Life
1955- [orth. vars. Toibín; occas. Toibin; err. Tóibin];
b. Co. Wexford; son of Mícheál Tóibín, a schoolmaster who died when he was 12 (a loss recounted in Sign of the Cross) and a Fianna Fáinna activist along with his brother Pádraig; ed. National School, Wexford, and UCD, grad. 1975; spent three
months each year teaching English in Barcelona, 1975-78; began journalism
on In Dublin, as theatre critic, later becoming Features Editor; edited Magill but late left and joined for the Irish Independent after differences with the proprietor/editor Vincent Browne; covered trial of Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri in Argentina, and travelled in S. America; issued “Martyrs and Metaphors” in Letters from the New Island (ed. Dermot Bolger, 1987), discounting the unity of Irish historical narratives; issued The
South (1991), a novel set in Catalonia and Ireland in the 1950s, shortlisted for Whitbread and winner of The Irish Times Literature (Fiction) Award, 1991; issued The Heather Blazing (1992), concerning Irish High Court judge Eamon Redmond and his arbitration of an constitutional case with implications for his beliefs and family relationships; winner of the Encore Award, 1992; ed., New Writing From Ireland: A Soho Square Anthology (1993);
The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe (1994); winner of E. M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1995; The
Story of the Night (1996), a novel about of Richard Garay, son of an Argentinian father and an embittered English mother, sleep-walking in the Buenos Aires of the
Generals, who later finds love with Pablo, the son of a politician and AIDs through his San Francisco friends; placed on the Lambda list; essay on Irish famine in London Review of Books, 1998; winner of the Ferro-Grumley Award
& the E. M. Forster Prize from The American Academy of Arts and Letters;
issued The Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels in English since 1950
(1999), selected Carmen Callil; issued The Blackwater Lightship
(1999), novel in which a Wexford family gathers to deal with the imminent
death of a son and brother, stricken with AIDS, shortlisted for the Booker
Prize; ed. The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction (1999); held fellowship at Centre for
Scholars and Writers NYPL, Sept. 2000-June 2001; addressed
the IASIL Conference in Barcelona in the same year; divides time between
house on Fitzwilliam Place and Catalonia; launched Lady Gregory’s
Toothbrush in Coole Park, March 2002; gave the
Ernest Blythe Lecture (Abbey Th., 19 May 2002), speaking on Lady Gregory;
issued Love in a Dark Times: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodovár
(2002), formerly review-articles on London Review of Books,
launched in Dublin, March 22nd; issued The Master (2004),
a novel based on 11 moments in the life of Henry James’s between Jan. 1895
and Aug. 1899, short-listed for Booker Prize, 2004; Beauty in a Broken Place, a commissioned centenary play dealing with Sean O’Casey (dir. Niall Henry), which opened at the Abbey on 16 Aug. 2004; owns home at Fitzwilliam St., Dublin; writes frequently for literary pages of English
papers such as The Guardian and Times Literary Supplement. OCIL
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Works
Novels, The South (London: Serpent’s Tail 1990), 238pp.
Do. (London: Picador 1992; rep. 1995); The Heather Blazing
(London: Picador 1992; rep. 1993), 245pp., Do. [Bloomsbury Classic
Ser.] (London: Bloomsbury 1995), Do. (London: Vintage 1995), French
trans. by Anna Gibson as La bruyère incendiée: roman (Paris: Flammarion
1996); The Story of the Night (London: Macmillan 1996), 312pp;
Do. (London: Picador 1996; 1997), 320pp., and Do. [1st US edn.]
(NY: Henry Holt & Company 1997); The Blackwater Lightship (London:
Picador 1999; rep. 2000; NY: Scribner 2000, 2001), 273pp.; The Master
(London: Picador 2004), 469pp. [on Henry James]. Drama, Beauty in a Broken Place (Dublin: Lilliput Press 2004), 96pp.
