TITLE: NEW WAYS TO KILL YOUR MOTHER
Writers and Their Families
AUTHOR: COLM TÓIBÍN
Pages: 346
Date: 26/03/2013
Grade: 4+
Details: Non-Fiction/Essays
Received from Penguin
Through Nudge
Own
In this fascinating book, Colm Tóibín sets out to show
how their families influenced the work of various authors. Divided into two
sections he first concentrates on Irish authors: W.B. Yeats, J.M. Synge, Samuel
Beckett, Brian Moore, Sebastian Barry, Roddy Doyle and Hugo Hamilton. The second
part of the book, called ‘Elsewhere’ gives us glimpses of the lives and
families of Thomas Mann, Jorge Luis Borges, Hart Crane, Tennessee Williams,
John Cheever, James Baldwin and finally Barack Obama, a man we don’t think of
as an author first and foremost. And there is one other author who returns in
chapter after chapter although he isn’t given one of his own: Henry James.
Of course Henry James is a favourite subject for Tóibín.
His book ‘The Master’ provides a wonderful description of James’ life and work.
And having recently had the opportunity to hear him talk about the James family
and their connection to Bailieborough, a town close to where I live, I fully
appreciate the depth of his knowledge and his affection for his subject.
With skill and clarity Tóibín shows us how authors
made use of their relationships – or lack thereof – with their families. For
example, in the preface he reflects on the absent mother who, in the novels of
Jane Austen and Henry James, is a vehicle to allow the main character to
develop on their own, without maternal influences.
But the observations in this book are not limited to
how the family influenced the work of the authors mentioned, they also reflect
on their actual relationships in real life:
“Thus the two successful
authors, William (Butler
Yeats) and Henry James, each in his
prime, had managed to kill their father rather fatally, as it were, by letting
his work be published in book form.”
But the reader is given much more than the title of
this book seems to promise. While connections between authors, their
relationships with their families and their work are frequent, those works are
discussed in detail that goes above and beyond the family relationship. So,
with regard to W.B. Yeats and his (much younger) wife George we are shown:
“…a symbol of the way writers use houses for
their magic properties rather than their domestic space.”
And Sebastian Barry in his play Hinterland deals with
the Father, as did a lot of plays in the early years of the twenty-first
century. More specifically, he deals with the father and his short-comings,
both as the head (and thus father-figure) of a nation and in his home life.
“If Ireland needed a public figure to become its
disgraced father, then Charles Haughey auditioned perfectly for the role and
played it with tragic dignity in a lonely exile in his Georgian mansion in North County
Dublin.”
The chapter on Roddy Doyle and Hugo Hamilton provides
the reader with a contrast in fathers. While father Doyle came from a republican
family he had no real interest in the concept of Ireland and its language.
Hamilton’s father on the other hand took such pride in his Irishness that he
refused to speak English and forbade the use of that language in his house and thus
managed to cruelly curtail his children’s’ childhood in the process.
In part two of this book, ‘Elsewhere’ we start with a
look at Thomas Mann and his family. To say that the relationships within this
family were unconventional would be putting it mildly. Covering among other
things homosexuality and incest this chapter is rather gossipy in appearance
and rather fascinating as a result.
With Borges however we are back in line with the
title, be it that the parent being ‘killed’ is the father rather than the
mother:
“It is as though an
artist such as Picasso, whose father was a failed painter, or William James,
whose father was a failed essayist, or V.S. Naipaul, sought to compensate for
his father’s failure while at the same time using his talent as a way of
killing the father off, showing his mother who was the real man in the
household.”
I could give more examples of how authors deal with
their families in their published work, but this book covers so much more than
what is implied in the title. This book also discusses the authors’ work;
sometimes staying on topic and discussing how their families and their
relationship with them influenced it, but, at other times, giving a much more
general description of their writings. In fact, there are some chapters in this
book in which the author’s family is barely mentioned at all. Brian Moore’s
story seems to be more about his absence from his native Belfast than about his relationship with his
relatives for example. So I think it is fair to say that while for some of the
authors mentioned their relationships with their families were hugely
influential on their work, for others that was less or not at all the case. In
fact, the first piece about James Baldwin doesn’t appear to be about his family
at all but about his ‘relationship’ with America and the changes it was
going through. The chapter James Baldwin shares with Barack Obama on the other
hand is very much about their families or, more specifically, their absent
fathers.
Tóibín may be writing about other authors and quoting
from their work, letters and diaries – giving the reader a taste of the
magnificence of those authors – his own writing is equally impressive in its
thoughtfulness and fluency. It is clear that he is an expert when it comes to
authors, their work and the connections between the various authors. At times
this book reads as if he personally knows all these people he is writing about
and is generously sharing this personal knowledge with his readers.
This is neither a quick nor an easy read. It is a
fascinating book though. Ideally, I feel, it should be read in bits and pieces,
a chapter started and finished when you are reading a book by or about the
author in question. Especially since I found that I was far more interested in
the chapters on authors and books I am familiar with than in those whose
subject I had barely heard of. I know I will be revisiting certain chapters
when I’m preparing for book discussions with my reading group.
Colm Tóibín provides his readers with fascinating and
knowledgeable insights into authors as well as their work and in doing so also gives
his readers a better understanding of those works and of what motivated the
authors to write them.
