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The second day of the Literary Festival ISLA
(Irish, Spanish and Latin America Literary Festival).
We have with us Kevin Barry, one of
the most prominent Irish authors at the moment.
Kevin, can you tell me about your work?
Ok,
I just published
this year my third book
which is a collection of short stories called "Dark Lies the Island".
That's my second collection of stories.I had a novel last year called "City of Bohane"
which is an invented Irish city somewhere around the west coast in
the future, in the twenty fifties. But no tecnology in my future
no computers, no cars.
Just a lot of trouble,
a lot of gangs.
I wanted to...
The one place it struck me when I started to write was
the one place the Irish novel has never gone to.
It's the future.
There has never been any future work in Ireland so I thought
this is something fresh to try. And it was good fun to write.
You have been described
as one of the most original Irish authors.
Where do you think that statement came from?
I think with my work a lot of
my influences come from outside of literature.
There are literary influences as well but
I'm also very influenced because of my age by television,
and by film and by graphic novels,
by computer games, you know, because I grew up in the eigthies
reading comics, reading graphic novels, playing video-games.
And all this stuff influences my stories as well as
the traditional literature influences.
So maybe, it makes my work feel a little new
and a little fresh.
I hope so. The great American writer Cormac Mc Carthy said once was that books are made out of books.
But I think that's true too
because they are made of a lot of different things.
Yes, other influences like cinema or...Especially in these days.
You wrote as you said
a short-stories collection.
But also very good novels.
What does it make good
a short-story
that wouldn't necessarily work for a novel?
The thing with a short-story,
I think the short-story is a very intense form,
you have to get the reader straight away.
You have little space to work in.
You have to trap the reader at once on the page.
And you have to build a very small world.
A very thight, controlled
small, little world.
So there are certain subjects.
When I have an idea usually
I don't know straight away
this has to be reduced, this is tight,
narrow, small. This is a short story. Whereas with a novel
it can be looser and you can get away a bit more.
you can go off on tangents.
And what I find with a novel, if it goes wrong,
you can get it back, you can save it. Short-stories are very hard.
If your short-story goes wrong, it's very hard to save it.
I always think a short-story for
a writer is like
walking a tightrope.
And each sentence is like a step beyond the line and you can fall off and break your leg at any moment.
But it's a very satisfying form because I think it's very intense for the reading.
In a novel there would be a net.
The novel is the net. But not in the short-stories,
it's hard
ground. In your creative process, in the act
of writing physically.
Do you write by hand? Do you use a computer?
You said you were very influenced about the technology.
I increasingly first drafted the story, I would write longhand.I would write with pen and paper.
For the simple reason that it
slows down the rate at which the sentences are coming out.
This is a good thing. It means there's more care that goes in.
And then the second draft, subsequent drafts, I tend to type up
on the computer.
My latest
thing is that I've tried standing writing up
because my back was getting sore from sitting at the desk.
I put part of the desk upon my own desk and I was standing up writing.
and it seems to change the way you´re thinking.
You feel a little bit more alert.
When you write standing.
When I write standing.
I think the most important thing for me at the moment is
when i'm writing in the mornings is to
keep away from the Internet.
Not have the Internet anywhere near. My computer has to be switched off. It's distracting.
Yeah.
And when you're online,
you're going to have space for your flicking from thing to thing.
And it's no good for concentration so...
I have to leave that in the afternoon and I write in the mornings.
You write in the mornings. Always mornings.
Because you are fresh and empty head?
For the other reason because I think writing is really close to dreaming.
I think it's very similar to the dream stage. So I think
first thing in the morning when you are kind of still
half sleep.
This kind of half thing that dream wild and I think it's a really good time
to get to your desk and see what comes comes from the pen.
Let's talk about technology.
What about
electronic books?
Electronic books. Anything that people reads is good.
I haven't converted yet but
I can see it's a good idea.
For travelling and all that.
