Colm Tóibín

Summary

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Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud

Guest: Colm Tóibín

Episode Date: June 10, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this richly intimate episode, Bella Freud invites renowned Irish novelist Colm Tóibín for a wide-ranging and deeply personal conversation. Together, they explore the nuanced ways in which clothing intertwines with identity, memory, family, and personal history. Touching on childhood, grief, creativity, sexuality, rituals, glamour, and the fraught codes of fashion, Tóibín brings a distinctive wit and honesty, making for a conversation that effortlessly moves between the sartorial and the soul.

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Key Topics & Discussion Points

1. Colm’s Outfit and Clothing Influences

(01:25–06:33)

• Colm’s ensemble: Allbirds shoes, socks from Muji, a distinct jacket inspired by Parisian publisher Olivier Nora, an XXL shirt from Adolfo Dominguez.
• Influences: Admiration for the style of Lydia Davis, Anne Carson, Olivier Nora—"I wanted to have this sort of... suave authority" (03:19, Colm Tóibín).
• Fashion as admiration: Colm discusses being captivated by the understated brilliance and confidence in style choices of intellectuals.

“I feel that I carry with me, as I wander around, some of the moral authority and sort of general, let’s say, understated talent of people, of Olivia Nora, of Lydia Davis and of Ann Carson.”
— Colm Tóibín (04:54)

• Hidden jacket detail: Red lining, perhaps “my inner cardinal” (05:00).
• On practical design: “Oh, it’s got big pockets. You can put books in them and stuff.” (06:30)

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2. Writing: Compulsion or Struggle?

(06:52–09:06)

• On hating writing: Colm rejects the notion, describing laziness more than hate.

“Hate is too strong. I get lazy and I prefer to do something else. But you have to settle down to it and do it... It’s just work.”
— Colm Tóibín (07:27)

• On writerly myths: He cautions against over-intellectualizing the misery of writing, seeing it as a communication and duty rather than self-expression alone.

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3. Fashion, Friends, and the Charvet Shirt

(11:38–14:24)

• Friends with style: Marie Donnelly’s sense of dress—“she looks like a schoolgirl who’s raided the Comme des Garçons section in Dover Street Market."
• Gifted a Charvet shirt: Colm describes the drama and ritual of a bespoke fitting in Paris.
• Clothing’s plainness as sophistication: Charvet shirts are “so plain, they don’t look like much... But, you know, I haven’t picked it up yet."
• Clothing confers invisible status: Reference to the Irish Prime Minister’s reputation for Charvet.

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4. Fashion Memories & Irish Style

(14:27–16:11)

• Childhood clothing: Never owned anything he liked—polo necks, string vests & underpants, cravats.

“The funniest thing I ever owned, and I wish I had it again, was not only a string vest but a string underpants.”
— Colm Tóibín (15:13)

• Clothing as class and fashion signifier: Nostalgia mixed with gentle humor at Irish men’s fashions of the 1960s.

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5. Family, Politics, and Self-Image

(16:11–19:24)

• Family role: Father was director of elections for the Fianna Fáil party; Colm involved in politics from age 9.
• On self-image as a youth: Felt he looked good, “like a poet, rock star,” but was self-aware rather than vain.
• Feeling different: Noticed physical differences from family—“I did really feel it was a joke at the beginning that I was on my way to Buckingham Palace. I got dropped in Enniscorthy by accident..." (19:24).

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6. Childhood Loss and the Theme of Abandonment

(22:26–25:06)

• Father’s death and the absence that followed: Sent away by his mother to an aunt, not hearing from her for three months, described as a “psychic wound.”
• Exploring this in fiction: Early novels grapple with abandonment (esp. “The South”) and its literary echoes.

“That became, no matter what I did, the subject.”
— Colm Tóibín (24:16)

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7. Women, Clothing, and Storytelling

(25:32–27:43)

• Obsessing over detail: Childhood fascination with sisters’ and aunts’ discussions of clothing, especially significant items like a fur coat or a wedding dress.
• Women as style icons: Stories reveal how clothing and character intertwined in the women around him.

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8. Physical Description in Writing

(28:09–29:18)

• Omitting physical detail: Prefers not to describe characters’ appearances so the reader can “feel someone rather than picture them.”

“No matter what you do, the reader fails to imagine... So that’s the opposite of what writing should be. And it’s no use.”
— Colm Tóibín (28:53)

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9. Hair, Widowhood, and Irish Mores

(29:30–31:24)

• Dyeing and wigs: Anecdotes about his mother and aunts grappling with aging, widowhood, and vanity.
• The rules of mourning and reinvention: Wearing sheepskin coats, blue-dyed hair, and the anxieties of self-presentation.

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10. Grief and Loss: Brothers, Therapy, and Hypnosis

(35:00–41:02)

• Losing both brothers: Sudden, painful, and marked by the irretrievability of loss.
• Seeking help: With psychiatrist Ivor Brown, undergoing hypnosis and writing about it with veracity—“Everything in the story about the hypnosis is what I remember. There’s nothing made up in... You can’t falsify that.”

“I went into his spirit as he was dying. And, I mean, it’s a very hard thing to talk about, in a way.”
— Colm Tóibín (39:22)

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11. Irish Grief, Transgenerational Suffering, and Poetry

(41:11–43:07)

• On Irish suffering:

“I don’t know one in Ireland who managed to deal with the death of their parents as though it was some sort of natural, inevitable thing.”
(41:17)

• Rituals surrounding death as insufficient: Wakes and other customs don’t alleviate true grief.
• Elegies in Irish poetry: Editing Poetry Ireland brought awareness to the immense volume of elegies.

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12. Fashion and Sexuality: Awkwardness, Judgement, and Not Fitting In

(43:18–44:53)

• Judgment in the “gay world”: Colm describes feeling out of place in gay scenes, never feeling right in the expected attire.
• Awkwardness as charm: Finds “Irish country awkwardness” more attractive than suave sophistication.
• Not able to dance: Which a friend alleged meant he couldn’t perform in bed—“People who can’t dance can’t fuck. Do you know that? Oh, God, that’s so true... and I’m sure it’s not true.” (45:37, Colm quoting a friend)

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13. Observations on Men’s Style: Almodóvar, Competitiveness, and Tennis

(46:15–49:51)

• On Pedro Almodóvar’s unexpected athletic style: “He’s like a wall... absolutely without style.”
• Work habits and creative personalities: Both meticulous and slow in creative work.
• Competitiveness in games: Celebrates victories, even in modest Monday tennis matches—“My age, winning a tennis match!” (49:32)
• Physical aging: Amused resignation regarding aging and unexpected medical concerns.

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14. Swimming, the Body, and Deep Memory

(49:51–53:23)

• Learning to swim in old age: Equates floating underwater while clasping knees as a fetal image—“it has to have something to do with the womb...” (52:11)
• Overcoming anxiety: For both Colm and Bella, water and immersion provoke memories and anxieties connected to childhood.

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15. Fashion World, Glamour, and Nakedness

(54:04–55:19)

• On glamour: “With people who are very glamorous, you’d really like to be with them naked, you know, rather than all their clothes.” (54:04)
• Modeling English poets for Esquire: Poets as unexpected fashion models.

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16. Poets, Competitiveness, and the Irish Literary Pecking Order

(55:19–58:05)

• Poets as competitive and glamorous: “Poets themselves were always fascinating... they all were aware of their position in a sort of pecking order.” (56:53)
• Author photographs: Photographs touched up by Jerry Bauer as icons of literary style.

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17. Style Turn-Offs and Italian Fashion Codes

(58:12–62:44)

• Suave vs. awkward: “There’s nothing more attractive... than Irish country awkwardness. Someone wearing absolutely the wrong clothes.” (58:16)
• Italian fashion rules: Forbade short-sleeve shirts, white shirts, and warned about looking like a waiter.
• Insular codes: Italians’ style “never make a mistake,” unlike foreigners trying too hard.

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18. Writers and Clothes: Who writes it well?

