Colm Tóibín

30:16Why was that? Well, I suppose that my mother was a widow. And there was always that sense of how should a widow dress. Right. 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.

31:00But then the 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 auburn or a sort of gold. And eventually my mother's hair got slightly gold. But the beginning, the first dye was a kind of blue. Like Quentin Crisp. Yeah. But I mean, women were very coy about it. One aunt denied it completely, said she never dyed her hair. She was very lucky. Her hair had stayed that color all her life. 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.

31:50Really? Yeah. Your Irish grandmother? Yes. Ah. Yeah. Me and my sister always wanted to have a black curly hair like her, but... Your other grandmother sounds like an item. 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. Yeah, there's a wonderful painting where he paints her with her hands like this. Yeah, yeah. 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.

32:45I thought that was a really good painting. Yeah, I love that painting. And she was wearing a paisley top, and I remember him painting the paisleys on. Yeah. Yeah.

33:27analysts of the conflict who recently returned from the front lines. The episode's out now. Search for and follow The Long Game wherever you get your podcasts. Have we underestimated the damage Trump has done? It's easy perhaps to chuckle at a Donald Trump. There are times when he's sort of campy. 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 the rule of law. I'm Preet Bharara, and this week, former U.S. Attorney Barb McQuaid joins me to discuss this administration's mob-style governance and corruption.

34:08The episode is out now. Search and follow Stay Tuned with Preet wherever you get your podcasts.

34:19Because your younger brother died suddenly and unexpectedly. Yeah, both of my brothers died. My younger one, I've never, you know, you never, I don't know what should happen, but 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. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, 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. Gosh, yeah. Yeah. And he had bought a house in South Wexford. And, I mean, honestly, the big debates we have take up so much time.

35:13I 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 was going to be great and 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 uh but it was um it's funny the things you distract yourself with because in 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 he you the 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?

36:43Yeah, 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. Yeah. And I was close to a man called Ivor 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.

37:27And he saw something. He really did. Early on, he said, there's something wrong with you. You do need to see me. I said, Ivor, 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. And I said, I would just 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, but eventually 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.

38:17He, yeah, he hypnotized me. And everything in the story about the hypnosis is what I remember. Gosh. There's nothing made up. 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 important 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.

39:01but 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 four and I was eight 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 so writing about it you have full control over it just trying to describe it in detail so that at least it's I felt it was important I wrote it down and published it yeah no it seems an extraordinary thing to be able to describe and to you know to have an experience because other people must have had similar things.

40:00But also must have that in them, even if they didn't do the hypnosis, that potentially they're going around where that had actually happened to them without them knowing. Yeah. Yeah. It's really hard to know where to place grief. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think there's a kind of Irish deep suffering that's transgenerational? 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, I know no one in Ireland who managed to deal with the death of their parents as though it was some sort of natural, inevitable thing, like the seasons changing, like the day becoming night.

41:05I know no one who dealt with that. Really? At the moment, I'm editing a magazine called Poetry Ireland. It falls to one person to edit it, and it fell 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 allergies for the parents. Why do you think that is? I don't know. I can't think of a historical reason as much as

41:47that it is as though maybe the rituals surrounding death that made it easier in some way were never actually real were things people talked about, I mean 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 Yeah. 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. Yeah, because that's the sort of folklore almost, isn't it? Yeah. There seems so much trapped sadness. Yeah. Yeah. I read that your boyfriend Hedy was playing the Pet Shop Boys recently and we've brought back all these bad memories from the 80s because you were always thought you were wearing the wrong clothes and said that the gay world is terribly judgmental he's um he's fed up with me talking about the Pet Shop Boys because his taste in music is actually very serious and sophisticated.

43:05And the Pet Shop Boys is just all I've taken from. He never listens to the Pet Shop Boys. But I said, well, in the loop music in the car, there's a song called We Were Never Boring. And we were never boring. But, yeah, I was never good at gay culture. I even used the word ironically, really. you know 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 we had the disco in London and realising I was completely out of place in there What were your sartorial flow path? Oh just stupid clothes 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 or something.

44:05Like, I never was interested in staying the night and doing, oh, I forgot to say I can't dance. My father couldn't either. Oh, really? Yeah. How did you know he couldn't? 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 yeah no no 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 and i'm sure that's not true she said it is everyone knows it i thought that was great I'd like to believe that but I don't think it is true No it isn't true but it's a lovely thing to say It just sounds so great Especially she was a marvellous dancer herself I bet she was She'd never say it if she wasn't You described playing tennis with the film director Pedro Almodovar 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.

45:25And I wondered what things you notice about a man's style. And is there something that always perks up your eye? 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.

46:15And that he, you see, he writes his own scripts. Yeah. 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 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'd do as a novelist. But I thought as a script writer, I wouldn't do that. Yeah. And I realized that he goes home and stays home. and really works solid in a very introverted way. And also, you know, his brother is his producer.

46:57He 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. 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. Yeah. And hit the ball back. I don't even place the ball well.

