Kevin Barry on the Need to Sustain Our Literature

Kevin Barry’s Night Boat to Tangier is out now from Doubleday.

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What do you always want to talk about in interviews but never get asked?
About exactly how important it is that we sustain our literature; it is humanity’s greatest achievement, and it is under attack from the forces of geekdom and moronism. People are losing the ability to read because they’re drooling into their bloody phones all the waking hours of the day, and they’re destroying their peace of mind, and with every click and scroll they are subverting the conditions in which literature can survive.

What time of day do you write?
First thing in the morning, before I’ve properly woken up, because when I’m still in dreamland I’m not afraid to embarrass myself on the page, and this is critical. When you’re looking back over your work, the emotion to look out for in yourself is SHAME. When you read over a passage you’ve written and feel hot-faced with utter mortification, pay attention—this is where you’re hitting on the good stuff. Cut all the cool-sounding, wise-sounding, impressive-sounding bullshit and go with the truly mortifying stuff. It’s also hugely important for me not go online in the morning—if I slip into that jittery, rabbit-brained, mouth-breather online mode, I just won’t write any useful fiction that day. The internet (miserably) will still exist in the afternoon; just leave it till then.

How do you tackle writers block?
By not believing in it. I think my background in freelance journalism is useful here. I freelanced from the age of 17 to 37, and I know that I can write in any circumstances and in just about any condition short of outright coma. Don’t take any break from your writing. Do it every day. You’re not going to write well every day but you’ll keep your engines purring. We are all blessed with imaginations—check us out when we dream!—but to keep the stuff coming freely you have to be disciplined as a motherfucker. Every day!

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?
Annie Dillard said once that the only advice any writer needs is to keep your overheads low. In our present epoch, this means you have to be very, very careful about where you choose to live. I live cheaply in the rural north west of Ireland and this means I don’t have to teach, I can just write. The city as an entity really doesn’t want anything to do with writers anymore—we’ve been priced out, as have all creative people except those from backgrounds of privilege. So screw the city—it’s the city’s loss.

 Is there a book you wish you had written?
There are eight squillion but I’ll limit myself to two. I currently have the hots for Elizabeth Hardwick in a major way. Her Collected Essays may be the place to start. She just had a burning, brilliant, righteous intelligence, and her sentences are gorgeous, elegant, unexpected. Also, for the princely sum of two Euro, I picked up an old copy of Kenneth Tynan’s Profiles in a bargain bin the other week. It’s a collection of picked-up pieces from his newspaper and mag work from the 40s onwards—he had a blade-sharp critical perception, he had moral insight, and he was seriously (keyword) funny.

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Kevin Barry’s Night Boat to Tangier is out now from Doubleday.