(74:11–76:01)

• Writers on style: Considers if anyone does it well; Martin Amis, Philip Roth, Paul Auster as examples.
• “Nobody really wrote about men in clothes, did they?” (75:46)

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19. The Art of Losing: Prizes, Resilience, and ‘Bouncing Back’

(67:00–73:07)

• Resilience as a gift: Therapist: “The thing about you is, you bounce back.”
• Losing literary prizes: The Booker as “a theater of cruelty” (67:56), the “oscillation between hope and public humiliation.”
• Coping mechanisms: Hiding out for days, but ultimately moving forward.

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20. Cancer, Writing, and the Birth of a Sentence

(71:21–73:16)

• Illness and creativity: No intent to write about cancer until an opening line arrived—“It all started with my balls”—and the piece flowed from there. Published in the London Review of Books.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “Writers talk a lot of rubbish about writing. Maybe because it’s so hard to talk the truth.” (08:23)
• On never fitting into the gay fashion world: “I was always wearing the wrong clothes. I remember going to heaven once, the disco in London, and realizing I was completely out of place.” (44:23)
• “In Ireland, we have no Wall Street and we've no aristocracy, and therefore the poets have a great power in the country. You can probably change the country by changing the poem.” (56:00)
• “With people who are very glamorous, you'd really like to be with them naked, you know, rather than all their clothes.” (54:04)
• “There's nothing more attractive... than Irish country awkwardness.” (58:16)

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Selected Timestamps for Important Segments

• The Story of the Allbirds & Lydia Davis: (01:30–03:27)
• Charvet Shirt Fitting & French Publishing World: (12:31–14:24)
• On Growing Up Politically Active & Self-Image: (16:16–19:24)
• Describing Characters’ Appearance in Novels: (28:09–29:18)
• Hypnosis and Grieving His Brother: (37:24–41:02)
• On Irish Grief & Poetry: (41:11–43:07)
• Gay Club Fashion Awkwardness: (44:23–44:53)
• Italian Fashion Codes – Shirt Rules: (59:14–62:44)
• Winning and Losing the Booker Prize: (67:56–71:14)
• Cancer, Writing, and ‘It all started with my balls’: (73:07–73:16)

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Memorable & Light-Hearted Moments

• Colm’s inability to dance (44:53), and a friend’s theory on dancing and sex.
• Playing tennis with Almodóvar and analyzing the director’s style—or lack thereof—on the court (46:15–49:51).
• The never-ending search for proper shirts, under the shadow of his stylish Italian friend’s fashion bans (58:57–62:44).
• Modeling poets for Esquire and the unintended glamour of literary men (54:48–55:19).
• His plea: “If anyone’s listening, just send me clothes. Please, just send me something nice.” (78:40)

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Tone & Atmosphere

Warm, humorous, honest, and gently self-deprecating. Both interviewer and guest foster a tone of confession and candor, freely blending the language of fashion with the language of feeling. The conversation is peppered with asides and wry observations, underscoring the interconnectedness of the clothes we wear and the lives we lead.

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Final Reflection

Through weaving stories of fashion and family, trauma and triumph, Colm Tóibín and Bella Freud showcase how the textures of memory, identity, and creativity are stitched through both the visible and invisible threads of our wardrobes. This episode is as much about the unspoken language of style as it is about resilience, vulnerability, and the endless quest to belong—whether in a shirt, a family, a nation, or a story.

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Transcript

[Colm Tóibín]

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[Podcast Sponsor/Announcer]

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[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Hi, come. Welcome to Fashion Neurosis. Colm Tobine.

[Colm Tóibín]

Thank you.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Can you tell me what you're wearing today and why you chose these particular clothes?

[Colm Tóibín]

The shoes are called All Birds. And I was at a conference on Proust at Columbia and the two cleverest people I knew there were wearing the same sort of shoes. One was Lydia Davis and the other was Anne Carson. And they're both about the same age as I am and they just looked tremendous. And I think they spoke beautifully and they were very confident. And we're both wearing sort of men's jackets and these shoes. And I wanted to be them and Carson and Lydia Davis, I mean, more than anybody. And I asked them, I couldn't ask them, what shoes are you wearing? Cause I thought it would be, you know, considered sort of, oh God. After all I've said about Proust, that's all you can ask me. But I asked somebody, you know, who I thought knew about these things, please come and look at their shoes. And they told me they were wearing Allbirds. And so I immediately applied for Allbirds online and they're size nine. And they came. I wear Allbirds all the time now because they just are very comfortable socks. In Terminal 5 in JFK, which used to be the Aer Lingus terminal, it's not now because JetBlue gets bigger. It's a JetBlue terminal. It used to have a muji shop. And every time I went there, I bought loads of socks. In Muji, but it's closed now. And I've never found a Muji that you know, the same. But anyway, they're from Muji. In Paris. There's a man who's in the news at the moment. He's called Olivier Noah, and he was the head. He is, or was the head of Grassy, which is my publisher. And recently he's had to resign or he's been fired by an awful fellow who's the owns Hachette.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Oh, yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

And he did something appalling. I mean, he wanted. He wanted Olivia to publish his most dreadful book by most dreadful man. And it was a big row. And of course, Olivia wouldn't do it. But I have a wonderful editor called Joachim Schnerf. And Joachim and myself would go and see Olivier in his big office because he was a big boss and so. But I know I should have been listening to Olivier talking about publishing, but I was looking at his jacket and I didn't really know. Again, I didn't know what to do. I mean, you can't really ask people who are known for their intelligence where they got their jackets. But I asked Joachim if he could very, you know, cautiously, perhaps politely ask Olivier. And he told me the name of the company in Paris. And I immediately went there because I wanted to. I wanted to have this sort of. I was gonna say suave authority, but just very, very kind. And he's very intelligent and he's. He's who I want to be, really. And so I went immediately to that shop in Paris and I immediately bought this. I bought another jacket and a pair of trousers. And then when I went back again to Paris recently, I bought a second one. See, it's red inside.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Oh, yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

Which may be my inner cardinal. And the trousers are the same. And so I feel that I carry with me, as I wander around, some of the moral authority and sort of general, let's say, understated talent of people, of Olivia Noah, of Lydia Davis and of Ann Carson. And then the shirt, I'm sort of all the wrong shape. So my shirt is xxl. I mean, it couldn't be bigger. From Adolfo Dominguez in Barcelona. But then I discovered online they had better shirts. And so I ordered a whole lot of them, a big load of them. And, yeah, it's a sort of dress shirt, but if you wear it during the day, you feel better, I think. So that's what I'm wearing.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah, I noticed it had a hidden.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah, look. It's really cool thing. Yeah, it looks as though you're going to some major party. It's cool. I'm just going. You know, I'm not.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

It's got a kind of fashion, like an Ander Millermeister, sort of.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Minimalist.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah. And this jacket is good. I've been teaching with it all semester. So you go in and eventually you take it off because it's too hot in the room. But the fact that it's red inside and. And it's very nice. Cause it has a little yellow hook or a little thing you can hang it up. And whoever designed it thought, well, black and red and then you need a little bit of yellow.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

That's good.

[Colm Tóibín]

Oh, it's got big pockets. You can put books in them and stuff.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Oh, yeah. I love that. I remember Ozzie Clark saying, if you're going to do a pocket, it needs to fit a dozen eggs in. Don't really know why, but I sort of got what he was aiming for. About. That's pretty good proportion and scale.

[Colm Tóibín]

A dozen eg.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

And you're an Irish writer and the author of 11 novels and numerous essays and volumes of short stories. And as well as the multitude of awards you've received, you've been nominated three times for the Booker Prize. And the film of your book, Brooklyn, won an Oscar. And I was given Brooklyn when it came out. And you became, and you remain my favorite living writer. And I've heard many writers say they hate the actual writing even though they're compelled to write. And I wondered if you ever hate writing.

[Colm Tóibín]

Oh, no, it's too strong a word, hate. I get lazy and I prefer to do something else. But you have to settle down to it and do it. And it's always easy to stop. You know, just. I'll stop at this page because I write in log hand. I just could stop in this page. But then you can't do that. So you've got to say, I'm going to go on. I mean, just go on writing. It's not like Beckett, you know, I can't go on. I must go on. It's nothing. Nothing like that. It's just work. It's like writing an essay for school. You know, you must, like, you often have to do more than you want to, but hate is too strong. And struggle. All those words are too strong.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah. So my ex husband is a writer and he. I once was saying something about, you're doing the thing you love. And he said, but I hate it. And I was really shocked. He's a brilliant writer.

