The Blindboy Podcast - Donal Ryan

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

I chat with twice Booker nominated internationally acclaimed writer Donal Ryan about creativity and being a Metaller Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Greetings you crinkly Vincents and welcome to the Blind By Podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier podcast to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast. Right now I'm preparing for my big giant tour of England, Scotland and Wales which I'm doing next week. It's nine dates in a row with a fair bit of travelling between each gig. So I am engaged in preparation, researching my guests, packing, bringing all my technical equipment so that I can record next week's podcast on the road. Hoping that the hotel room that I'm staying in has decent sound and that I won't have to do a dreaded hotel podcast where it's about 10 hours of me huddled in a bed underneath

a continental fucking quilt so that the sound is correct. But I can't wait to go across the water to tan land. I'm really looking forward to Nottingham. I booked a gig in Nottingham. I didn't even know I looking forward to Nottingham. I booked a gig in Nottingham. I didn't even know I had listeners in Nottingham. It's sold out, so it turns out I do have listeners in Nottingham. But I booked a gig in Nottingham so I could visit the caves. Nottingham has a vast network of underground caves, some of them dating to Celtic times, so I'm very excited about visiting those caves.

For this week's podcast, I have an absolutely marvelous guest. A writer. A writer from Tipperary who's based in Limerick called Donald Ryan. He's written novels like The Spinning Heart, The Queen of Dart Island, a lovely short story collection called A Slanting of the Sun. Donald has been nominated for the Booker Prize twice. He is a very serious writer of international acclaim who just happens to live in Limerick. And that's something I really love about Ireland.

You could go the length and breadth of fucking America and you'd be hard pressed to find one person with a Booker nomination, let alone two fucking Booker nominations. But in Ireland we punch so far above our weight as writers that there's an awful lot of internationally acclaimed accomplished writers just wandering around. So me and Donald had a wonderful chat about two months ago. In Limerick we spoke about the creative process, we spoke about writing, we spoke about heavy metal. I knew I was gonna hit it off with Donald because the second I met him, within three minutes we were talking about the music of Pantera, so we were able to have a conversation about art, about writing.

A serious conversation about art and creativity in writing, without any of the solemn bullshit that often accompanies a lot of conversations about literature or about fine art. Literature conversations tend to... they tend to be very solemn. a performative type of seriousness, which doesn't serve to communicate, it serves to exclude regular people, it serves to make literature seem out of reach to regular people, to make literature something really exclusive that requires a particularly solemn key to access, which is horseshit. That's a lot of bollocks. You can

have very serious, passionate and sincere conversations about art while also being silly and having a laugh. And this chat with Donal Ryan, it's the best crack I had in a long time. So I hope you enjoy this conversation with the magnificent Donal Ryan. And if you like the conversation, go out and check out his books and consider buying one.

I have a most magnificent guest. Here's something that's gas, right? So this person is a world-renowned novelist with awards coming out of his hole and fucking two long lists for the Booker Prize and you'd have to scour the art to find someone like this and in Limerick it's like he just lives down the road and his name is Donal Ryan. Come on out, Donal. You are right what makes.

I'm great. Yeah. Not the first time. Thanks for the introduction. That's the coolest introduction I've ever gotten. Really? Yeah, absolutely. You look like Eminem. Thanks very much. You do! You have the same eyes as him. Has anyone ever said that?

No. But I'm delighted. I'm really thrilled to hear that. It's really cool. I had a very embarrassing moment there about just after the fucking pandemic. So after the pandemic, like two years is a lot of time. And I wasn't sure like what had happened to fashion. I wasn't sure like how should I start dressing? So I started like experimenting with new clothes. So I was like, I think skinny jeans are out.

I'm gonna try something a bit baggier. So I got these baggy blue jeans and then a white t-shirt and then I was wearing a shirt over it as well but at the same time I was having mental health difficulties so I bleached my hair you know under the bag just just to feel something so I was like grand I'm gonna go out now for my first pint in two years there's been a lockdown and I went to pub in town and I was in the smoking area and I took off my shirt and this young lad comes up to me about 22 and he goes, are you in like a play or something? And I'm like what? No. What do you mean? You're dressed like Eminem

from 1998 there. I'd fucking dressed head to toe like 1998 Eminem to the point that this young lad, he wasn't being mean. He sincerely believed that I was part of some type of play. That's funny, because I got a really cryptic text off my friend Steve today saying, man, don't wear boot-cut jeans tonight and brown shoes, whatever you do. I wasn't sure he meant. You're not wearing boot-cut jeans. They're the

skinny ones there. That's how you know you're from Nina. Yeah. That's a very tipperary look though. Well like in Nina in the mid 90s you were either Iron Maiden or Led Zeppelin and so this was kind of Led Zeppelin. Did you stick with a bit of a metal look? Is that what you did? Kind of, yeah. I was never really into fashion. I never got fashion right really. So my wife buys all my clothes now. And she has for the last 20 years, thank God. But I still, I just wear this basically. But I was at a meeting once at work and someone looked at me really pointedly and said a real sign of psychopathy that some of the psychopath is wearing the same outfit every day. Go away. Are you wearing the same outfit every day. Go away. You wear the same outfit every day? It's just handy. I've loads.

