Interviews.
Brian Leyden
Brian Leyden was born in Roscommon in 1960. He won the Francis McManus Short Story Award in 1988, and the Irelands Own short story competition the following year. a regular contributor to radio, his RTE documentary, "No Meadows in Manhatten" won a Jacobs Award in 1991. Author of "Departures",(1992, Brandon) "Death and Plenty", (1996, Brandon) and "The Home Place", (2002, New Island).
1. Brian, I’d like to begin by asking you what was it that kick-started your writing career?
Winning the Francis McManus short story competition with “The Last Mining Village” in 1988, and then the Ireland’s Own competition the following year with “On the Market”. I also had a couple of other stories broadcast on radio and published in magazines, so I was building up a C.V. and had enough material to form a collection of short stories.
2. Do you have a writing routine?
Yes. Writing is a very routine business. I spend three to four hours writing every day. I believe you have to make a contract with yourself to be at your desk for an agreed time in order to give the creative muse a chance. It’s a bit like being an athlete — we only see them on the days of glory when they’re winning the race but we don’t see all the training that precedes that. The routine of sitting at your desk every day is the training that results in publication.
3. The dreaded ‘Writer’s Block’ — does it affect you and how do you deal with it?
For me it’s not so much a creative block that hampers me; it’s more what I would call Writer’s Road Block. Satisfying the market these days is becoming more difficult in that the publishers tend to dictate what they want. I write because I have something to say and I need to say it — and this doesn’t always fit in with what publishers are looking for.
4. The memoir seems to have come into its own as a literary genre over the past twenty years or so. (Alice Taylor, Frank McCourt, John McGahern, Nuala O’Faolain). What do you see as the challenges specific to writing memoir as opposed to fiction?
I think there’s great scope in the memoir for experimenting, perhaps more so than in a novel, where you have to take into account the demands of the plot. Writing is about taking life to heart, and the memoir is the story of how you do this. But it’s also about understanding the dynamics of the situation, not just about having your say. The risk of offending people is very slight once you don’t resort to malice. The memoir also serves to give us a reflection of the changing Ireland if we compare the work of say, Alice Taylor with Nuala O’Faolain.
5. In “The Home Place”, you evoke a world of paraffin-oil lamps and barns in which cows with pet names are milked by hand, and then go on to document the changes which result in “an acceptance of livestock as reproductive mechanisms, with all the horrors that attend this treatment of living creatures as industrial units.” What do you feel is the most negative impact of our 21st century Celtic Tiger on the small farming communities you describe?
I think the loss involved in the old order giving way to the new is what disturbs me most. With the disappearance of the rural, agrarian society and its replacement with our highly mechanized farming of today, we have lost a whole way of life and all the body of wisdom that goes with it. The unassuming decency of this older generation in the wilderness of the changing world is what makes them heroic. Through my parents and the neighbours, I had access to that older world, and I wanted to preserve a record of these people who would otherwise vanish forever. Nowadays there is a huge interest in the preservation of endangered species and plants. I believe that the whole body of knowledge and experience of the land is being lost as rapidly as these plants and animals, but the value of this loss is seriously underestimated.
6. Staying with “The Home Place”, your acute observation of the landscape seems to me to be reminiscent of the late John McGahern, especially in “That They May Face the Rising Sun”. Do you think he has influenced you?
John McGahern’s influence on me was more ethical than stylistic. He was the great goal setter for integrity in literature. He did set standards for writing. I would frequently find myself asking if something I had written would measure up to the quality he would expect.
7. Are there any other writers you feel you have learnt something from?
I think Dylan Thomas, for his sheer exuberance and joy in language itself. Ernest Hemingway is another writer I greatly admire. Coming back to the Irish context, there were two great communicators who really opened the door to literature for me: David Norris, especially when it came to illuminating James Joyce, and also Brendan Kennelly, whose great enthusiasm and joyous appreciation of the written word has stayed with me.
8. In your writing, the sense of place seems to be a huge force in shaping the narrative. How would you estimate the importance of landscape for a writer?
I know that in my case, the landscape instigated my earliest sense of wonder. And I do think that people’s mentality, and even their identity is shaped by the landscape that surrounds them. However, I also feel that in some cases, landscape can be commodified — in other words, we end up selling an image of a particular county that doesn’t exist.
