‘If you need cancer to tell you how to live, there’s something wrong with you’

Each week, Benjamin Law asks public figures to discuss the subjects we’re told to keep private by getting them to roll a die. The numbers they land on are the topics they’re given. This week, he talks to Colm Tóibín. The Irish writer, 69, is the author of 11 novels, including The Master, Brooklyn, The Magician and, last year, Long Island. His work has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times.

US-based Colm Tóibín: “Now’s the time to try to build a decent society, not on the basis of some mystical greatness, but on the idea of ordinary political progress.”Credit: Alamy Stock Photo

DEATH

You’ve published so many books, accomplished so much. Can you die happy? All that stuff doesn’t make any difference. When someone else dies, you think, “Well, that’s not me.” Then someone says, “Well, it will be you.” But you still don’t face it or deal with it. Only once, in 1995 at a performance of Beethoven’s Opus 74 in New York, the idea came to me in full that this music would go on and I would not. It came to me very sharply and seriously.

What emotions ran through you? Sadness? Gratitude? Certainly not gratitude. I mean, you’ve gone to all the trouble of learning Spanish or working out how to put in a light bulb, and it all becomes noise. But this isn’t merely about what you’ve learnt. It’s all the things you love – stories, poems, music, paintings, people. All will be wasted and become none and zero and f--- all. It’s just miserable; it’s just wicked. You become very skilled at not thinking about the full nature of extinction for eternity.

How do you feel about the fact that your books will outlive you? Is that consoling or horrifying? It might be consoling for Shakespeare, but books like mine just disappear slowly – maybe even quickly – over time. So yeah, it’s no big deal.

You’re turning 70 this year. Does that mean that death is on your mind more? Not really, because you manage to get through the day with all sorts of distractions. It’s quite exciting, actually, being 70.

Oh, what’s exciting about it? I’m still playing tennis; I’m still working. When I was young, I would’ve thought 70 was the very end. But it turns out not to be.

You’ve written about surviving testicular cancer. Has that changed how you live now? I take a strong line on this. If you need cancer to tell you how to live, there’s something wrong with you. Something much worse than cancer.

POLITICS

You’re an Irishman living in the US. What’s your take on Irish politics right now? Irish politics is lovely, it really is. The world should learn from it. Yes, there’s a sort of inertia in Irish politics that’s really frustrating. If you want to get anything done – get legislation passed, or get any serious reform or change – don’t think about it. But at the same time, Micheál Martin – the prime minister, the taoiseach – is a good guy and he reads books. But not just that, he’s just a normal, decent person. There’s a sort of level of decency in the way things work there; education is more or less free. There’s a problem with health, but there are no huge problems arising from public nastiness.

And the United States? I think the only good thing that’s come out of what’s happened is that Americans can now stop talking – forever – about their constitution, about the greatness of their country, about the Capitol, about the White House. Those things did not protect society from Trump. If you want to ever see bad behaviour, it’s those senators who, one week, were saying one thing, then, the second week, after they were slightly threatened, said the opposite. On the record. You can see it!

So what I hear there is that not only are these dark times, but there are no illusions left. Exactly. Now’s the time to try to build a decent society, not on the basis of some mystical greatness, but on the idea of ordinary political progress.

Are you hopeful that can still happen? Everyone’s hopeful about the midterms. If [Trump] wins the midterms, we’re in terrible trouble.

Tell me about the politics, the issues of your most recent book, Long Island. The novel’s set in 1976. Watergate is happening on the American side. Northern Ireland is sort of banging at the door on the Irish side. And the private drama that’s going on is about migration. I wanted to make the issue personal and dramatic. If you’re dealing with migration, you’re dealing with the public demonisation of outsiders.

BODIES

Is it true that growing up, you had a stammer? I still have it, actually. But between about 8 and about 17, I had a problem with certain hard consonants. My own name was a particular nightmare. If someone said, “What’s your name?” I’d have real trouble with the first name and tremendous trouble with the second. I just couldn’t say it.

Oh, I feel for that young version of you! It’s fine. I got over it. But there was a fellow who used to follow me home from school, taunting me. The big cure in Ireland used to be to put on an English accent. A man in the town I’m from had a tremendously bad stammer. He simply changed his accent. People were like, “How does this man now have such a posh English accent?”

Are you happy when it comes to your body? The thing is, I’ve never really felt good about it, ever. I was never toned or fit in the years when other guys were worrying about that. Looking too much in the mirror, thinking too much about your body … there’s something indecent about it. So you’re stuck in your body. But luckily, you’re looking outwards. That’s what’s interesting.

Colm Tóibín appears at Melbourne Writers Festival (May 8-11) and Sydney Writers’ Festival (May 19–27).

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