Colm Tóibín Discusses Home, Solitude, and Craft at UCSB

Students and community members gathered to hear two of today’s most thoughtful literary figures — Irish novelist Colm Tóibín and author and essayist Pico Iyer — engage in a meaningful discussion on stage at UCSB’s Campbell Hall on November 19. The conversation was hosted by UC Santa Barbara Arts & Lectures. Appointed by the Arts Council of Ireland, Tóibín served as the 2022-2024 Laureate for Irish Fiction, and has authored 11 novels, with Long Island — the long-anticipated sequel to Brooklyn — being his newest addition to his list of stories centering migration, belonging, and the private lives of ordinary people.

“It’s always on my mind, the things that happen and the things that remain unresolved,” Tóibín replied to Iyer’s question asking whether it was difficult writing about his hometown. “Leaving your own country, Ireland, to go to England or America, and what sort of life you live … That remains a great unresolved story.” He went on to talk about the emotional dissonance of those who have moved away returning home after years abroad, saying, “You think you’re going home, but actually you’re somehow a ghost in your own hometown, with your different accent, your different experience, with your different response to money. People think you’re glamorous. These things are still oppressing the emotions.”

Throughout the evening, Tóibín revealed glimpses into his writing process. When asked whether he needs a particular setting to work, he said, “If I’ve just got a corner facing inwards, I could really be okay anywhere … It might be different when starting a book. When starting a novel, especially, you can’t just decide strategically this is the day I’ll do it. It has to happen of its own accord, by accident almost. And for that, you need to be in some familiar space where it’s very easy to settle down quickly … If you’re moving around all the time, you can’t get [something interesting.]”

Tóibín also shared that teaching has sharpened his craft. He talked about bringing Jane Austen’s Persuasion to a writing class that had never read Austen before, and that diving in, taking notes before class, and starting to think about how the novel works really affects you. “I think it nourishes you,” he said before turning to Austen’s interiority. “The dance matters, let’s say in Pride and Prejudice … But it’s the next day that matters more when you see Elizabeth’s interior life, how she feels it herself … You learn that the more you let characters be alone and give their solitude a richness, the more energy you give them in everything else they do both socially and emotionally.”

Tóibín went against the idea of writing as a projection of the self, instead saying, “I have to not exist … My feelings do not matter, how I think about the character or views I may have must not appear … I must put a shutter down and only [look] outwards.” He then explained that a writer must imagine both the character and the reader, and shape the prose’s pacing accordingly. Without rhythmic guidance, he argues that “the prose is dead, it’s language of information, it’s like a manual.”

Despite its demands, Tóibín expressed that writing still serves as a sanctuary. “It’s comforting in some way, the idea that you’re immersed,” he shared. “A novel is written by someone alone, and is generally to be read by someone alone.” Connecting to a single voice, he emphasized, exposes your own self to another conscience.