[Colm Tóibín]

I think that hate thing is just too strong. I think people, writers talk a lot of rubbish about writing. Maybe because it's so hard to talk the truth. It's so hard to work out what it is that you invent all these. You know, I write for my people say I write for myself. Well, in that case, don't write then because, you know, why don't you just, you know, it's a form of communication no matter what you do. And there's a sort of also a feeling that if you didn't do it, it would be an awful waste to have all that. I'm not sure even talent as the word, but have all those skills and impulses and not act on them. Yeah, it would be appalling.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

I think it would be appalling.

[Podcast Sponsor/Announcer]

Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder With a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other. Introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all in one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e commerce, and more. And the best part, Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you try Odoo for [e-mail] that's o d o o dot com.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Hi, I'm Maria Sharapova, host of the Pretty Tough podcast. Each episode I sit down with high achieving women to discuss the pursuit of excellence without apology. This week, model, Sports Illustrated covergirl and entrepreneur Ashley Graham talks about the time she almost quit.

[Colm Tóibín]

I called my mom and I said,

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

mom, I just, I'm not gonna do this anymore.

[Colm Tóibín]

And she told me, no, you are

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

going to stick this out. Your body is going to change someone's life every decade. You're gonna go through something different. So be really happy with who you

[Colm Tóibín]

are right now because things change.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Check out pretty tough new episodes on Wednesdays. You can watch it on YouTube or listen in your favorite podcast app.

[Political Commentator/Host]

So the 2026 midterms is shaping up to be an all out brawl. But the biggest fight may not be between Democrats and Republicans, but over the congressional maps itself.

[Colm Tóibín]

Gerrymandering is not a good thing. We don't like it. And then all of a sudden we're going out and telling people, vote for this.

[Political Commentator/Host]

So I'm in Ashland, Virginia, a small town just outside of Richmond, which calls itself the center of the universe. And that checks out because it's the center of the political universe, at least when it comes to the 2026 midterms. That's because Ashland sits in Virginia's 1st congressional district, which is one of only about 35 or so that are actually competitive. That makes Virginia particularly important when it comes to the question of gerrymandering.

[Tech News Host]

The gerrymandering is a major problem, but it's not like Democrats drew first blood with this one. Donald Trump doesn't think he should be held accountable by anybody, so he's trying to change the rules because he doesn't like the game.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

We've shown what we're capable of. Now let's keep up the push through the midterms.

[Political Commentator/Host]

America actually will be in your feeds and on YouTube every Saturday with an interesting interview in politics or culture.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

I met you through a mutual friend of ours, Marie Donnelly, and she wears the most exquisite clothes. And so does her husband Jo, actually. And I think she's around 70, and she looks like a schoolgirl who's raided the Comme des Garcons section in Dover Street Market. And she's a great reader.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah, she's a really great reader.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

She's a marvelous reader.

[Colm Tóibín]

She's also got tremendously good taste. Oh, my God, really exquisite taste. And everything she wears and everything she does, really, she's great.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Because. Do you find you're attracted to people who wear clothes in a beautiful way?

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah, but I'm also. I also just have old friends, and I would never notice what they're wearing, you know, so. But with her, yeah, there's a really great style which, yeah, I'm really interested

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

in because she told me that she'd gifted you a handmade shirt from Charvet for your birthday.

[Colm Tóibín]

Oh, yes. It was great drama. I eventually went to Paris and went to the fitting and, oh, they put pins all over the material. And the woman came in, a man came, and I stood there and it's very exciting. What's great about those Charvet shirts is they're so plain, they don't look like much. I think you could probably wear one in Ireland and no one would know what it was. But, you know, I haven't picked it up yet. I have to go for a fitting, and I was going to go in the autumn, but the problem is the whole Grasset problem, you know, because I wouldn't sign a contract with Grasset now because of their appalling behavior. And my friends who are the editors are, you know, it's unclear what's going to happen, so I'm going to have to keep postponing this charvet fitting. But it's tremendously exciting because the Irish Prime Minister of years back, he was famous for getting Chavez shirts.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Really? Yeah. My son Jimmy's godfather is Christian Louboutin and he gave him for his 10th birthday or something, some bow ties from Chavez, which are absolutely amazing.

[Colm Tóibín]

Oh, I haven't thought of when I go finally for the final buy, which I don't know what it's going to be like, I'm going to have to ask them what else they have. But I went downstairs. There's a word in English called bolt. B O L T. The bolts of material and bolts. And bolts. Bolts. Like it's like. I mean, I've never seen anything like it. And it's not as though they're all silk or they're all linen or something. They're just basically cotton shirts and. But yeah, eventually I'm going to have to come clean and just take one home.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

That's exciting.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Do you remember a piece of clothing that growing up that seemed to bestow magical qualities on somebody?

[Colm Tóibín]

No, I never had any clothes I liked and I remember seeing things I liked, like a really beautiful. Someone had a beautiful gray. Gray suit. But no, I never had anything I liked. I don't think did.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Was there anything that you longed for or that you knew?

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah, you see, it was really. What was very fashionable then were polo necks. I don't know. I think they came in sometime in the 60s, not having. Not really. The older generation wouldn't wear polo neck. You know, the funniest thing we. That I ever owned, and I wish I had it again, was not only a string vest but a string underpants.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Oh my God.

[Colm Tóibín]

And that was very fashionable in Ireland for men to wear a string vest. I remember getting a slight suntan through a string vest and. But a string underpants was really something you never see them anymore.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

I've never seen in my whole life. String underpants.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah. I mean for. For the. For the part of your, I suppose, underpart. It wasn't string. Yeah, but it was. But in all the surround was all string. You know, a lot of people had string underpants in Enniscorthy. I would see circa 1967, 68, 69. And. But also the other thing was a cravat. They were also very fashionable while all those things were awful. Yeah. No, so absolutely never anything nice because

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

you come from an intellectual and political family.

[Colm Tóibín]

I wouldn't put it like that. But my father, the ruling party in Ireland really throughout the independence period, has been a party Called Fianna Fall and they're still. The prime minister now is from that party. It came into Power in 1932 and my father was director of elections from that party for the minister who was the minister for health and then the minister for finance. And so my first election that I worked on was 1964 when I was nine.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Wow.

[Colm Tóibín]

Basically folding things and putting them into envelopes. But I followed the election that night on television very closely. I was very pleased when our party got re reappointed. And I worked on the 69 election, which was meant to be. The big slogan for the labor party was the 17th will be socialist. But actually we won. Fo won. I mean, not that we ever did anything useful. I mean, I. And once I went to university, I was so ashamed, you know, of being. Having worked for FO in the 69 election. I have a sneaking regard for the party, but not for its policies. But intellectual. Yeah. My mother read poetry and cared a lot about poetry, but you wouldn't. No one would use the word intellectual. Right people, intellectuals were in Paris.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

But I saw a photograph of you, age 16, where you looked like a poet, rock star. And I wondered, were you enthralled by your appearance when you looked in the mirror or were you imprisoned by self criticalness?