Commentary, Walking Along the Border (London: Queen Anne Press 1987), [photographs by Tony O’Shea] 159pp., rep. as Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border [rev. edn.] (London: Vintage 1994), 210pp.; The Trial of the Generals: Selected Journalism 1980-1990 (Dublin: Raven Arts 1990), 197pp.; The Sign of the Cross, Travels in Catholic Europe (London: Jonathan Cape 1994), 296pp.; with Diarmaid Ferriter, The Irish Famine: A Documentary (London: Profile 2001, 2003), 221pp. [orig. review articles in London Review of Books, 1998]; Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush (Dublin: Lilliput Press 2002), 127pp.; Love in a Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodovár (London: Picador 2002), 279pp.
Edited collections, Seeing is Believing: Moving Statues in Ireland ([Laois] Mountrath: Pilgrim 1985), 95pp.; Homage to Barcelona (London: Simon & Schuster 1990), Do. (NY: Simon & Schuster 1994), 240pp. [travel guide]; ed. Soho Square 6: New Writing from Ireland (London: Bloomsbury 1993), 255pp., rep. as New Writing From Ireland: A Soho Square Anthology (Winchester, MA: Faber 1994); ed. with Bernard Loughlin, The Guinness Book of Ireland (Enfield: Guinness Publishing 1995), 192pp.; ed., The Kilfenora Teaboy: A Study of Paul Durcan (Dublin: New Island Books 1996), 173pp.; ed., Irish Short Stories [Penguin audiobooks series] ([London]: Penguin 1997), 4 sound cassettes; ed. with Carmen Callil, The Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels in English Since 1950 (London: Picador 1999), 304pp.; ed. & intro. The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction (London: Viking 1999), Do. [rev. edn.] London: Viking 2000), 1,120pp.; with Andrew O’Hagan, ed., New Writing II (London: Picador 2002).
Published Articles, ‘Martyrs and Metaphors’ [pamph], in Dermot Bolger ed., Letters from the New Island (Dublin: Raven Arts 1987), pp.6-8, also iss. as Martyrs and Metaphors [Letters from the New Island Series] (Dublin: Raven Arts 1987), 20pp.; review of Nationalism, Colonialism and Literature [Field Day pamphs.; 5th ser.], in Fortnight [Belfast], No. 271 (March 1989), p.21; ‘New Ways to Kill Your Father: Historical Revisionism’, in Karl-Heinz Westarp and Michael Böss, eds., Ireland: Towards New Identities? (Aarhus UP 1998), pp.28-36; ‘Erasures’, [on amnesia and the famine], London Review of Books (30 July 1998) [q.p.]; ‘Literary Genesis’, [account of preparation of The Modern Library with Carmen Callil of Virago], Irish Times (17 April 1999), [q.p.]; ‘Issues of Truth and Invention’, review of Brendan Barrington, The Wartime Broadcasts of Francis Stuart (Dublin: Lilliput 2000), in London Review of Books (4 Jan. 2001), pp.3 and 6-11. Also, extract on Roger Casement from Love in a Dark Time, in The Irish Times [Weekend], 2 March 2002, p.4; ‘Emmet and the Historians [what the epaulets were for]’, in The Dublin Review, 12 (Autumn 2003), 107-27 [review essay]; ‘Reinventing Shakespeare’, review of Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, in NY Times [Book Review Desk] (3 Oct. 2004), Sect. 7, p.22-23 [infra].
London Review of Books (Contributions): ‘Erasures’ (30 July 1998) [on Ireland ]; ‘Roaming the Greenwood’, review of A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition by Gregory Woods (21 January 1999); ‘“What is your nation, if I may ask?”’, review of Jews in 20th-century Ireland: Refugees, Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust by Dermot Keogh (30 September 1999); Issues of Truth and Invention, review of The Wartime Broadcasts of Francis Stuart by Francis Stuart , ed. Brendan Barrington (4 January 2001); ‘Love in a Dark Time’, review of The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde by Oscar Wilde ed. Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart-Davis (20 September 2001); ‘The Last Witness’, Janet & Jackie: The Story of a Mother and Her Daughter, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis by Jan Pottker and Mrs Kennedy: The Missing History of the Kennedy Years by Barbara Leaming (20 September 2001); ‘How To Be a Wife’, review of Becoming George: The Life of Mrs W.B. Yeats by Ann Saddlemyer; (6 June 2002); ‘A Djinn speaks’, review of Diana Vreeland by Eleanor Dwight (20 February 2003); ‘Rinse it in Dead Champagne’, review of War Paint: Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden: Their Lives, Their Times, Their Rivalry by Lindy Woodhead (5 February 2004); Contributions to London Review of Books (to oct. 2004), ‘I was Mary Queen of Scots’, review of My Heart Is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots by John Guy and Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens by Jane Dunn (21 October 2004); ‘A Priest in the Family’[story] (6 May 2004) [online].
