Colm Toibin

I’m Colm Tóibin, I’m a novelist and my house is in the middle of Georgian Dublin. The room is at the back of the house on the third floor so it looks onto the back of buildings and it’s very quiet. It used to be a bedroom but I used to dream about covering it in books and thought I’d work well in here.

There was a door which led out to a hallway so I had that door blocked up and then there’s just a tiny little opening which I realise wasn’t there when I moved in, it was under the stairs, just by banging on something I realised that’s just a piece of wood. So it was a much narrower opening and in fact the table had to be put in here before you know it came in by the other door, it wouldn’t come in by this passage.

I think the builder either thought I mean I was slightly crazy when I explained what I wanted and then it was clear what I wanted, which was a cave, which was a room.

I make a joke but it’s not entirely a joke that when I get a bit older or maybe soon I’ll just block or have that part blocked up too and you know bits of me will get found here eventually, you know? just blocked in here.

The chair is the most uncomfortable chair probably anyone’s ever made; I think it’s for dinner guests. It’s French so it’s a French dinner guest meaning you want them to go, sit down for a while and then it’ll be very sore and then they’ll go.

It’s very good for working because just in case you get comfortable or feel that you know the world is a good place to be you write harsher sentences in this chair. You always feel a bit of wood hitting against some part of you and it’s just very good to keep you tense because you do need to be tense when you’re working. There’s no point in being relaxed when you’re working.

My books are arranged I suppose?  All the Irish books are in one place, all the poetry is alphabetical another, it ends with you know Z with CK Williams is to the left of Adam Zaretsky and Henry James is right behind me. And Joseph Conrad’s up there too so I sort of know where everything is. But I don’t feel tapped on the shoulder by them unless I look up and think I’d actually like to just read a passage of Conrad sometimes which I might do.

You can’t just decide today will be the first day. But once the first few pages are down … then it’s just work and not doing so is called laziness and you must not give into it.

I have a few ideas which relate to Brahm’s German Requiem and it’s some years been on my mind, the music itself but I also have in my room nearly 20 different recordings of the German Requiem.

I have them here because I’m banned by myself from listening to them over the next while, I haven’t listened to it for three or four years. But I have actually got two novels in my head which have this in them in one way or another. They may end up getting erased, the idea may end up getting erased but I have this sort of as an almost like talisman thing.

Some day I will start listening to them again. I don’t know what it’ll be, whether it’ll be the beginning of a book or the end of a book or half way through a book but it’ll be a book of the future.