[Colm Tóibín]

Ah, I've never thought of that. Yeah, I liked how I looked. Yeah, I did. But I never put that much thought into it. I grew a beard as soon as I went to university. So I looked much older than I was that I didn't shave the beard for years. I had terrible teeth. I don't know. There was a funny thing happened in university where there was one lecturer and no matter where I ever was in any way near him, he always stared at me obsessively. And, you know, if I was walking along a corridor and he was walking on the other way, he would just stare at me. I found that very exciting. I liked that a lot.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

It's great that you. Because that photo, you look so glamorous and so beautiful. But it's not often that anyone. I mean, I never liked my appearance. I just could only see everything wrong. And it took me till I was about 50 to start appreciating myself. And so it's always good. I think it's great when anyone has, however, any moment of liking themselves in the mirror. Yeah, because your father died when you were 12.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah. And I think I had. I think someone said it was unusual that my eyes were a completely different color to either of my parents. My mother's eyes Were sort of gray, and my father's were blue, but mine were completely different, you know, I did really feel it was a joke at the beginning that I was on my way to Buckingham Palace. I got dropped in a score by accident, and I would just have to put up with it. And I would. You know, there was a sort of grandeur. No matter. I liked things that were nice. And I was ashamed of our car, which was a Morris Minor. I wanted us to get a bigger car. And my mother would just say, well, there you are again. It was such a mistake. That's so funny, you know. Years later, I told her that that was in Freud. And she said it was that good or bad. And I said, it's always bad. It's always neurosis. It's always wrong if your parents say that to you and you grow up thinking that you really were destined for elsewhere. And also, my mother had never. The concept of an unruly teenager did not exist. There was nothing about it in the newspapers. So when I began to. Just the worst moments, the really shameful, shameful moment. And if my mother were here now, she'd say, I know what it is. That after my father died, one of the summers. It must have been two summers after he died, my mother decided we needed to go to County Kerry to, you know, to look at the landscape and maybe learn Irish. And there's a famous building in the West Kerry called the Galleris Oratory. I think it's from the 6th century or the 7th. It's very, very early. And it's like a beehive. And it's terribly important. And when they were all my sisters and my mother and my brother were getting out of the car to study it. I just said I was going to stay in the car if I was all right with them. And, I mean, they shouldn't have let me. Getting out now. Out of the car. Drag me out of the car. But they just said, okay, if you want to stay in the car, that's fine. But anytime after that I ever mentioned some building I liked or some. There's a Galleris archery. You wouldn't even get out of the car. And I went back there, you know, some years ago, almost penitentially, for like, you know, what an appalling thing to do. But the. Yeah, the. I didn't look like any of the others. And so I. And then someone somewhere said that they thought I was an Italian. Notice Italian. He looks like an Italian. I sort of loved looking like an Italian.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah. God. Because I was gonna ask you about before your father died and he had an aneurysm. Your mother sent you to stay with your younger brother at an aunt's house and you didn't hear from her for three months. And it's odd how being left alone is almost the worst thing ever, because my mother left me for three months. And you described it as a psychic wound. And you say you return to the theme of abandonment almost without intending. And do you go to a strict place to regulate yourself when you think about this?

[Colm Tóibín]

There was a moment years later when we were driving down to Wexford and the road was blocked, the main road, and we went around another way. Myself, my brother, I'm driving. He's in the passenger seat. And it means we have to pass by this house where we were for those months. And we do. And neither of us speaks. We just don't speak. Because it was probably worse for him because he was 4. And I think it damaged both of us a lot. And we never knew what to say about. Was slightly embarrassing later because I wrote a novel which had that. In the novel.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Is that Nora Webster?

[Colm Tóibín]

No, Nora Webster was written after my mother died.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

All right.

[Colm Tóibín]

But there were novels before that, which. The very first novel I wrote, called the south, has, you know, a mother abandoning her daughter, who in turn abandons her son. This is pure abandonment.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

And, you know, you don't write that for no reason. But there were posh Protestants, those people, so my mother didn't. It didn't. She didn't notice it. But I suppose in the next one more, and the next one, maybe more and more, but that became, no matter what I did, the subject. And you see, the problem was, I suppose, that, you know, my aunt, my mother's sister, she was very nice, and it wasn't as though anyone did anything to us. But, I mean, for her point of view, having these two very entitled boys foisted on her when she had her own children who were younger, so she didn't know what to do with the two of us because we ran our own lives by that. We were the youngest, and so we were so used to deciding our own bedtime and deciding what clothes we wore and deciding to do what we wanted.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

It's so odd, the never mentioning it, because my mother never mentioned it either.

[Colm Tóibín]

Did she not?

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

No. And we talked about other things, not very successfully, but that I never felt I could bring it up because it was so awful and it was undeniable and.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah, yeah. It's such. It's so accusatory. You know, and so why didn't you? And there's no answer to that.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah. Yeah. Because you've talked about growing up surrounded by women and saying they were interesting in a way that men weren't. And you tell this hilarious story about listening to your mother and sister discussing their Aunt Harriet having bought a new coat and the material and the exact shade of green. And then you sneak out of the house, age 5 or 6, and go next door and tell Mrs. Hayton the whole story of the coat. But you make it a fur coat. And this. I just cried with laughter when I read that.

[Colm Tóibín]

My mother's too young. Especially Harriet, the youngest, really cared about clothes. She was very good looking and she really, really watched what she wore. It was always beautiful. And she went to sales and the other sister went to sales and they loved sales. But she told a wonderful story, Harriet. There's a shop in Wexford town still there called Shaws. And one day she had an hour or two to kill. So she went into Shaws and pretended she was going to a wedding and got the woman to show her an entire rig out and all the accessories and what exactly she should be wearing with him. She had no intention of buying anything, she said the woman followed her out the street, said, don't ever come back into this shelf. To be completely fooled into thinking this woman was ready to buy an enormous amount. And Harry got married in Rome. She was in her 40s and she didn't want to get married in the cathedral, it was too public. But she bought a most beautiful white dress and it was 1968, I think, which meant that it was just slightly above her knee, which no one would do now. It was obviously time. But I remember she had it made and there was a great deal of discussion about it. She had to have it all, you know, put into lovely paper and, you know, before it was packed, where she went off to Rome to get married.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

So it was such a good point, the upping the ante about turning it into a fur coat. And I wondered if you'd ever. Have you ever interviewed a fashion designer? I'd love to hear you talk to someone like Rick Owens because the way he's quite avant garde and I think your line of questions, you would produce something.

[Colm Tóibín]

Oh, I've never done that. No.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Because I read also that you choose not to include any of that descriptions of your characters, appearances. And you said if you describe them physically, you actually remove them from the reader, you distance them.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah, that the reader has to sort of. If you describe someone as Small or tall or gray. Yeah. That. You've got to be careful not to overdo that. Because also, no matter what you do, the reader fails to imagine you could say someone had full lips and slightly pointed nose and dark eyes and thick eyebrows, but it wouldn't really give you a face. It would just give you a description of a face. So that's the opposite of what writing should be. And it's no use.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

God, it's so interesting. Never occurred to me that. I mean, I've read lots of your books, and I feel very engaged with each character and. But I feel them. I suppose you need to feel someone rather than picture them.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yes. And also get a sense of their affect, of what it means for them to come into a room.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

And describing someone's, you know, even their posture. I just. I've never been convinced by it.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Mm. Cause in Nora Webster, which is one of my favorite of your books, you write about her having her hair dyed for the first time and how self conscious she feels and how it was such a radical move on her part and. And it all seemed to go wrong. And my grandmother was Irish, and it seemed like these misdemeanors around thinking sort of more of yourself were fraught. Why was that?

[Colm Tóibín]

Well, I suppose that my mother was a widow, and there was always that sense of how should a widow dress?

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Right.

[Colm Tóibín]

And there was a very big moment. The big thing that came in in those years was a sheepskin coat. And I think they were much more expensive than ordinary coats. But eventually my mother did have a sheepskin coat. But the business of hair and how you dyed it, See, women just didn't want to go gray anymore. There were some women who did who prided themselves on just being utterly gray. But then if you were very posh, you did blue. Literally blue hair. You don't see it at all now, I think. But then other women just went into his place and just got black. But black went out because you could see the gray roots. And what came in was a sort of. A sort of auburn or sort of gold. And eventually my mother's hair got slightly gold. But the beginning, the first dye was a kind of blue,

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

like Quentin Crisp.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah. And. But, I mean, women were very coy about it. One aunt denied it completely, said she never dyed her hair, that she just was very lucky her hair had stayed that color all her life.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah. My grandmother had pitch black hair, and then I think she had a wig. But I never realized that until my mother told me.

[Colm Tóibín]

Really?

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

Your Irish grandmother.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yes. Yeah. Me and my sister always wanted to have a black curly hair like her. But

[Colm Tóibín]

your. Your other grandmother sounds like a item.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

I only met her twice. My father's mother, when her husband died, when my grandfather died, who I'd never met, she tried to commit suicide and was rescued and became very, very quiet and passive. And he started to paint her then.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah, there's a wonderful painting where he paints her with her hands like this.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

I found that very interesting, you know, as to how you think about your mother. And it's very tender. You see her very vulnerable. I thought that was a good, really good painting.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah, I love that painting. And she was wearing a paisley top and I remember him painting the paisleys on and. Yeah.