Miscellaneous, ‘Malvinas Malvinas’, [work in progress], in Big Issue [Eire] (July 1995), [q.p.]; Introduction to Francis Stuart, Black List, Section H [rep.] (Penguin 1996); ‘Roaming in the Greenwood’, review of G. Woods, A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition, in London Review of Books, Vol. 21, No. 2 (21 Jan. 1999), pp.12-16; Introduction to Micheal Toibin, Enniscorthy: History and Heritage (Dublin: New Island Books 1998); ‘The Day Poetry Came Alive’, in The Irish Times (9 Dec. 2000); review of Vincent Banville, An End ot Flight (New Island), in The Irish Times, Weekend (21 Dec. 2002), p.11.
Bibliographical
details
The Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels in English since 1950, ed.
Carmen Cahill & Colm Toibin (Picador 2000), incls. short, incisive
commentaries on the eclectic and wide-ranging selected titles, laid one
as one page per book; cites awards; titles incl. Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice
Candy-Man; Gita Mehta, A River Sutra, Janet Frame, Owls
Do Cry; Agatha Christie, Murder is Announced [&c.].
Query, The Youth [Viking], 238pp., listed in Abebooks as Viking remainders [n.d.] at Dorothy’s Books, Caldwell, ID, USA.
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Criticism
Interview with Shirley Kelly, in Books Ireland (Oct. 1994), pp.240-41.
Maurice Harmon, review of The Heather Blazing (Picador 1992), Irish Literary Supplement (Spring 1994), p.21.
Hayden Murphy, review of talk given by Tóibín at the 7th Biennial Edinburgh Book Festival (Sept. 1995), in Irish Times (9 Sept. 1995).
G. V. Whelan, review of The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe (London: Jonathan Cape 1994), in Books Ireland (April 1995), pp.84-85.
Brendan Hamill, review of The Story of the Night, in Fortnight Review (Nov. 1996).
John Dunne, review of The Story of the Night (1996), in Books Ireland (Nov. 1996), p.320.
Eithne Farry, review of The Blackwater Lightship (Amazon online, 1999).
Terry Eagleton, review of The Blackwater Lightship, in London Review of Books (14 Oct. 1999), p.5.
Richard Tyrell, ‘The Shock of the New’ [interview-article], in The Independent [UK] (18 Sept. 1999) [q.pp.].
[Shirley Kelly,] ‘Colm Tóibín reassessed the old lady of Coole’ [interview], Books Ireland, April 2002, p.81.
Jim Marks, review of The Blackwater Lightship [Scribner Edn.], in Washington Post, “Book World” (16-20 Dec. 2000).
Tom Herron, ‘Contamination: Patrick McCabe and Colm Tóibin’s Pathologies of the Republic’, in Liam Harte, & Michael Parker, Contemporary Irish Fiction: Themes, Tropes, Theories (London: Macmillan 2000) [cp.172].
Cormac Ó Gráda, review of Toibín & Diarmaid Ferriter, The Irish Famine, in Irish Times (19 May 2000).
Joyce Carol Oates, reviewing Andrew O’Hagan & Colm Tóibín, eds., New Writing II (London: Picador 2002), in Times Literary Supplement (12 April 2002), p.11.
John Gardiner, review of Colm Tóibín, Love in a Dark Time, in Times Literary Supplement (12 April 2002), p.22.
John Banville, review of Love in a Dark Time, in The Irish Times (6 April 2002), Weekend, p.8.
Brenda Maddox, ‘The queen of Coole’, review of welcomes Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush , in The Guardian ( 30 Aug. 2003 ).
