RTÉ documentary to examine Tóibín’s relationship with Wexford
A NEW RTÉ documentary will examine Colm Tóibín’s childhood in Wexford and how the world-famous author still takes inspiration from summers spent at Ballyconigar beach.
On Memory’s Shore will be shown on RTÉ One next Monday, April 19 at 9.35 p.m. and, as well as his life growing up in Enniscorthy, will explore and celebrate his contemporary writing life in Dublin.
The documentary, directed by Brendan J Byrne, and produced by Belfast-based independent production company BelowTheRadarTV meets Colm as he completes his latest novel The Magician based on the life of the German Nobel winner Thomas Mann, most famous for his short novel Death In Venice.
Colm has long been fascinated by Thomas Mann and in a journey to Venice, almost completely empty of tourists because of Covid-19, he shares both the origins of his new novel and the challenge of writing about a figure as complex, unknowable and influential as Mann.
Filmed in the late summer and early autumn of 2020, the documentary also captures Colm in his native Wexford where the beach at Ballyconigar has, since childhood, held an irresistible draw.
Colm explains how walking that beach and distinctive shoreline conjures up memories of summer holidays as a boy, scenes that have made their way into several of his books, most memorably The Blackwater Lightship.
In Dublin, Colm discusses his path to becoming a writer and how living in Barcelona at a critical moment in its history shaped his debut novel The South.
He admits the writing of this debut novel was ‘recovering what was lost when he left Spain’ to return home to Ireland. Colm reveals how he writes and, in revisiting early drafts of some of his short stories, considers the importance of feeling in his work: ‘as a writer you have to feel it, nothing will happen unless you feel it.’
This documentary profile of Tóibín concludes with Colm offering a hint of a future novel inspired by an image that came to him several years ago during the equal marriage referendum.
Known across the world for his novel Brooklyn which was adapted for film and picked up three Academy Awards nominations in 2016, Tóibín himself has been nominated three times for one of the English-speaking world’s most famous literary prizes, The Booker Prize.
Each nomination was for a work different in style and tone from the others, evidence of Tóibín’s versatility as a writer which encompasses journalism, short stories, travelogues and reviews all combined with his teaching at Colombia University in New York.