[Tech News Host]

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[Tech News Host]

But all the tech bros who are gonna make all the money, they need our money way more than we need their products. And we're gonna remind you why on Today Explained from Vox, who is actually

[Colm Tóibín]

winning the war between Russia and Ukraine

[Political Commentator/Host]

right now, it's clear that Ukraine is much more confident. Time now looks increasing on Ukraine's side

[Colm Tóibín]

and there's no obvious reasons for them

[Political Commentator/Host]

to negotiate a ceasefire in the near

[Colm Tóibín]

term, just because the United States or somebody else wants it to. Jake. I'm John Finer.

[Political Commentator/Host]

And I'm Jake Sullivan and we're the

[Colm Tóibín]

hosts of the Long Game, a weekly national security podcast. This week we discuss the war in Ukraine with Michael Kaufman, one of the leading analysts of the conflict, who recently

[Political Commentator/Host]

returned from the front lines.

[Colm Tóibín]

The episode's out now. Search for and follow the Long Game

[Political Commentator/Host]

wherever you get your podcasts.

[Colm Tóibín]

Have we underestimated the damage Trump has done? It's easy perhaps to chuckle at a Donald Trump. There are times when he sort of. I think there are things that he does, you know, his little dance and some of the other kinds of things to come across as a rascal. But I think we have to look under those things at the real harm he has done to American institutions and

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[Colm Tóibín]

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[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Because your, your younger brother died suddenly and unexpectedly.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah, both of my brothers died, but my younger one was, I've never, you know, you never, I know what should happen, but there's no, there's nothing you can do to bring him back. And he died on a Saturday night. Sometimes it hits me harder on a Saturday night when it's coming to Saturday night. It comes into my mind.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

And you know, it's about, it's in Henry James where he says about, I think it's Millie Thiel in the Wings of the Dove. She would have given anything to have lived, you know.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Gosh, yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

You know, and he had bought a house in South Wexford. And it was, I mean, honestly, the big debates we have take up so much time. I was arguing that he needed to take out the ceilings and make a big high room, a big high living room. And then he could have a bedroom upstairs, you know, and a kitchen downstairs. But they would be both of them equal to the size, to the height of the one room and that room would be really lovely. And I also wanted him to put a toilet under the stairs. And we were discussing this and then he met someone who said a cottage should be a cottage and not have double height rooms. And I was dead against her and I was arguing no. And a lot of friends of his had summer houses in that area. So it's going to be great. And, oh, you know, it was lovely, I suppose. And then when he died, we just had to sell the thing before any work had been done on it. And but it was, it's funny the things you distract yourself with because in

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

your short story Sleep, you describe your character in a state of deep, unexpressed grief, being forced by a man that he's seeing to get help. But he says that you have to get Irish help. And in the story you're hypnotized and you become your brother. And it sounds a bit like an acid trip. And did that actually happen?

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah, some of it's invented in that I wasn't, I had been with this younger guy in New York much earlier and it wasn't, you know, it wasn't as though he sent me back, but I did feel that I needed help myself.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

And I Was close to a man called Ira Brown, who was a psychiatrist. I had worked with his wife, who was a journalist, and I'd been her editor. And I went out to their house a few times to oversee something she was doing. And this very tall, very beautiful man would just keep looking at me. And it was Ivor. And June would say. His wife would say, ivor, stop looking at Carl, because he was looking at me. And he saw something he really did early on and said, there's something wrong with you. You do need to see me. I said I would. Leave me alone. And he would just. No matter what was going on, including a party or a very noisy dinner, he would look at me and say, when did your father die? Tell me that again. I said, I eat your dinner. But he did lure me eventually into some sort of treatment. So I went back to him saying, you know, the last time I avoided you, and, you know, but eventually you. You trapped me, you know, but this time, I need you. And I went to the house. It was a big, long room in Dublin I was familiar with from social events. He. Yeah, he hypnotized me. And everything in the story about the hypnosis is what I remember. There's nothing made up in. You see, you can't falsify that. I think that. I know fiction is fiction and there are no rules. You can make things up, but for me to write that down, it was so personal and so. So important.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

That I wrote down exactly what happened. And he didn't understand it, even when I. He didn't want to hear about it, actually. He said, it's yours. You take it. You know, it's not something. I thought it was going to be the beginning of talk therapy, that from. That we were going to begin, but he said, no, no, no, it's just something you need to know. And he never really knew what happened. And what happened was that in the hypnosis, you see, we were brothers, and he was 4 and I was 8 when we spent that time together. But, I mean, in other words, the two of us were always put together. And so I went into his spirit as he was dying. And, I mean, it's a very hard thing to talk about, in a way.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

So writing about it, you have full control over just trying to describe it in detail so that at least it's. It's. It's. I felt it was important. I wrote it down and published it.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah. No, it seems an extraordinary thing to be able to describe and to, you know, to have an experience.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Because Other people must have had similar. Similar things and.

[Colm Tóibín]

But also must have that in them even if they didn't do the. If they didn't do, you know, the hypnosis, that potentially they're going around where that had actually happened to them without them knowing, you know.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah. It's really hard to know where to place grief and.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Do you think there's a kind of Irish deep suffering that's transgenerational?

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah, I do. I mean, I think that for some reason it's very hard to deal with death even you think, surely in a country that's Catholic or, you know. But I don't know one in Ireland who managed to deal with the death of their parents as though it was some sort of natural, inevitable thing of, like, the seasons changing, like the day becoming night. I know no one who dealt with that, really. At the moment, I'm editing a magazine called Poetry Ireland. You know, it falls to one person to edit it. And it felt to me. And I think I'm reading a thousand poems and I've probably read hundreds of them by Irish poets. And so many of them are elegies for the parents.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Why do you think that is?

[Colm Tóibín]

I don't know. I can't think of a historical reason as much as. That. It is as though maybe the rituals surrounding death that made it easier in some way were never actually real.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

Were things people talked about. I mean, I'm talking about the wake or, you know, the idea of the dead body. But I wonder if none of that was true. If people were just devastated.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

I mean, devastated by death. And it's a curious thing because people would presume Irish people had a better way of dealing with death, but it's not true.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah. Because that's the sort of folklore almost, isn't it? But there seems so much trapped sadness.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

I read that your boyfriend Hedy was playing the Pet Shop Boys recently, and we brought back all these bad memories from the 80s because you always thought you were wearing the wrong clothes and said that the gay world is terribly judgmental.

[Colm Tóibín]

He's fed up of me talking about the Pet Shop Voice because his taste in music is actually very serious and sophisticated. And the Pet Shop voice is just all I've taken from. He said he never listens to the Pet Shop Voice. But I said, well, in. In the. In the loop music in the car, there's a song called We Were Never Boring and We were never Boring and. But yeah, I was never. I was never good at gay culture. I even. Even use the Word. Ironically, really. You know, I never. I never really took to the music, I never took to the drugs and. Yeah, I was always wearing the wrong clothes. I remember going to heaven once, you had the disco in London and realizing I was completely out of place in there.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

What were your sartorial.

[Colm Tóibín]

Oh, just stupid clothes. Yeah. Like I wouldn't wear jeans. I was wearing probably cavalry twills or some rubbish I'd bought. But whatever it was, I certainly didn't feel. I mean, my only interest when going into someone like that was to find a nice English boy and go home with someone. Yeah. Like I've never was interested in staying the night and doing. And. Oh, I forgot to say, I can't dance. My father couldn't either.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Oh, really?

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

How did you know he couldn't?

[Colm Tóibín]

Because it was a big myth at home, seemingly. Someone said to him, he said to someone that he had in his head, meaning brains, what they had in their feet. It doesn't sound like him because he wasn't so arrogant like that. But he did say that to someone and you know, I would even know by thinking about him now that he couldn't dance then. I remember someone friend said to me, I mean, a good friend, she could get away with saying it. You know, people who can't dance can't fuck. Do you know that? Oh, God, that's so true. And I'm sure that's not true. She said it is, everyone knows it. I thought that was great.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

I'd like to believe that, but I don't think it is true.