I think,
what's very interesting for me,
is that e-books will start to change the way our stories are written
because always when the media change,
when the technology changes, the content changes.
It affects the way we read stories.
In an e-reader the page would be smaller and shorter.
I think it's gonna change the way stories are formed.
I kind of have a theory. Increasingly I find with my own reading.
And I think again it's affected by technology and being online all the time. I dip in and out of books,
and I move from book to book very quickly.
Almost like I go from
website to website.
and I don´t know if we are coming to the end of an era
where books are meant to be read from the start to the finish.
I think you are gonna start having books that are in fragments.
And you dip in and out at your will.
If we take someone like the great
Roberto Bolaño.
I think his work was going to start almost a literature of fragments.
It's very interesting.
What about madness?
They say that in every writer
there is a certain...
Yes,
they are very close. Writing and being crazy are very close.
Would you describe yourself as a crazy person?
I'm neurotic.
Certainly neurotic. I think most writers are quite neurotic
and even melancholic.
But also you have to know what happiness feels like as well.
You can't just be one thing or the other.
Writing
short stories, for example for me is all about hearing voices in your head, you know.
And then writing them down. But it's kind of...It's positive madness.
It's a good way to
be mad.
Certainly when I was writing my novel
"City of Bohane", I wrote it quickly. The first draft was in three months, very quick for a novel.
And I think for that three month period I was
technically nuts, I was pretty...
I had a one track mind, I was just living in this place
And I was kind of away from reality.
Could you tell me some anecdote? Some neurotic thing
you did.Probably when you were younger, when you were trying to publish something.
Some kind of crazy act. Yeah, when I was in my twenties and
starting to write fiction in a serious way, I was working as a free-lance journalist and making some money
and living in Cork city, in the south of Ireland.
But
I knew that I had to be dedicated to this into a full time so I left my
apartment in the city.
And I bought a tiny, little caravan
and put it in a farmers' field in West Cork.
And I sat out there for five or six months and tried to write a novel.
And there's twelve foot long, five foot wide.
And it was
a terrible novel.
It was really bad.
But it taught me enough about the discipline
that was needed.
That you give everything, that you can only do this one thing.
And you probably are not going to make much money for a long time. And it's a difficult life in lots of ways.
But also it's a way of being free.
That's what writing is, a way of being free, of being your own
Independent republic of one person on you own rules
and everything flies. And that's a wonderful thing.
But there are most days that feels like a job.
It's tough.
It's tough because you are alone a lot.
There is no help.
Yes, somebody said,
the great English novelist Martin Amis said that
writers are most alive when they are alone.
When they are on their own.
And that can be a very lonely thing.
And a lot of the day you´re just sitting in the room and it's not going very well.
You are staring at the wall.
You are drooling
and you just, you know...
What I discovered is that you get a good day when the writing is fluent, everything is fluent.
But you have to go through the bad days to get the good days. Because in those bad days,
it's all happening
in the sub-concious, in the back of the mind, in that kind of dreamy place back there.
So you have to stick to the bad days to get the good days.
You need the inspiration.
What about recognition?
You need to be recognized, to get a reward
to keep doing it.
Yes.
I'm fortunate because my books have come out
and I´ve gone into the world and found readers
I think if that had never happened for me,
I would have kept writing anyway because I need to do it. If I don´t write during the day, I don't feel right about myself at night.
It's all I'm good at.
I'm good for nothing else.
I think it's a great thing to get
some recognition four your writing
but I think real writers will do it anyway.
Ok, that sounds good. Just to finish, could you
give us some advice for a young writer who wants to start?
First thing, turn off the internet.
The second thing is to read
widely.
Read lots and lots of different things.
Don't just get focussed on a couple of different writers.
Read as widely as possible from as many literary cultures as possible.
And try all those different influences
mix-up
and become your own influence.
And don't think the time you spend reading it's ever a wasted time. Time for reading is very much important of your life as a writer.
Thank you very much. Kevin Barry. Isla Festival.