Colm Toibin at the Berkeley Bay Book Festival this weekend
"A person in silence can in reading a book change his/her life." Like Velasquez's early portraits, where he looks at faces of common people, we get a full sense of their interior life, of their impoverishment and powerlessness, in their physiogamy. Toibin wants to create such character portraits in words.
He cites his portrait of Lady Gregory patron of WB Yeats and of the Dublin Theater.
In another quotation, he compares a sense of place in Nora Webster, for example, as being like a Renaissance painting, where the town and mountains recede into the background.
When speaking of his book which is very loved, about Henry James, "THE MASTER", he says that what is interesting in James' novels is that there is a secret, a mystery which creates tension and ambiguity in his work between the interior life and the public manifestation.
When a review is brought up to him by the Chancellor, he says his response was to "smile and nod"; that is what he was taught to do. The real story is that when Henry James was dying, his brother's wife (Alice James; not the sister, Alice James) was appointed the executor. Being a Boston Matron, she hated Edith Wharton. The grandsons guard the material at the Houghton Library and will not let anyone publish anything about Uncle Harry that is spurious in their viewpoint. They forbade the 74 letters written to a young sculptor by James, which were published in 2000..
A few more notes from listening to Colm Toibin talk with the UC Berkeley chancellor who is the former Columbia University chancellor and appointed Toibin to work at Columbia; he says, now he would like him to come out here to Berkeley, but Colm has already been in the area, teaching in South Bay at Stanford... it sounds like he likes the classroom at Columbia University, where he has a very enlightened teaching style. He asks students to lead discussions about sensitive issues in novels, when they have more investment than he...and it works out very nicely...
An example he provides is the following: We will have a Syrian novel to learn about Syrian culture and life, not just the view from journalists about what is happening to Syrians in Syria. I totally agree: that is the task of literature: to communicate the humanity and how humans experience historical events.
Doris Lessing reading by a man result in us getting to know women in a new way...
Seamus Heaney is evidently admired, as we all admire him and he had a place at UCBerkeley; "language sonorously used can make possible PEACE." ; YES! It can also make war.
Colm continues: "We do not go to a novel to confirm what we know. Novels are dangerous as they destabilize our world. We need to read translations from other cultures and countries.
Toibin's grandfather was imprisoned in the Uprising. As a result, his family hated members of the English government, but it did not stop them from reading Charles Dickens!
Oh, he said so much more, but let this suffice to encourage you to rise in your thinking, and as I told Colm, when he signed my version of his "On Elizabeth Bishop", I always feel "improved" by listening to you. " He just smiled and nodded...
Of course, we all know him for the past year's success of BROOKLYN as a film. He brought out this book when I was in Shanghai at Fudan Univesrity; Colm read at Fudan and at M on the Bund. He was chosen to judge the first Booker International Award, which went to a Chinese author.
He cites his portrait of Lady Gregory patron of WB Yeats and of the Dublin Theater.In another quotation, he compares a sense of place in Nora Webster, for example, as being like a Renaissance painting, where the town and mountains recede into the background.
When speaking of his book which is very loved, about Henry James, "THE MASTER", he says that what is interesting in James' novels is that there is a secret, a mystery which creates tension and ambiguity in his work between the interior life and the public manifestation.
When a review is brought up to him by the Chancellor, he says his response was to "smile and nod"; that is what he was taught to do. The real story is that when Henry James was dying, his brother's wife (Alice James; not the sister, Alice James) was appointed the executor. Being a Boston Matron, she hated Edith Wharton. The grandsons guard the material at the Houghton Library and will not let anyone publish anything about Uncle Harry that is spurious in their viewpoint. They forbade the 74 letters written to a young sculptor by James, which were published in 2000..
A few more notes from listening to Colm Toibin talk with the UC Berkeley chancellor who is the former Columbia University chancellor and appointed Toibin to work at Columbia; he says, now he would like him to come out here to Berkeley, but Colm has already been in the area, teaching in South Bay at Stanford... it sounds like he likes the classroom at Columbia University, where he has a very enlightened teaching style. He asks students to lead discussions about sensitive issues in novels, when they have more investment than he...and it works out very nicely...
An example he provides is the following: We will have a Syrian novel to learn about Syrian culture and life, not just the view from journalists about what is happening to Syrians in Syria. I totally agree: that is the task of literature: to communicate the humanity and how humans experience historical events.
Doris Lessing reading by a man result in us getting to know women in a new way...
Seamus Heaney is evidently admired, as we all admire him and he had a place at UCBerkeley; "language sonorously used can make possible PEACE." ; YES! It can also make war.
Colm continues: "We do not go to a novel to confirm what we know. Novels are dangerous as they destabilize our world. We need to read translations from other cultures and countries.
Toibin's grandfather was imprisoned in the Uprising. As a result, his family hated members of the English government, but it did not stop them from reading Charles Dickens!
Oh, he said so much more, but let this suffice to encourage you to rise in your thinking, and as I told Colm, when he signed my version of his "On Elizabeth Bishop", I always feel "improved" by listening to you. " He just smiled and nodded...
Of course, we all know him for the past year's success of BROOKLYN as a film. He brought out this book when I was in Shanghai at Fudan Univesrity; Colm read at Fudan and at M on the Bund. He was chosen to judge the first Booker International Award, which went to a Chinese author.
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