[Colm Tóibín]

No, it isn't true, but it's a lovely thing to say. It sounds so great. It's a especially. She was a marvellous dancer herself.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

I bet she was. She'd never say it if she wasn't. You described playing tennis with the film director Pedral Modovar, and you said, he's like a wall. He simply returns the ball very hard. He always hits it and it's absolutely without style. It's fascinating because it goes against the idea of him. And I wondered what things you notice about her. A man's style. And is there something that always perks up your eye?

[Colm Tóibín]

I was interested in Almodovar because he could very quickly become the director of his films, you know, even his for Vanity Fair. I went down. It's the only time I've really written about that sort of design and things. Just looking at his house that he had in the countryside in Spain that he went to at the weekends and his nephews came and his Brother came and, you know, it was just filled with those colors we see in his films. But the person himself, I became interested in him because I saw an element of myself in him, in that he was quite dull in some ways, and that he. You see, he writes his own scripts.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

And I wrote a script for him at one point, and he couldn't believe how bad it was. But my point was, no, this is the beginning. This is just. This is. This is the start of a script. I'm showing it to you because then I want to. You know. And obviously, that's not how he works. He works, seemingly. He moves very slowly, perfecting things as he goes, which is almost what I do as a novelist. But I thought as a script writer, I wouldn't do that.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

And I realized that he goes home and stays home and really works solid in a very introverted way. And also he, you know, his brother is his producer. He works a lot with the same actors. And his tennis was interesting because he really, you know, you expect people to, you know, like, a serve is a form of choreography. It's, you know, the way you twist your body or the way you even look with your face. Nothing. He just hit the ball hard. And that's what I do. I'm not as good as he is. I'm not as strong. He's very, very strong. Shoulders and back, and I don't have that. And. But I play tennis, and I always have. Without any style of any sort. Completely free of, you know, any obvious, you know, nothing but brute force.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

And hit the ball back. I don't even place the ball well. And that's a side of me that I keep very hidden, where I'm very determined, dull, slow, plodding person.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Is it to do with competitiveness?

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah, that's also the case. I mean, I play a lot with Hedy, my partner, and I really do want to win, and so does he, and it's fine. I mean, anyone watching it would just think these two guys are insane. Because also on the way home in the car, I would do a victory speech in Spanish. Otra veda ganado y landezo el campion de etiano el. And I would go on like that in the car, and he would just say, please stop. So good.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Oh, God, I think that's fantastic. It's so hard to actually sort of incorporate competitiveness. It's so loaded up with shame, certainly in England. And so I think any celebration of it is,

[Colm Tóibín]

at my age, winning a tennis match.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

That's brilliant. It's great shows your life.

[Colm Tóibín]

You know, recently I've been. I had a pain in my hip, which I thought was arthritis. And I thought, here it comes. You know, Henry James, when he was dying, said to someone, here comes the distinguished thing. We meant death.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

But when I thought I had arthritis in my hip, oh my God, I'm gonna have to get new hips. And generally all these old man stuff is coming towards me. But it wasn't that at all. It was just some nerve. But the physio said that his friend Jim was the trainer of the Columbia men's swimming team and that if I wanted to go and get lessons with Jim, Jim he was sure would do them. So at 8 o' clock on a Monday morning, Jim would. I've never put my head underwater. And swimming is a big deal because we would go to the beach in the summer in Ireland and of course the sea was so cold you just stand for hours. Someone told me that in all of the novels there's a character standing in the sea, desperate not to have to get into it, shivering, then eventually getting the courage, like a sort of cormorant or something, just to get down into the water. And this is because it happened so much and it was such a big deal, you would live in dread of it. But this man Jim is great. He's a good teacher. He shouts at me for an hour from 8am to 9am on a Monday morning. And it's all about getting my head under the water. And he put me all sorts of exercises so that I would get used to keeping my head under the water. And he's very funny. In America they use things, words we don't use. He said, okay, I want your head absolutely flush with your butt cheeks. Get your butt cheeks. I said, don't. What are you talking about, my butt cheeks? I'm a 71 year old man. That's the last thing I want to hear about on a Monday morning. My what? My butt cheeks. But putting your head underwater, he got me to go under the water. And I mean, no matter what I do with this, and I am lying on a couch, so I kind of really be brave enough to say, this has to have something to do with the womb. So you get under the water. So your head is under the water. Then what he wants you to do is clasp your own knees. Now if you do that, you lose all power because you really are fetal.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Right?

[Colm Tóibín]

You know, in other words, you, if you. And it says hold onto you, don't let go of your knees. So you Begin to sort of move in the water in ways you can't control. And you're underwater. And freeing yourself of that is a big moment where he says, okay, put your arms right out now. But for a while, you're sort of. You know, you're just almost weightless for a while in the water, clasping your own knees. Just as. I don't know if you clasp your own knees in the womb, but you must be in that sort of funny folded or curled position. That's my Monday morning.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

And do you sink when you clasp your knees?

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

God, that's so interesting. I'll definitely try that. I'm afraid of going. Having my head. And I'm afraid of the vastness of underwater. It makes me really.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Anxious.

[Colm Tóibín]

But you can swim much faster if you keep your head on.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah. Yeah. And my. I haven't. My earliest memory is being in the bath held with my mother, holding my head under her hand. I must have been a few. Don't know why I can remember this early.

[Colm Tóibín]

Lovely.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

And then I remember her. I remember struggling, this panic, and then realizing there's nothing I could do. And then suddenly it was okay. So I suppose that the whole body kind of seems to flow together. But you may not be part of the fashion world, but you seem to be connected to glamour. And maybe it's the glamour of being such a great writer. And I wondered, does it ever blind your judgment, which seems so astute.

[Colm Tóibín]

Huh. I mean, one of the things, I suppose, is that with people who are very glamorous, you'd really like to be with them naked, you know, rather than all their clothes.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Oh, gosh.

[Colm Tóibín]

You have to think about that sometimes.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

That's a very good thought,

[Colm Tóibín]

but. Oh, I know. I worked briefly for Esquire, and all the guys there were really. It was a lot of fashion. And I came up with the idea. You know, there were meetings there, and we meant to come up with ideas that we should get all the poets of England, or as many as we could find, to model for Esquire.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

And we discovered how beautiful all the poets were. We got Steven Spander as the oldest one. He looked marvelous. He really did. Andrew Motion, Michael Hoffman, Michael Donahue, Don Patterson, all of them were. The men were so exquisite. And they looked so. They looked so. Really. They looked so good in good clothes. I thought that was funny.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Such a good idea. It's a wonderful idea. My friend. A friend of mine was married to a poet and she said, they're the most competitive, venal, egotistical group of creative beings that she'd ever encountered. I couldn't. I just thought, I just don't believe it. And then I read that book by John Berryman's ex wife. First wife.

[Colm Tóibín]

Oh, yeah. Poets in their youth.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Oh, God, it was wonderful. And they are all completely wild and really kind of.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah. You see, I think in Ireland, even more so.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

Because we have no Wall street and we've no aristocracy, and therefore the poets have a great power in the country.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

And you can probably change the country by changing the poem. I worked in Stanford with Yvonne Boland. She was my boss, and I'd never really met her in Ireland. She was slightly grand. Her father had been the ambassador, you know, to the UN and to London. Her mother was a painter. She was always beautifully dressed and her hair was always beautiful. But what she said was, I don't want to be the woman in the poem. I want to be the woman writing the poem. And almost just by saying that and then doing it, she did change things. She was part of that movement, feminism. But her poems change things. Seamus Heaney's poems change things.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

And. But the poets themselves were always fascinating to see. I suppose they all were aware of their position in a sort of pecking order, which really was put in place when they were very young. But, I mean, I remember seeing John. Well, what's quite important, actually, are the author photographs. And there was a man called Jerry Bauer who would touch up the photograph. He would come to Dublin, take photographs, touch them up so they look great on jackets. Other photographers wouldn't do that, but I remember really, really studying John Banville's photographs when he was young, his first books, just looking at his hair and his skin and his eyes, and really, really looking at those photographs, which I think probably readers do sometimes.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

And then seeing him, and then seeing him, you know, and he was. John Banville was always beautifully dressed. Really beautifully dressed.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

I mean, a poet in good clothes is about the most glamorous thing on earth.

