Writing as an emergency

I grew up in Wexford, the fourth of five children. When I was 12 my father died. It was a big shock and there was a period of three or four years, where it was just myself, my younger brother and my mother in the house – and a lot of silence. Sometimes in life it's hard to know what to say, especially after a death. It's easier to mask what you want to say with jokes or with light conversation. There's a drama in the air but it's ambiguous. Nobody shouts. That silence influenced me from early on. 

My mother left school at the age of 14. She was headstrong and loved to read. We had lots of books at home, especially poetry. For her, a writer was more important than a bishop. I started writing poetry around 1967. I was still at school, but I had already found my theme: sadness – although I only realised that later.

When I was studying at University College Dublin, I met a few older fellow students who raved about Barcelona. They said that you could always find work there as an English teacher. In 1975, at the age of twenty, I moved to the Catalan city and spent three decisive years there, during a time when democracy was taking hold in Spain after Franco's death.

I went to Barcelona in 1975 and the dictator Franco died just a month later. The Spain that I found was surprisingly liberated, despite decades of dictatorship. I was there for a crucial three-year period when democracy came to Spain. I was on the marches and really felt part of it. I think the revolution had already happened in people's minds about five or six years earlier. I arrived there when I was 20 and the young people I knew smoked dope, listened to Bob Dylan, read whatever they wanted and travelled. No one talked about Franco anymore. It was like that era was over already. The streets were wild. After a certain time of night, they were filled with gay men wandering up and down. This was before AIDS and before heroin. It felt incredibly safe and good-humoured, even though it was furtive.

Years later, when I interviewed Pedro Almodóvar, we realised that we had often been in the same places in Barcelona in 1975/76. The flamboyance of the time, the spirit of optimism, is conveyed by some of his films. To this day, I travel regularly to Spain and have a house in Catalonia. My life has become quieter. The most important thing for me is to be able to work – no matter where.

In my life I end up moving around a lot. My boyfriend is in Los Angeles, I teach one semester a year at Columbia University. I'm also in Dublin a lot. I never know where I am when I wake up! For some writers, moving around a lot would be a disaster but I get ideas on the way. I find it very fruitful. For me, writing is a sort of emergency: if you don't finish the story, no one will.

“For me, writing is a sort of emergency: if you don't finish the story, no one will”

You have to finish stories. Nora Webster, for example, a very personal book about grief set in Wexford, was something I put off for a long time. When the book was finally published in 2014, my mother and brother, who’d lived through that sadness with me were both dead by this time. It was just me left. Nora Webster was written mostly in Los Angeles and Spain. From there, I had a clearer view of the past. I have never written about Los Angeles, even though I have lived there on and off for twelve years. Sometimes you have to lose something, to have it behind you, to be able to write about it.  

My move to America was gradual. It was a drift rather than a decision. I got offered a teaching position in Austin, Texas for a semester. That became a habit. Often while I was living at a university, I would write a short story. They were often dark and forlorn, like the one I wrote in Texas One Minus One. It was written in one single day. Those experiences gave me a funny dark energy and a lot of melancholy. It’s not surprising: You're out of your comfort zone in a rental accommodation: the bed isn't yours, your books aren’t there. I always meant to stop drifting, but the offers kept turning up. After a while, Princeton-Columbia offered me a job. Over time, I’ve got used to being in that world of students and colleagues and libraries.

When I'm teaching, I don't usually write stories, but instead do research, travel or visit my friend in L.A. I find the current situation in the United States grotesque. This country has always been almost unbearably proud of its constitution, its institutions, its democracy. The Americans built neo-Greek temples like the Capitol, the White House: there was always this attempt for skin-deep grandeur but now their constitution now has failed them so badly.

The problem did not start with Trump. How can a single person have so much executive power in a country that calls itself a democracy? To Republicans I say: if you have something against immigrants, remember that at the end of your life you will be surrounded by them. When you are too weak to lift a glass of water, an illegal immigrant will hand it to you. Remember that, and watch out.

As told to Jess Smee