Frank Kermode, ‘Meditations on The Master’ [review of The Master], in The Irish Times (6 March 2004).
Alex Clark, ‘Songs of experience’, interview-article in The Guardian (13 March 2004).
Arminta Wallace, ‘In the Shadow of a Playwright’, [interview article with Colm Tóibin], in The Irish Times (7 Aug. 2004), p.7.
Jim Marks, review of The Blackwater Lightship (Scribner), in Washington Post, Book World [16-20 Dec. 2000], p.14.
Adrian Frazier, reviewing Colm Tóibín, Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush (Dublin: Lilliput Press), in The Irish Times [Weekend], 23 March [2001] p.8.
Helen Meany, notices paperback edition of The Blackwater Lightship, in The Irish Times (July 200).
Mark Lawson, ‘Whispering gallery: ML wonders if Ireland has lost its voice’, review of The Blackwater Lightship, in Guardian (25 Sept. 1999).
John Waters, Jiving at the Crossroads (Belfast: Blackstaff Press 1991; rep. edn. 1994).
Conor McCarthy, Modernisation, Crisis and Culture in Ireland, 1969-1992, 2000), pp. 219, 220, .221.
Gerry Colgan, ‘Beauty in a Broken Place Peacock Theatre, Dublin’ [review], in The Irish Times (18 Aug. 2004).
Maurice Harmon, review of The Master, in Books Ireland (Summer 2004).
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Notes
Website: A “Colm Tóibín” website (at www.colmtoibin.com) contains biographical notices by Jacob Urep Nielsen and Belinda McKeon, with interviews and related material by Roisín Ingle, Eileen Battersby, and others.
The Heather Blazing (1992):
Eamon Redmond, is a High Court judge; brought up on Wexford, and groomed
by the Fianna Fáil party machine. Dermot Bolger calls him ‘an
existentialist with two capital FFs, and the novel, a portrait of the
vast class of ordinary people whom Ireland’s writers have singularly
failed to engage with. When Eamon asks his father, a school-teacher with
secret War of Independance memories about burning houses, he answers,
‘We gutted a good few of them, all right. Wilton, old Captain Skrine.
The Proctors on the Bunclody Road, Castleboro.’ The Proctors have
been the central characters in Tóibín’s previous novel, The South, a study of Protestant Wexford, just as The Heather
Blaze is an examination of what the Proctors would call the RCs. Redmond
is a reserved character, hiding the secret source of his hurt, so much
so that he doesn’t even tell his wife, who hates hanging, that he
has helped draft the Bill to abolish it. The novel deals with the re-emergence
of his unbearable pain at with the death of a loved one, and his first
steps back towards life with his grandson. [See also remarks on the preamble
of the constitution under Eoin Neeson, supra.]
The Blackwater Lightship (1999), set in Ireland in the early 1990s; concerns the Devereux family, three of whom - Lily Devereux, her mother Dora and her daughter Helen - arrive at an uneasy peace after years of strife when Declan, Helen’s brother, begs to be taken to the family home in Co. Waterford as he approaches death from AIDS, accompanied by two of his gay friends. The novel revives memories of childhood, follow Lily’s husband’s early death and her remote love for her children. (For extract from Walking Along the Border, see de Valera, infra.)
Beauty in a Broken Place: At its centre are the infamous riots that attended the first productions of Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars, provoked by such dramatic incidents as the bringing of the tricolour into a pub, and the presence there of Rosie Redmond, the prototypical prostitute. Wouldn’t it still make the blood boil in your veins? It is a debate that, skilfully manipulated, is as relevant now as then, in the modern equivalents of patriotism and morality. Donal O’Kelly as O’Casey leads a cast of stalwarts. They will be directed by Niall Henry, artistic director of Sligo’s Blue Raincoat Theatre Company, who usually makes a worthwhile difference. Peacock Theatre Previews, 8.15pm also Sat 2.45pm €17/€12.50; 01-8787222. (Gerry Colgan, The Irish Times, “The Ticket” [online], 14 Aug. 2004; for full text, see also review, infra.)