47:45and that's a side of me that I keep very hidden where I'm a very determined, dull, slow, plodding person. Is it to do with competitiveness? 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 would just think, these two guys are insane because also on the way home in the car, or I would do a victory speech in Spanish. Amen. Otra vez ha ganado el irlandés, el campeón de este año. El irlandés ha ganado otra vez con un... And I would go on like that in the car. He would just say, please stop. That's so good.

48:31Oh, God. I think that's fantastic. It's so hard to actually sort of incorporate competitiveness. competitiveness it's so loaded up with shame certainly in england and so i think any celebration of it is is fantastic even yet my age winning a tennis match that's brilliant it's great shows your life you know recently up in them 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 it comes the distinguished thing. We meant death. Yeah. But when I thought I had arthritis in my hip, I thought, oh my God, I'm going to have to get new hips.

49:16And generally all this 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 eight o 'clock on a Monday morning, Jim would, I've never put my head under water. 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. And you just stand for, 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.

50:01And shivering. and 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 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. 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 whereas we don't use. He said, okay, I want your head absolutely flush with your butt cheeks.

50:45Get your butt cheeks. I said, don't, what are you talking about? My butt cheeks. I'm a 71-year-old man. It'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, 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.

51:30Right. You know, in other words, and it says, hold on to 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. 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 and that's my Monday morning And do you sink when you clasp your knees? Yeah, yeah God, that's so interesting, I'll definitely try that I'm afraid of going, having my head under I'm afraid of the vastness of underwater It makes me really anxious But you can swim much faster if you keep your head on the water.

52:28Yeah, yeah. And my earliest memory is being in the bath held with my mother holding my head under her hand. I must have been a few. I don't know why I can remember this early. Oh, lovely. 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 wonder, does it ever blind your judgment, which seems so astute?

53:26I 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. Oh, gosh. You have to think about that sometimes. That's a very good thought.

53:48But, 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, or 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. Yeah. And we discovered how beautiful all the poets were. We got Stephen Spender as the oldest one. He looked marvelous. He really did. Andrew Motion, Michael Hoffman, Michael Donaghy, Don Patterson, all of them, the men, were so exquisite. And they looked so really, they looked so good in good clothes.

54:37I thought that was funny. 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. Oh yeah, a poet in their youth. Oh God, it was wonderful. and they are all completely wild and really kind of... Yeah, you see, I think in Ireland even more so. Yeah. Because we have no Wall Street and we have no aristocracy. And therefore, the poets have a great power in the country.

55:28Yeah. 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.

55:50She 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. Yeah. But the poets themselves were always fascinating to see. I suppose they all were aware of their positions in a sort of pecking order. Yeah. Which really got, 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.

56:38and 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. Yeah. And then seeing him, and then seeing him, you know. And John Bannamu was always beautifully dressed, really beautifully dressed. I mean, a poet in good clothes is about the most glamorous thing on earth.

57:24There's nothing like, you're absolutely right. Yeah, you think about it. Because if you fancy someone and don't like something they're wearing, does it kill your attraction? No. I love that. It's a sign of awkwardness. 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. Someone wearing absolutely the wrong clothes. but would the suave no debonair put you off no yes yes right yeah oh absolutely I wouldn't know what to do I wouldn't know what to do but yeah someone who was completely awkward yeah 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 Bertrice Razzori, who's Italian.

58:27And she put a ban on me wearing short sleeve shirts. 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 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 going to 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.

59:22A pale blue 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 is lovely. Yeah, I'm going to 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. You can keep her off your... It was really funny because I honestly thought I was fulfilling her dream. Yeah, because it was the reservoir dogs. But obviously she desperately needed me to stop. So she picked it. People are going to order, you know, 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.

1:00:08He 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. It's so good. I loved his diaries. Yes, he said that Michael Heseltine was a sort of man who bought his own furniture. But I know, 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.

1:00:44Gosh, did he come up with that? because I thought that was a sort of night. I don't know where I thought I was. Well, he used it about Michael Heselt. 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. 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-sleeved shirt is now seems to be coming back into fashion for English men, and it's quite sexy actually now.

1:01:35Is it? I've come round to it after it being the sort of worst thing, like someone's really unclean dad. I associate 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, no. So I don't think I'll bring them. I don't think I'll start wearing them again. Huh. because I 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 oh that was Almodovar actually um no that yeah he told me that this this thing really worked.

1:02:33And, 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, 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 expresso and you let it cool. You put sugar, 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. Wow. 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.

1:03:15And 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. and poor students had to listen to this. Oh, I'm dying to try it. Yeah, no, it's really great. And, you know, it's not illegal. You don't feel that you're somehow compromising with so many people, that your drug habit. Yeah, there's nothing worse than cocaine. That is cheap. Yeah, it's a fantastic idea. Yeah, I know, it's really great. Because in a New Yorker interview, it said your boyfriend, Hedy, does all the cooking and drives you and makes the bed and that you'd never knowingly made a bed.

1:04:00Yes, 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. and 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 a sign that I'm making an effort. But I can't cook or I can't do anything like that.

1:04:41My 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 spiritual ritual. I was in my editor's house in New York, and I went into all her rooms just to look at them. Really? Just that nosiness, and all the beds were made. And I said to her, do you make them in the morning? She 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.