This is Dunstor's. They're about two euros each, these t-shirts. Maria buys about ten at a time. It's just handy. You're a teacher as well, though. You lecture up in UL. Teachers get away with same clothes every single day. There's an unwritten rule. Which if not smelly you're fine with. It's actually, it's strange if a teacher's wearing different clothes all the time. That's it, yeah. I don't want to learn from that person. Well, if you wear the actual same clothes you get smelly, but if you have the same type of clothes and wear them every day it's totally fine, as long as you don't stink.

Like lots of people did, you know. I said that to a psychiatrist and I got diagnosed with autism. I'm serious, cause I'm the same, like, do you know what I mean? Cause I'm at the moment now with clothes, I fucking hate dressing myself, like even tonight, I'm dressed like your man Zelensky, the president of Ukraine. That's not intentional. Do you know what I mean? I was just like, oh fuck's sake, I have to go up on stage now. Green combats, fine, they'll blend in.

New fucking Nikes, and then a black hoodie, can't go wrong, Zelensky. And the only reason I know that is, your man, the president of France, he started dressing like Zelensky. So people think that he's hard. And it's like, you're not, Macron, you prick. so people think that he's hard. And it's like, you're not, Macron, you prick.

Cause the other thing I've been thinking of recently is, you know that new place, Mountain Warehouse, there on Childers Road? I wanna just start wearing fucking outdoor gear, like head to toe, because it's completely functional clothes, like everything, like why not? But you can't, you look like you've been through a difficult divorce.

Yeah, that's it, yeah. It's true! Yeah, well I don't get paranoid about clothes really unless I'm in a secondary school and I used to be asked to go there a lot. You get a nickname. Yeah, but for some reason at the end of every session I do in secondary schools a young fella always goes, hey Donald, nice shoes. And all his friends laugh and he doesn't laugh. And it always happens in the same way

in every school I go to. I don't know why it is. Well I suppose it's something to do. They're just looking for something man. As long as you don't end up with a nickname. Oh yeah. We the fucking teacher man, his nickname was A. And just because he wasn't,

the poor man had been gored by a bull in his youth. This isn't a nice story at all. It wasn't me, I'm just saying it was secondary school, it's not a nice place. I can't think of any nice, we had another teacher called Sheila, his name wasn't Sheila at all, he just had an unfortunate beer belly that looked like he was pregnant. Yeah, I can't think of a complimentary nickname we had for any teacher. I don't want to say any either just in case they're close by you because you never know. I know I listed out two real names there and they could actually be in the fucking audience. The fucking teacher who expelled me, the teacher who fucking expelled me, I went

to my 10-year reunion you know and the cunt comes up to me and goes can I get your autograph I want to prove to my wife, you know, and the cunt comes up to me and goes, can I get your autograph? I want to prove to my wife that I know you. And I'd forgotten that he expelled me. Were you bald in school, Donal? I was I wasn't great, no, and fairness, I had a few run ins with teachers, but I was I was quite enough. And I hung out with a group of tough guys and they're all really nice guys.

Sound like you're in the drug squad. A group of tough guys in Nina. Was it the Mettlers sound like you're in the drug squad. A group of tough guys in Nina. Was it the Mettlers? Did you hang out with the Mettlers? They weren't Mettlers, you see. You're either into GAA or have you met them. I was terrible at hurling so I had to be a Mettler and joined the FCA and so I had a really lovely group of friends that I referred to collectively as the Hamilton Drive boys because they all lived in an estate called Hamilton Drive. referred to collectively as the Hamilton Drive boys because they all lived in an estate called Hamilton Drive. Is anyone here from Hamilton Drive? Oh yeah. Is anyone here from Nina? Great. But the lads had a bit of swagger and a bit of a street cred that I hadn't so I just stayed in the

middle of them and kind of stayed quiet and it was great. I was kind of minded all the way through secondary school. Was there any competition with Tardalus because they had the Fela? It was a bit alright but we all went down to it like we didn't begrudge them at all and we kind of felt it was ours too. I found something fucking fascinating recently, so I was looking at photographs of Fela from 1992 and what I noticed, so crowds everywhere in the middle of Thardis, right? Something I found fascinating is people used to sit on top of phone boxes and stop signs and you don't see it anymore. And I was like, what the fuck is that?

Every photo, it's like, why has this man decided to... Because that's Sauron the old anus. Climbed to the stop of a... And sitting there like a Buddha. No mobile phones. If you got lost in that crowd, you got fucking lost. So you had to go to the top of a stop sign and vandalize your own rectum,

just so your friends would see you. You don't, like, I was a Mettler as well when I was younger, you know. And we just used to have to hang around outside Brown Thomas. But did that's what we did? It's because the door was black. We called it the black door of death.

And we didn't have internet. So I just wanted to meet people who kind of possibly listened to similar music to me. So we'd wear like a slipknot hoodie. And then you go there, and you hang around there, and someone else has the same hoodie. And then you talk about music. Yeah, it was a great thing that the B&F Metal because it did give you this kind of shield immediately. You know, people were a bit wary of you because you could be a psychopath very easily.

