Jeffrey Eugenides on Colm Tóibín, “The Kindest Person in the World”

“Colm Tóibín is the kindest person in the world.” Don’t take my word for it. That’s a quote. The speaker was my six-year-old daughter, Georgia; the time almost exactly twenty years ago. Colm and I were attending the Parati Literary Festival, in Brazil. Among the other participants that year were many writers who have received The Medal of Honor for Achievement in Literature, including Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, and Paul Auster. They were all down there, apparently being less kind than Colm. Because one night as I tucked Georgia into her hotel bed, she looked up and gave her of assessment of tonight’s honoree. I can hear her voice now, saying, “Colm is the kindest person in the world.” And I can hear Colm’s voice every night during the rest of the festival, saying, “Jeff, tell everyone what Georgia said about me.”

Well, it’s true. He is the kindest. And the form his kindness often takes is that, when you run into Colm, he’ll tell you what you’re like. Last month, at the The Paris Review Revel, Colm came up to me with a grin on his face and, without preliminaries, began telling me stories about myself. According to Colm, he’d once encouraged the people at the Stanford University to invite me to give a reading. When I did so, during my opening remarks, I happened to mention that, when I’d been a grad student at Stanford, I’d dated a woman who turned out to be allergic to my semen. I had no memory of saying such a thing I public. I couldn’t believe I’d ever said something like that. I can’t believe I’m repeating it now. And I’m only doing it to give you a sense of what a repository of fact, incident and embarrassing anecdote this man is. Running into him is like finding an old diary and reading through it with astonishment. Did I really do that? Say that? Is that what I’m like?

Henry James said that a novelist should be “someone on whom nothing is lost.” Fittingly, the person I know who best fits that description is the author of The Master himself. Nothing is lost on Colm. Ever. The reason he’s a great novelist is that he pays attention to everything everyone does and remembers it. Some novelists look inward; other look outward. The best look inward by looking outward, and that’s a fair description of Colm’s method.

The chief pleasure of being present tonight, of course, is to celebrate Colm’s achievement in literature: all of his novels from Brooklyn to The Master to the The Magician. But it’s an additional pleasure that we honor tonight a writer who has never hoarded his gift. Colm never returns my emails because he’s busy doing more important things. But anytime I’ve needed something, from a new introduction to an old book of mine to a conversation in the newspaper to promote a new one, he’s always made himself available; and I know this is true for countless other writers. Once, when I made an idle, dismissive remark about another Irish writer, Colm reared back and said, “She’s a great friend mine and I won’t hear a word said against her!” That’s the only time I’ve ever seen him angry.

In addition to being the kindest person in the world, Colm is also one of the funniest. I remember, when I first read The Story of the Night, I wondered why Colm’s writing wasn’t as funny as he was. I took me one or two more books to find the answer. When Tóibín writes, he shakes off the geniality of his public persona; he goes to a deeper, more profound place, to a depth of feeling that, of all the arts, only literature can plumb and that only the most fearless and tireless writers have the stamina to measure. Gradually I understood that Colm had been acquainted with grief at an early age and that this was responsible for the deep current of emotion that runs through writing. Each of his books is a transmission of essential utterances; in writing each he dove so deeply down into his material and his self that the language he brought back up with him, and rendered on the page, was of the utmost significance and seriousness. You should more no more expect a joke from Tóibín than you would from Jesus during the Sermon on the Mount.

Ok, I’ve compared him to Jesus now. That’s a sure sign that I should conclude. Before I do, let me say this. This a lifetime achievement award, not a funeral. Colm’s new novel, Long Island came out just two weeks ago. Still, I can’t fail to remark that, when certain people disappear, we will never their like again. You can say that about John Updike. You can say it now about Helen Vendler, who died only a few weeks ago. And someday–may it be decades from now–people will say it about Colm Tóibín. No one is as industrious as Tóibín, no one is as good a literary citizen, no one’s a better teacher, or a better lecturer, no one more faithfully upholds tradition while expanding its concerns.

Colm has a habit, when you’re talking with him, of bending forward and pressing the top of his head against your chest. It’s an affectionate, almost canine gesture. I’ve never met another person who does it. You might be in at a black-tie event like this, and Colm will make a joke and you’ll both laugh and then he’ll bend forward and butt you with the top of his head. The gesture is a perfect metaphor for his writing, which is brilliant without ever being egocentric or self-involved, even when he deals with autobiographical material as in his masterpiece Nora Webster. Tóibín’s intelligence isn’t used to dazzle you but to break straight though to your core. Which is where he places that ideally bald head of his. He leans forward, smiling, and presses the exquisite, humming dynamo of his brain right up against your heart. He does it person, physically, and he does it at a distance, but no less intimately, in his books.