguities were emphasized.  Toibin says he likes to think of the space in his books is like looking at a Vermeer painting; he just wants to do that and it is enough, create a room and a woman in it, and atmosphere... and he can make that decision.  To talk about humanity and feeling.  His books have that intimacy.  

In a reply to a question from the audience, Toibin says of the preservation of  “Irish”, that it did not succeed like Hebrew in Israel; the villages where it was spoken, the people have left.  It is usually the impoverished part of Ireland that speaks Irish. 

Toibin concedes , " Yes, this last novel Nora Webster is most autobiographical, because he had the material and he needed to use it.  He knew he would regret it if he did not; he says he has used elements in all his short stories but he had not, until 40 years later, gained the perspective to deal with his mother's situation after their father died. It takes place over three years and also shows the changes in the village and its boundaries with their house.   His father died when he was 12.   (The book is beautifully done on fine paper, $30, or $10 on Kindle.) 

As for the craft of writing and reading, Toibin asserts  that a novelist does not read his own work.  A reader reads what he writes.  He does not write novels for therapy.    He is interested in the novel's  creation, its invention, its strategy, its materials, its form .   As for the wider questions of history and society, he does not concern himself so much with them, though there is evidence of change.  He wanted a woman in a house, and those confines delimit the representation.  He reads a section of the book...that shows the gradations of colors and emotions he feels.

Toibin says a great influence on his book happened on a walk.  He cannot just sit in his room and write; he needs something to happen.  (Virginia Woolf said the same...)  You must go somewhere, do something.  He went out and discovered the Scottish landscape artist,Callum  Inness,  in a  gallery,  and went oftentimes to see the paintings. On one of these visits,  the artist and he met and after their conversation, suggested they do something together.  He subsequently visited the artist's studio and had various conversations with him. What fascinated him was that though there was one color on the surface, beneath the surface, there were many more colors on different levels; here was abit of red on the surface from one of those levels. . He emphasizes the gradations, the tones in his own writing. Toibin asserts that this was a revelation and gave him new direction in his own  writing.  (see Callum Inness section)

The topic turns to THE MASTER, his book about Henry James and to  Brooklyn. In reply to a question, he says, "Life is a journey; to have a story, a novel, something has to happen.  Taking a journey from one place to another situates your character and allows a story to evolve.   There has to be movement in the dynamics of a novel.   The difference between a novel and a short story is that the latter has a single image and clear culmination into a resolution. "

How does he know about things, places, in his novel.?  He does not do research.  He imagines, for example, how women feel when they color their hair.  In this village, women would emerge from the beauty parlors with green and purple hair.  Everyone knew them, so he could figure out how it took place.  Any autobiographical detail in a novel is conflation and sometimes straight anecdote(as in the teacher, he hated).  He recalls an instance where a former journalist and novelist, Robert O'Brien used actual conversations, and people got into an uproar about it.  He thought it was a great idea and thought he would do that, as well. 

Toibin did  work on menial jobs and he recalls people used to follow him around. Those people who earn the most money seeing that others do the work.  For instance, in  a strawberry factory; he kept eating strawberries and smoking instead of packing strawberries and the supervisor would chase after him.  He gives this instance in reply to a question about how he knows about the laboring group in his books. 

About the writing process, Toibin reflects on the fact that  he can get  passionate in an evening and has all sorts of ideas, and when he wakes in the morning, thinks them  very bad ideas.  As to whether books are going out of fashion, Toibin affirms that "  Writing takes place in solitude, and reading is in solitude; nothing has changed. 

Writing a novel is not therapy; it is making something, finding a way to use what you know.  Toibin continues, This book is about my mother and my childhood, but it is fiction because much has been made up, or is a combination of other towns and other people.   

Wexford County is where John Kennedy visited; Tolm says his father took him to Wexford town see Kennedy that day.  We thought he was so tan, so “in Technicolor”, so shining.  We don’t get that much sun in Ireland, so his face was outstanding.  He met Schlesinger who told him to read Kennedy's speech to the Irish Parliament in that year, as Kennedy underlines the greatness of James Joyce, whom the government had dismissed as worthy of mention in Ireland. He felt Kennedy's mention required the government to take another position towards the great writer.  

The village in his stories is the village in which he lived.  His father died when he was 12.  His mother had to bring them up; these are the days when women did not think of work.  They married and their husbands made all the decisions.   They had the house, and that was their domain.  

In the book, for a few details, Toibin  cites two films the boys watch with their mother, both of which seem to be about their own lives:   “Lost Horizon”, where someone goes away over a horizon and never returns, having found Shang ri La.  The other is “Gaslight” (though they had electricity) starring Ingrid Bergman.  The child asks his mother what the movie is about.   The mother replies, " a woman in a house."  He says if you were to look up a tv scheduling, you would find that these played at 9:00 pm two weeks apart.  His mother said they could stay up; it filled the silence, the unspoken in the house, the absence of the father.   He has treated this material in short stories, yes, many times.  (In Mothers and Sons, both father and mother die in the first pages, a story I read on the train on the return )   Mothers are strong female characters in his books and short stories.  

