Passa Podcast: Colm Tóibín
Which rules govern literature? How to maintain order in the empire of the imagination?
In this podcast we find out how writers do it. How do they manage to make their characters do what they want? How do they keep their ideas under control? Where does creative license end and discipline start? What is most important: talent or craft?
Every writer has their own ideas about “the profession”, and many have written about it. Numerous famous authors have invented their own writing rules. In this podcast, our guest puts a couple of these axioms to the test, and at the end of the conversation they come up with one writing rule, one literary law of their own.
Episode three
Colm Tóibín: “You see it before you write it”
The Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet talks about Long Island, sentences that do nothing at all, the great European novel, gay characters, poker and tennis.
The Writing Rules of Colm Tóibín
Kurt Vonnegut
Henry James
Susan Sontag
Thomas Mann
Jeffrey Eugenides
Rudyard Kipling
Reading tips
Colm Tóibín, Long Island
Colm Tóibín, Brooklyn
Colm Tóibín, The Blackwater Lightship
Colm Tóibín, The Master
Henry James, The Golden Bowl
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis