tinvan

  Colm Tóibín , The Art of Fiction No. 256 Interviewed by Belinda McKeon Issue 242, Winter 2022 With his partner, Hedi El Kholti, at the Taj Mahal, 2016. Courtesy of Colm Tóibín .   Often, during the course of my interview sessions with Colm Tóibín, which numbered more than a dozen and took place across time zones—he was in Los Angeles, in the Catalan Pyrenees, on the Ballyconnigar coast of his native County Wexford—a disposable fountain pen would dart into view, held in his hand and used to emphasize a point about process or method or about the novel he had been working on before our conversation began and to which, after it had ended, he would return. Tóibín’s friends know that these pens are part of the deal. See Tóibín, see a Pilot V, or more than one—tucked into a jacket pocket, waiting on a desk, scattered like cigarette butts across the kitchen countertop at one of the parties for which his Georgian town house has been legendary in Dublin. The novel in progress, a seque...