[Colm Tóibín]

There's nothing like. You're absolutely right. Yeah. You think about it.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Because if you fancy someone and don't like something they're wearing, does it kill your attraction?

[Colm Tóibín]

No, I love that. It's a sign of awkwardness. Yeah. And there's nothing more attractive for me than Irish country awkwardness. You know, I was in a boarding school with 300 boys. They were all awkward. I still, to this day, find that more attractive than someone who's suave or, you know, sophisticated or debonair. So I'm just the wrong someone. Wearing absolutely the wrong clothes.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

But would the suave.

[Colm Tóibín]

No, debonair put you off? No. Yes. Yes.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Right.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yes. Oh, absolutely.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Totally.

[Colm Tóibín]

I wouldn't know what to do. I wouldn't know what to do. But yeah. Someone who was completely awkward.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

And I should say that my shirt. I didn't say this is this. The sleeves are rolled up. This is as a result of my friend Beatrice Rezzori, who's Italian, and she put a ban on me wearing short sleeve shirts.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Oh.

[Colm Tóibín]

She said no one in Italy wears short sleeve shirts. No one. Just if you have them, get rid of them. Don't ever wear them. Maybe on the beach. But don't wear them to the beach. Maybe you wear them just on the beach. And don't wear. She lives in fear of Americans because they wear shorts. So she put a ban on shorts, but I wasn't wearing shorts. But then she put a ban on white shirts. Because she said to me one day, I was just there, I thought I looked great. I was wearing a white shirt, sleeves rolled up, as she had said I should, and black trousers. She said, well, you look like a waiter. You look like the waiter. People are gonna actually call you over and order drinks from you. And so I'm going to stay with her. She's 100 years old. I'm going to stay with her in a few weeks. But I won't bring any white shirts because I just couldn't bear her going on more about it.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

The pale shirt is a very. I think it's my favorite thing on a man, apart from a khaki shirt and a denim shirt. But a pale blue shirt.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Is lovely.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah. I'm gonna have to get some of those before I go. So I don't, you know, people don't order a gin and tonic from me.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

You can keep on.

[Colm Tóibín]

It was really funny. Cause I honestly thought I was fulfilling her dream.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah. Because it's the Reservoir Dogs.

[Colm Tóibín]

But obviously she desperately needed me to stop, so she picked. People are going to order, you know, have a glass of wine, a ginger ale, no ice, and could we have some olives? You know, And I think that happened with Alan Clark did that. He was on a plane with Margaret Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe. And Geoffrey Howe went into the bathroom to change because he was going to some dinner in London when they landed in the plane. But he changed into a full sort of, you know, monkey suit. And when he came out, Alan Clark said, oh, that'll be gin and tonics all round. Thank you. I thought that was a great story.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

It's so good. I loved his diaries, thought they were good.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yes. He said that Michael Heseltine was the sort of man who bought his own furniture. But I had no idea, honestly, I didn't know what that meant. I thought, oh, he bought his own furniture. And then I realized, no, it meant that he didn't inherit his furniture.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Did he come up with that? Because I thought that was a sort of night. I don't know where I thought I.

[Colm Tóibín]

Well, he used it about Michael Hazelton. I thought it was his, but it could be somebody else's. The Italian thing is that they never make a mistake, you know, like if I try and wear shoes with no socks, my ankle, my whole. That part of me down there looks so white and strange. But if an Italian does it, it looks perfect.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

But they have such strange codes that we, you know, they wear lemon colored V neck cashmere sweaters or pale pink and they look so sort of namby pamby. But the short sleeve shirt is now seems to be coming back into fashion for English men and it's quite sexy actually now. Is it? I've come round to it after it being the sort of worse thing, like someone's really uncomfortable.

[Colm Tóibín]

I associated with shame with that shame of being in Beatrice's house having no other shirts except the short sleeved and her saying, you know. Yeah, that. No. So I. I don't think I'll bring them. I don't think I'll start wearing them again. Huh.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Because I read, I don't know where I read this, that you'd said that you'd met some people who were experts in cocaine. I love the way you termed it and that as you weren't a fan, they recommended you try a double espresso with Coca Cola poured on top and that. You tried this and it really set you on fire. Teaching your.

[Colm Tóibín]

Oh, that was Almodova, actually.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

No.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah. He told me that this, this thing really worked. And you know, I think he was talking about actors and that if you gave it to an actress and then turned on the camera, I think that's what happened. And so I was going just after I saw him. At that time I was going to teach at the New School. It was a three hour seminar. And I would do it right before a double espresso. And you let it cool, you put sugar into it, let it cool and then you throw in a full bubbly Coca Cola and drink it all down like medicine.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Wow.

[Colm Tóibín]

And you were. I mean, it took about an hour, but by the. I mean, on fire, you know, I became this sort of teacher, couldn't stop. And I mean, it was really true that there was a complaint from the Porters because they were closed up to school at 10. I would still be in full flight at 10, and I would tell them, you know, just go away for a while and we'll come back. Poor students had to listen to this.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Oh, I'm dying to try it.

[Colm Tóibín]

I. Yeah, no, it's really great. And. And, you know, it's not. It's not illegal. You don't to feel that you're somehow compromising with so many people. It's your drug habit.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah, there's nothing worse than cocaine. Cheap. Yeah, it's a fantastic idea. Yeah, no, it's really great because in a New Yorker incident interview, it said, your boyfriend. Your boyfriend Hedy does all the cooking and drives you and makes the bed and that you'd never knowingly made a bed.

[Colm Tóibín]

And, yes, I had to explain to the interviewer what that meant. I'd never knowingly made a bed, meaning that perhaps they got made in some funny way without me intending to make them. But that's now changed since I said that and since it appeared. I now try always to make the bed. So if I pass the bed and it's not made, I make a big, big effort. I feel like a nurse in a hospital. I try and get the sheets all straight and the duvet and do all this stuff. It still looks wrong. Things are always hanging down awkwardly, asymmetrically. But I do do that as an. As a sign that I'm making an effort. But I can't cook or I can't do anything like that.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

My grandmother, my Irish grandmother, she had a bed and breakfast and she taught me how to make beds. And I found it unbelievably. I still do it. I don't just make the bed. I make the bed. You know, it's like part of a school ritual.

[Colm Tóibín]

I was in my editor's house in New York, and I went into all her rooms just to look at them. Just a nosiness. And all the beds were made. And I said to her, do you make them in the morning? He said, well, do you not? And I said, no. And then I tried to do that for a while in New York, make my own bed in the morning. So my bedroom looks like it's, you know, ready for you. But I just. I stopped doing it. And I got it.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

I find it very peaceful. It's a sort of way of not having a distraction. It's. Oh, well, I. That's do you have any stabilizing rituals?

[Colm Tóibín]

None. I mean, I just find it hard to get out of bed than I do. I wash myself in the morning. Do you do that?

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah, I have a kind of thing that I do. A bit like a prisoner.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

I do certain things and then I'm ready.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Because. Was it your psychiatrist who said to you, you have the ability to really bounce back? And you were talking.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah. I mean, he was good. He was good in that he was sometimes, like, there's nothing wrong with you. Go, you know, like, let's have. Let's talk about something else. But he said, yeah, the thing about you is you bounce back.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

And it was such a liberating thing to say to me.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

It's wonderful, isn't it?

[Colm Tóibín]

And it sounded true when he said it. And I said, oh, do I? Well, obviously I do. And that's a great gift, I think.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah, it is. Because people say that you can go through all sorts of kind of extreme experiences, but it's all in how you. Your resilience in how you come back from it. And I think you were talking about the second time you didn't win the Booker Prize, our mutual friend Rachel Kushner, who also didn't win the Booker Prize for the second time. And she was telling me that Wolfgang Tillman said to her, well, it is better. The thing is, it is better to win. And I mean, instead of sort of trying to make these packages of why you shouldn't. But how's your morale barometer around not winning?

