‘Reaching beyond Maurice’s work in search of an analogy, the closest I can think of is that of the painter Paul Klee. There’s the same curiosity as to what the medium can do, a similar interest in small effects writ large, a shared fascination with the compositions of those often thought below serious consideration.’
‘I have a habit of telling stories too fast, expecting a coherent narrative to spring up from a few words flimsily strung together on a string. The problem is words words words. The more neatly I arrange them, the more they lose their flavour.’
‘It is hard to think, that’s Kelman’s point, but you have to. Your freedom depends on it. The problem is that when you start to think, which is usually when the bad stuff starts to happen, when you fuck up or you get fucked, and who can say which comes first, you realise that the words you use to think are not your own, they have been shoved down your throat. You have to learn to think for yourself. In your own terms.’
In this fine set of essays, Colm Tóibín's ebullience and intelligence is consistently apparent.
‘I remember my uncle cutting his toe nails with a razor blade. I remember my father drunk from Sunday to Sunday. There has to be a monument to the failures as well.’
‘One requires only a few moments in the Cohenverse to grasp that here is perhaps the only person in the world with the discipline, intelligence, and voracity to render even the most exacting of inner critics speechless.’
‘I have a habit of telling stories too fast, expecting a coherent narrative to spring up from a few words flimsily strung together on a string. The problem is words words words. The more neatly I arrange them, the more they lose their flavour.’
‘I remember my uncle cutting his toe nails with a razor blade. I remember my father drunk from Sunday to Sunday. There has to be a monument to the failures as well.’
‘Something always came down like a guillotine to split her life in two, so that on one side was happiness, and on the other, the present.’
‘This was in Montpellier, in 2012. He was a legionnaire from Birmingham; his reclaimed name was Roger, and he was the most intelligent murderer I have ever met.’
‘In the hours and days after seeing Eugene, I was particularly bad: sobbing uncontrollably, vomiting, roaring into the hell’s bells of night. I prayed for typhus, Asiatic cholera, plain old consumption, anything that would do the job for me. I had no way to impart how terrible and terrified I felt except to write it down.’
‘Her husband was asleep beside her, snoring gently, and she lay, breathing shallowly, planning her next move.’
25th January 2023
1st September 2022
‘I have a habit of telling stories too fast, expecting a coherent narrative to spring up from a few words flimsily strung together on a string. The problem is words words words. The more neatly I arrange them, the more they lose their flavour.’
‘I remember my uncle cutting his toe nails with a razor blade. I remember my father drunk from Sunday to Sunday. There has to be a monument to the failures as well.’
Contributors: Dizz Tate, Olivia Fitzsimons, Danielle McLaughlin, Jill Crawford, Neil Hegarty, Angelique Tran Van Sang, Anna Walsh, Mia Gallagher, Thomas Morris, Kevin Power, Niamh Campbell, Ian Maleney, John Patrick McHugh, Mary Morrissy, Tadhg Hoey, Susannah Dickey, Sean O'Reilly