Colm Toibin says not to have too much pride in something.  It could change or disappear.   Testament of Mary was playing on Broadway. I was sorry to miss it, and plan to see the play now opening in San Francisco.   It played better in London than in New York.  He tells us, "it was a remarkable day.  I got a call that the play  was nominated for a Tony, for the best play of the year, and and then, as I would be late for an appointment with a student,  I needed to go out, but the phone rang.  It  was Ken Rudin, the producer,  saying he was pulling the play.  I asked him, "When?"  He said. " Sunday."  I said, " I will see you there then."     He talked with Carey Perloff at a private viewing of the play which previews Wednesday.  Learned that there is also an audio book of the Testament of Mary, which I have read, and found it very poignant; Meryl Streep reads the audio which would be worth a listening.l 

Dr Myles Dungan, an Irish writer and broadcaster with a PhD from trinity College, Dublin.  He lectures at University College and Trinity College Dublin and the University of California, Berkeley.  He is a fixture of major literary festival in Ireland. The journalist hits him with broad questions about Ireland and about him having been a journalist first.  Colm responds about Mary Robinson, who in his view was an austere cold academic, but warmed up, when she campaigned by going out to the villages.   The implication that Toibin  does not have this political viewpoints or context in his work.  Colm Toibin he asserts that he chose to write about an intimate space, a woman in a house, a person taking a journey, what is common to humanity .  This is literature. This is his choice.  It is enough to do.  

When asked how he feels about his 68th birthday coming up, Colm Toibin says, and quotes a NPR interview with a trumpeter from Poland  ---(He thinks NPR dumbs up, not down; what would one do without NPR when one wakes in the morning? ) He said, “I have a richer sensibility”!  I don’t miss anything.  What has changed is that I have to play doubles in tennis, now...Not much else has changed. 

Again, the question of real details in his novel arises.  He replies that there is a section  in the book about a school teacher he hated; he taught two science classes.  He told his mother that Tolm was dumb and shallow(not his words exactly) and his mother said what do you think of that?  He retorted, " I wish the teacher’s house would burn, that the teacher would die."  He hated this teacher.  He had a stammer then...He puts him in the book, as he is now dead. 

I was so riveted to my seat, I did not want to be distracted by notetaking.   It was a nice audience, many Irish from the Irish Society which I think I may join.  There is noone like an Irish writer, I have concluded!   The Consul General SF,  Philip Grant  introduced Toibin by talking about his “Walking book” which he used when at Dublin College , while studying botany and walking the borders.   There is an Irish Literary society in San Francisco. Austrian white and Sangiovese Tuscan red wine were served, along with almonds, and a selection of hard and soft cheese, and a large plate of strawberries. The space in the Mechanics Institute Library was expansive and enjoyable; there may have been a hundred people in attendance, and most appreciative.  

I read a couple of his short stories from MOTHERS AND SONS on the Bart trip.  Mothers figure importantly  Sons are often weak, and disturbed by the death of their fathers.  I have also read a couple of stories, from his short story collection, "The Empty Room".  The first is about Lady Gregory, the Irish playwright's real sponsor and WB Yeats' personal patron; he lived in her house at Coole, and we all know the "swans of Coole"; Lady Gregory's Toothbrush was my first brush with Colm Toibin.  The short story "Silence" had another revelation, not in the long book; she had an affair with Edmund Blunden, secretively from her husband or his wife, but it ended.  Blunden lectured at Oxford when I was a student; I took his course! 

So riveted to my seat, I did not do the assiduous notekeeping that I normally do. I did not want to miss a word.  This man is  true genius; one feels in the presence of a masterful mind and intelligence, and one who affirms truth, even brutal truth in his compassion for humanity.  

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Callum Innes

b. 1962

• 
  

Callum Innes .Born in Edinburgh in 1962, he studied drawing and painting at Gray's School of Art from 1980 to 1984, completing a post-graduate degree at Edinburgh College of Art, in 1985.Innes began exhibiting in the mid-to-late 1980s.  In  992 he had two major exhibitions  at the ICA, London and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. He has emerged as one of the most significant abstract painters of his generation.
Innes tends to work alternately on a number of disparate series, each of which he repeatedly revisits. In his Exposed Paintings a single color, mixed by the artist, is brushed on to the canvas. Turpentine is then repeatedly applied by brush to remove the paint before it begins to dry. Innes washes away or, as he has described it, "unpaints" the canvas, leaving all but the faintest vestigial traces of color. The result reveals varied veils of color buried within the seemingly monochromatic single pigment. Each finished painting thus suggests a freezing in time of the otherwise momentary arrest of an ongoing process. The play between the additive and subtractive process, the making and unmaking, underlies this sophisticated body of work.

Innes joined Sean Kelly gallery in London in1997.  Awarded the Jerwood Prize for Painting in 2002 and the Nat West Prize in 1998. In 1995 Innes was short-listed for the Turner Prize. His critically-acclaimed museum exhibition, From Memory, traveled throughout Europe and Australia and the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, England recently presented an exhibition of his oil paintings and watercolours. Innes's work is included in many major public collections worldwide including: the Tate Gallery, London, England; the Kunstmuseum, Bern, Switzerland; the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada. An installation of callum innes|colm tóibín water|colour, first exhibited at Sean Kelly gallery in 2010, was also featured at Art Basel Unlimited in 2011. In 2012 he was commissioned by the Edinburgh Arts Festival to transform the capital's Regent Bridge, which he   with a changing sequence of colored light.
Callum Innes lives and works in Scotland.For more information, please visit www.calluminnes.com.