9. Going back to “Departures”, your first book of short stories, it seems to have a lot in common with “The Home Place” in its lyrical evocation of the life of a small rural community. Would you see it also as a series of reflections on the Ireland of your childhood and adolescence?
While "Departures" is a collection of stories, it does inhabit that twilight area between fact and fiction. It covers much of the ground which reappears in “The Home Place”, but uses that material to generate fiction.
10. Your novel “Death and Plenty” takes as its central symbol the Black Pig of Celtic mythology, and this draws together the various strands that drive the story forward. Could you comment on how this works in the book?
The Black Pig symbolized both the fatted pig of plenty, and the ferocious black boar of death, which roots up the country. At the core of the novel is the get-rich-quick plan of gold-mining, which tears open the heart of the mountain, while also poisoning the rivers with cyanide. Then the festival at which the monument of the Black Pig is launched brings untold wealth and plenty to the town in the form of tourism.
11. Do you think some of the old beliefs and superstitions still survive in the Ireland you write about?
Yes we still have a rich heritage of folk beliefs and calendar customs which impact on our daily lives. When you’re up against something bigger than yourself, you resort to superstitious actions to appease the greater power or thwart its intentions. Closely linked to this heritage would be our rituals of transformation — when we move from one phase of our lives to another — to instruct us in these transitions. Beyond that again is myth, which connects us with the grander cosmos — the mystery of being itself.
12. You’ve talked about the importance in fiction of the disclosure that changes the life of the protagonist. In “Death and Plenty”, Grace O’Connor comes to Ireland in search of her roots and is faced with the monumental discovery that the old sculptor she meets is in fact her grandfather. Could you comment on the significance of this revelation?
I’ve always been interested in the idea of something drawing you back to the place you’re supposed to belong — the old belief that “Those whom the gods can’t lead, they drag”. This recurrent myth goes back to ancient Greece — the outcast who has been condemned to wander the earth suddenly finding the place and the people he belongs to. In a sense, “Death and Plenty” is about a homecoming. Originally displaced by the forced emigration of her grandmother, Grace eventually finds what it means to belong, and to be loved.
13. In both “The Home Place” and “Death and Plenty”, your interest in the impact of the Famine on the area you write about comes through. Have you ever thought about writing a historical novel to explore it in more detail?
Growing up in Arigna where the relicts of the Famine are so physically close — the stone cabins that housed whole families, the corrugated rows of famine ridges, the famine graves — it was like seeing history surface before my eyes. Also, I grew up with my grandfather, who had memories of its lasting effects. I suppose this was the great upheaval, the turning point in our history, and, as with any holocaust, the guilt of the survivors is still with us. Whether or not I will tackle it in the form of a historical novel, maybe sometime. Wait and see.
14. Your writing to date has ranged from lyrical evocation of your home place to novels to radio documentaries. Can you give us any idea of what we can expect next?
I’m very interested in the effect transformation is having on our society, and one of the darker sides of this is the rising suicide rates throughout the country. This is something I would like to explore in terms of the wider issues surrounding it. I believe suicide is very individual and very complex and so, these issues cannot be oversimplified. But fundamentally, there is something deeply troubling in our society if a person chooses physical annihilation rather than psychological change. With reference to the numbers of young men who die in this way, I believe that the inability to communicate, which in turn leads to problems in managing their emotions and problem solving, plays a significant role in pushing them over the edge. I am currently working on a novella which addresses this topic.
15. Ireland has recently seen a huge increase in what has come to be known as “chick-lit”. How do you see the difference between literature and commercial fiction?
I can do no better than to quote Iris Murdoch on this question. In distinguishing between fantasy (or commercial fiction) and imagination (what we will call literature), she says:
“Where fantasy operates with shapeless day-dreams, small myths, and toy pictures, imagination grapples with reality. Where the former is wilful, whimsical, self-centred and consoling, the latter is a form of moral attention committed to delivering a new vocabulary of experience, a true picture of character, a recognition of the irreducible messiness of life.”
The messiness of life notwithstanding, the business of transforming painful or pleasing lived experience into a kind of wisdom has always been one of the chief preoccupations of literature.
16. In the desert island scenario, which five books would you take with you?
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”.
Seamus Heaney, a selection of both his poetry and prose.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Sherlock Holmes collection, for sheer reading pleasure.
For my classic, Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”
The short stories of Alice Munro
17 Finally, what’s the most important piece of advice you would offer to aspiring writers?
Keep at it!