[Colm Tóibín]

Oh, it really is designed, I think, to be a theater of cruelty. And just the length of the dinner and the length of the speeches and the fact that, you know, no matter what who you are, you think you're going to win. Briefly you have a thought and you people have speeches ready and. And then some other name is announced. And especially the second time, I think, where I wrote a novel called the Master.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

And wonderful. I thought that could win, but it didn't. And, yeah, there was a funny. I stayed on in London Rewear. I thought, no one in some funny hotel, no one in the world knows where I am. And that was a funny feeling of just. I was meant to go back to Dublin and didn't. I was meant to. I don't know. But I just stayed on and just basically just stayed in bed. And then I was just fine. Got over in a few days. But it stays with you. It's just sort of public. I know. Public humiliation is too strong. I mean, I think if you were going to be executed, it would be much worse publicly, like they used to do. But it has some of the elements of that.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

It does. It's a very strangely organized thing. It's sort of designed to demote you in some ways.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah. There was one year where I think it was the Year of the Master, where they were always inviting posh lords to the dinner who had nothing to do with literature. And one of the lords they invited was David Trimble, who was the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party. And somebody thought that since we were both Irish and since we both liked Wagner, we should meet each other. He looked at me with a sort of horror, and someone said, well, of course you'd be rooting for him, since he's Irish. And David Trimble said, in a very rude way, no, I won't. I haven't read his book. I don't know anything about him. And I thought, is this what I've come up? Is this what I set out. You know, is this what I set out from. Dubbed my monkey suit? This why I put. You know, that's why I put deodorant on, so I could have to be insulted by David Trimble.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

It's really lowering, isn't it?

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah. And that. That was funny, actually, I have to say, it is all funny in retrospect. And the fact that you're so susceptible to becoming famous is shocking and shameful, and it is all your own fault. And, you know, I'm sure the judges and the people who give them money and all mean well by wanting to have a prize for literature. And the fact that, you know, the first year I was up for it, JM could say who seems like the most sensible and talented person just didn't turn up. He won, of course, but he didn't have to sit there. And it would have been lovely to have met him, but he just didn't bother turning up.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

That's classy, isn't it?

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah, really classy. He's such a classy fellow. Then he went on to win the Nobel Prize. Really? I think he did turn up, but not for the short listing, but for the big dinner.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah. I still think it's good to want to win. It's better than not.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yes. The art of losing isn't hard to master.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah. Because you talked about writing, and I quote, with no shimmering tones, but with shimmering feelings. And you wrote about going through cancer treatment quite graphically. And it was such an incredible. And there's no sentimentality or stoicism, and it was such an incredible moment reading about when you start to get your appetite back. And was there ever any question about you not writing about this experience?

[Colm Tóibín]

I mean, the doctors, the oncologist said to me at the very first meeting, we haven't lost anyone to this yet. Meaning testicular cancer.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

And he never wavered in that, so I always presumed that he was going to cure me. And there's a lovely moment where something went wrong with my mouth and they were all looking at it, and one nurse said to another nurse, no, no, we're not stopping. We can't reduce the treatment because this is curative. And hearing her saying that, thinking I wasn't listening. So it's all great. So it wasn't really so bad. But I had no intention of writing about it. I hate those pieces. You know, how I battled cancer came out the other side, sort of insulting to people who didn't survive. But then I got a first sentence. I was back in la. I was with Hetty, and I'd gone back to Columbia to teach, and I hadn't told anyone because I was on sabbatical when I had cancer. I didn't tell anyone at Columbia, and I didn't tell any. And then I was back at spring break and I was back in la and I just got a sentence. It all started with my balls. And once that sentence came, I was away.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

It's a funny idea that. That a sentence leads you to the whole thing. And so I did write about it then, and the London Review Books are sweet enough to publish it.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Oh, it's a brilliant. I mean, it's completely amazing piece. And also, I think. Well, obviously, it's amazing to read. There's a certain point when you're suffering so much and you don't talk about that. You know, your writing is so kind of distilled. And if I ever have cancer, I know if I feel like that, it's possible to come out the other side. So it was magnificent.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah. It's a question of bouncing back, you know?

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah. Yeah. I think Martin Amis writes well about clothes. He doesn't say much about them, but in one of his novels, he says a girl's wearing cool trousers, which I thought was so evocative. And I wondered who you thought writes well about clothes.

[Colm Tóibín]

Oh, Martin Amos almost had a lovely haircut. And he was. He was very beautiful.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

And he had. But he. He did wear bell bottoms.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah.

[Colm Tóibín]

And I never. I don't think I ever wore bell bottoms. Imagine wearing bell bottoms. But I'm trying to think about you Know, I suppose someone like Philip Roth always looked great. He was tall, you see. I think if you're tall. That's what someone said about Philip Larkin. He shouldn't have moaned so much about his looks because he was tall. I think being tall would be great.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

You're tall.

[Colm Tóibín]

No, I'm not. I'm not. I'm small and I'm bald.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

You see?

[Colm Tóibín]

Stop it. Give it up. But I mean. Oh, I tell you who's beautiful. Paul Austin was beautiful. His wife, Siri, who's now his widow. Both of them were astonishing looking. You see them in photographs, but in real life, they were also just amazing looking. Yeah, the two of those were so great. I was in Brazil with them.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Really?

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah, Yeah. I traveled with them and I couldn't stop looking at them. Her. She has the most beautiful eyes. You could spend the day looking into her eyes.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Who do you think writes well about clothes?

[Colm Tóibín]

Oh, I don't know.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Does Henry James write well about clothes? Do he? I get a sense of how someone's looking just thinking about.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah, you see, nobody really wrote about men in clothes, did they? I don't think anyone did. I'm much more interested in the sort of awkwardness of someone wearing the completely wrong shoes.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Oh, yes.

[Colm Tóibín]

And I was in Italy, one of those Beatrice Rizzori events. And Inge Feltrinelli, who at the time was controlling the whole Feltrinelli business, publishing and bookstores, was talking about a rule. In Italy, there are so many rules. One was that you didn't ever bring your bodyguards into the room. Your bodyguards. The word for bodyguard in Italian is gorilla.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Really?

[Colm Tóibín]

And you left your guerrilla outside. And someone very naff broke all the rules by bringing his. Just to show off. He brought his guerrilla, his bodyguards, into the room. He was a minister in one of the Berlusconi governments. And she said. I said, how did you know that they were his gorilla rather than maybe his friends? And she said, oh, I looked at their shoes. And of course, I immediately looked at my own shoes. And my own shoes looked very guerrilla to me. I mean, they didn't look like Italian shoes. So I sort of. I'm sort of more interested in that idea of someone who's completely wearing just. But it's that Italian idea that they would know a foreigner who's trying to be Italian, because you get one thing so wrong. And it wouldn't just be socks. It could just be something so. So small and. But I don't know. I don't know any novelist who goes on about this, but I Must go on about it more about the wrong, you know, just the character. Just, you know, the wrong thing.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

It's always so interesting.

[Colm Tóibín]

I mean, that's why when I was talking about the toes at the beginning, there's clothes I saw in other people, but they're completely wrong on me. I'm sure. Completely wrong.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

But it's when you were talking about seeing those clothes on the other people and how clothes can represent intelligence. So you must have responded to something.

[Colm Tóibín]

I'm Carson. It looks tremendous. Like you. She often wears a tie. I think if I was a girl, I'd wear a tie.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Yeah, I'm wearing a tie.

[Colm Tóibín]

You look so great in a tie.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

I always wanted a tie. When I was at school, they didn't have a school uniform, so I started. Now it's such fun. Well, thank you so much, Karen Tobeen, for being on fashion neurosis.

[Colm Tóibín]

This is a dream. Oh, God. I'm the most neurotic person about. Clothes are just always in the wrong clothes.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

You're not absolutely.

[Colm Tóibín]

I completely am.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

You are not. I love everything you're wearing.

[Colm Tóibín]

If anyone's listening, just send me clothes. Please, just send me something nice.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

There's nothing more fun than going shopping with somebody. I love that.

[Colm Tóibín]

Yeah, that's absolutely true.

[Interviewer (possibly Sam Baker)]

Well, if you ever need a shopper, I'm on st. Oh, I would be

[Colm Tóibín]

really on for that. I love that. Thank you very much, Sam.