IASIL/Barcelona: Addressing the IASIL Conference in Barcelona in 1999, shortly after the publication of Homage to Catalonia, Tóibín gave an account of similarities between Ireland and that country during their respective revolutionary upheavals, capturing brilliantly the amalgam of modernism and conservatism which went towards the making of the political and artistic upheavals which have left so strong a mark on each in this century. Dominech and Gaudi, Picasso and Miro were all part of the fabric of his lecture [...]. An enthusiastic reception from the IASIL audience, including especially the conference hosts, confirmed that Toibin had struck deep chords in bringing his love of Catalonia, which he has known intimately since 1975, to such a pitch of intellectual and emotional understanding. (IASIL Newsletter, CUA 2002).
Film version: Blackwater Lightship, dir. John Erman; film-script by Sean Connaughton, with Angela Lansbury as Mrs Devereux, Dianne Wiest as Lily and Gina McKee as Helen; Keith McErlean as Declan; Brian F. O’Byrne as Larry, and Sam Robards as Paul. See review, Rex Reed ‘Angie, Baby!’ (NY Observer, 2 Feb. 2004): ‘You are enriched by the positive ways people who never dreamed their lives would lead them to this predicament learn to cope and join together and make their differences work. Unlike most of the first-run movies that are made today, The Blackwater Lightship has a central, life-affirming theme: We all make mistakes, but forgiveness is the thing that defines love and leads to peace. What is a film this simultaneously heartbreaking and life-affirming doing on television?’
Booker shortlist: The Master (2004), was short-listed for $90,000 Booker Prize, 2004, losing to Allan Hollingworth’s The Line of Beauty. The party given for the two Picador writers took place on two floors of Soho House and included among the guests Anne Enright, Roddy Doyle and Ruth Scurr (who had given The Master an ecstatic review). The publisher was said to be ‘conflicted’ by the competition between its two candidates. ( See NY Times, 24 Oct. 2004 - online.)
Conflicted? The NY Times (4 July 2004) recommended The Master as a ‘deeply considered, crisply delivered novel whose hero is Henry James, of all writers the most ambiguous about the issue of secret sexuality’, calling its author ‘a gay Irishman, sees in James an opacity, a failure of passion, a coldness and evasiveness that may conflict with the apparent happiness and sociability recalled by many who knew the real James.’ [NY Times Online.]
Zeitgeist: ‘It takes a lot of audacity to reanimate a dead author - or so the evidence of David Lodge’s new novel about Henry James would suggest. Yet it can be done, and Colm Toibin’s recent attempt at the same subject, ’The Master, casts a terrible shadow over this book. “A few weeks after I delivered the completed Author, Author to my publishers in September 2003, I learned that Colm Toibin had also written a novel about Henry James which would be published in the spring of 2004,’’ Lodge writes in a postscript. It is hard not to imagine the awful emotions in the Lodge household at this point, the anguished telephone call: He’s written a what? About who? Lodge leaves it to “students of the zeitgeist’’ to ponder the significance of this coincidence.’ (Sophie Harrison, NY Times, 10 Oct, 2004 - online.)
Literary agent: Tóibín’s first literary agent, who accepted The South, was Imogen Parker; his agent is A. P. Watt at October 2002.
Big IMPAC: Colm Tóibín was among the judges of the IMPAC International Dublin Literary Award (£100,000).
Fave book (1): Tóibín chooses Tim Robinson, Aran: Pilgrimage in ‘The Best of Tomes’, Guardian Magazine (8 Dec 1995), p.23; see further above and under Robinson, Rx); also praised poems by Michael O’Loughlan and a work on Alexandria.
Fave book (2): Tóibín chooses Alice Kaplan, The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach (Chicago UP) and Brendan Barrington, ed., Francis Stuart’s Wartime Broadcasts 1942-1944 (Lilliput Press) in “Writer’s Book Choice”, in Times Literary Supplement (1 December 2000).
Kith & Kin: Tóibín’s father published Enniscorthy: History and Heritage (q.d.) and was associated with a local priest in establishing a museum in a prominent local site (a castle).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)