1:05:20But I just, I've stopped doing it until I got it. I find it very peaceful. It's a sort of way of not having a distraction. Do you have any stabilizing rituals? None. I mean, I just find it hard to get out of bed and then I do. I wash myself in the morning. Do you do that? Yeah, I have a kind of thing that I do a bit like a prisoner. Yeah. I do certain things and then I'm ready. Yeah. because was it was it your psychiatrist who who said you you have a the ability to really bounce back yeah you were 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 the thing about you is you bounce back yeah and i it was such a liberating thing to say to me you know it's wonderful and you know it sounded true when he said it and i said oh do i and well obviously i do and that's a great gift i think 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 and how you come back from it and i think you were talking about the second time you didn't win the Booker Prize.

1:06:48And 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? Oh, it really is designed, I think, to be a theatre of cruelty. And just the length of the dinner and the length of the speeches and the fact that, you know, no matter who you are, you think you're going to win. Briefly, you have a thought. And people have speeches ready.

1:07:41And then some other name is announced. and especially the second time, I think, where I wrote a novel called The Master. Yeah, it's wonderful. I thought that could win, but it didn't. And yeah, there was a funny, I stayed on in London, really where 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. It got over in a few days, but it stays with you. It's just sort of public, no, public humiliation is too strong.

1:08:29I 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. It does. It's a very strangely organized thing. It's sort of designed to demote you in some way. 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 said, we both liked Wagner. We should meet each other.

1:09:08He looked at me. It was a sort of horror. And someone said, well, of course, you'll 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 over? Is this what I set out? Is this what I set out and dumped my monkey suit? That's why I put deodorant on so I could be insulted by David Trimble. It's really lowering, isn't it? Yeah, and 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.

1:09:54And it's just 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 that's classy isn't it yeah really classy he's such a classy fellow Then he went on to win the Nobel Prize. I think he did turn up, not for the shortlisting, but for the big dinner.

1:10:33Yeah. I still think it's good to want to win. It's better than not. Yes, the art of losing isn't hard to master. 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 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? 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.

1:11:22and he never wavered in that so I always presumed that he was going to cure me and there was 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 was 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. It came out the other side. Sort of insulting to people who didn't survive. But then I got a first sentence.

1:12:00I was back in L.A. I was with Hedy, 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. I didn't tell anyone. And I was back at spring break, and I was back in L.A., and I just got a sentence. It all started with my balls. And once that sentence came, I was away. Yeah. It's a funny idea that, that the sentence leads you to the whole thing. And so I did write about it then. And the London Review books were sweet enough to publish it. Oh, it's brilliant. I mean, it's a completely amazing piece. And also, I think, well, obviously, it's amazing to read.

1:12:49there'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. Yeah, it's a question of bouncing back, you know. 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. Oh, Martin Amos always had a lovely haircut. And he was very beautiful.

1:13:36Yeah. And he had, but he did wear bell bottoms. Yeah. 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. You're tall. No, I'm not. I'm not. I'm small. and I'm bald. You seem tall. Stop it, give it up. But I mean, oh, I tell you who's beautiful. Paul Auster was beautiful. Oh, yeah.

1:14:26His wife, Siri, 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. Really? 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. Who do you think writes well about clothes? Oh, I don't know. Does Henry James write well about clothes? I get a sense of how someone's looking just thinking about. Yeah. You see, nobody really wrote about men and clothes, did they?

1:15:11I don't think anyone did. I'm much more interested in the sort of awkwardness of someone wearing the completely wrong shoes oh yeah and I was initially one of those Beatrice Red Story events and Inga Feltrinelli who at the time was controlling the whole Feltrinelli business yeah 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 guerrilla. Really? 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.

1:15:57He was a minister in one of the Burlesconi governments. And she said, but how did you know that they were his gorilla rather than maybe his friends. And she said, oh, I looked at their shoes. Oh, that's so... And of course, I immediately looked at my own shoes. And my own shoes looked very gorilla to me. I mean, they didn't look like Italian shoes. So I'm sort of more interested in that idea of someone who's completely wearing... 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.

1:16:41And, 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. It's always so interesting. I mean, that's why when I was talking about the clothes at the beginning, they're clothes I saw on other people but they're completely wrong on me I'm sure but it's interesting 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 Ann Carson looks tremendous like you she often wears a tie I think if I was a girl I'd wear a tie yeah I'm wearing a tie you look so great in a tie I always wanted a tie when I was at school.

1:17:33They didn't have a school uniform, so I started now. It's such fun. Well, thank you so much, Cun Toveen, for being on Fashion Neurosis. This is a dream come true. Oh, God, I'm the most neurotic person about clothes. I'm just always in the wrong clothes. You're not, absolutely. I completely am. You are not. I am. I love everything you're wearing. If anyone's listening, just send me clothes, please. Just send me something nice. There's nothing more fun than going shopping with somebody. I love that. That's absolutely true. Well, if you ever need a shopper, I'm on Starlight. Oh, I would be really on for that.

1:18:16I'd love that. Thank you very much.

1:18:30Thank you.