So it was, you know, and it kind of, there was definitely an element of it being a defense mechanism for sure. A defense mechanism against what? Just against, you know, someone tink and they could push you around. You know, it was kind of a statement. What would you call, would you call gots, freaks? mechanism against what? Just against you know someone tink and they could push you around. What were you called? Were you called Guts? Freaks? I don't think we were called anything really because the lads were so tough and so feared that I know that vicarious reputation that I didn't deserve at all because I was a total wimp. I was never in a fight in my life and so I don't think we had nickname really except the Hamilton Drive buys and I wasn't

from Hamilton Drive but I was very proud to be called one. So you've been nominated for some serious shit like two Booker Lang lists and then you've got the, is it the Castor prize? No, I was chart listed for it in a minute. But you've got... You've a lot of serious shit going on, right? And you operate in the proper literary world. And you'd never have a conversation like this. You would never find yourself at a literary thing

where it's like, let's talk about your genes and fucking heavy metal. Not really, no, but I mean... But I think, I fucking hate the way those cunts go on. I... They speak about writing and art in a way that excludes people. Unnecessarily big words. And at the end of the day, writing, as far as I'm concerned, it's literally what you and I are talking about.

It's the authenticity of... For sure. You know, it's not writers usually, actually, as I'm concerned, it's literally what you and I are talking about. It's the authenticity of all. For sure. And you know, it's not writers usually, actually, and I have to say, because if Paul Lynch hears this and doesn't hear me saying that he's a heavy-metler as well, he'll go crazy. Is he a heavy-metler? Yeah, Paul Lynch from the book.

He won the Booker this year. Just won the Booker, yeah, for Profit Song. He's a great writer, he's a friend of mine. We're actually members of a secret society called the Hermetic Order of the Gazebo. And I can't, no, genuinely, I can't see any more about it. It really is secret and it's a very serious thing. And he's a heavy metaler and we would talk about genes

and heavy metal and all those things. And most writers, I know actually would, but there are people in the periphery of writing, like critics and people who write about writing and people who study writers and study their books that do tend to talk in very arcane ways and use really opaque language. It's hard to figure to figure out you know I don't know why really. I think why is that those people are effectively they're stockbrokers so

seriously if you look at what people do on Wall Street or whatever one they have in London where the fucking yuppies were. A stockbroker's job, right, is to increase the value of things. What, we'll say a hipster or whatever, what we're speaking about here, a cultural elitist does, they inflate the cultural value of work by making it something that's inaccessible. So if you've got a book here and you speak about it in a way that makes most people go, I know what the fuck he's talking about, I bet you I'm not smart enough to read that. It increases the cultural value and then that does translate into capital. So it's an industry. I don't like speaking about art that way because art for me is,

it's just, art, it's just the same shit I was doing when I was three and I couldn't talk and I was playing with crayons. Now we've got pubes. There should be silence about it. Like, yeah, seriously. Because when I was standing there in the wings, listening to you read a story, I mean, I just felt joy because it's a beautiful, beautiful story.

And it's funny and it's really beautifully written. Like, and you're saying so much in such a compressed space. And like the best way to consume that story is in silence, to hear you read it and to be silent and listen to it and not then to talk, not then to take it apart because that whole process of deconstructing art, it just ruins it. It ruins it and it happens a lot and it happens sometimes. I think it happens a lot in France actually, you know, and the French love art obviously, but they do tend to take things apart, part by part

and examine each part, you know, and talk about it, put it back together. Maybe it works in France, but I do find sometimes that, like, if you're being interviewed in France, they'll go through a story you've written or a novel and go, why exactly did you use that word? And they'll say the word. I sure have no idea, like, because... And would it freak you out then, having to think about... Oh yeah, I'd make up stuff and all, I'd start making up words and everything. And I'd start getting really red and hot and sweaty and shaky. It can go horribly wrong at times. Because for me, if I'm writing something right and the end result is a thing that I enjoy,

that for me was a process of flow. It feels like dreaming but I'm awake and I have some amount of control but not really and if I approach any piece of work trying to reverse engineer it if I even say to myself this is gonna be clever this is gonna be good I'm fucked I'll get writers block I have to be at play. Oh Jesus yeah absolutely I mean I remember having writers block once really badly. How long did you get it for? I got it for about four months I couldn't write at all and I had just given up my job. I hadn't given up my job. I got on a career break. I said I'm gonna take three years off. Unpaid career break now. And I said because I'd been given an advance to write books.

And I said to Penguin, the first book I write is going to be a short story collection. And I can't even remember why I said that. Because I thought at the time I could do anything. Because I'd been for the Booker for my first book and then the second book did well and I thought sure I'm a fucking genius. I can do anything I want. You got nominated for a Booker for your first book. Yeah. But you see I still thought it was... That's like when you're like, that's like throwing a basketball here and it is like and that's pretty fucking mad. Yeah but that's a good analogy because if you do make the basket it's look and you

see it was, it was blind look. But I thought at the time it's because I was a genius. I didn't realize, because I just, things, all these cards just fell the right way for me. You know? Did you take this, I am a genius, into your identity? I did, yeah. No, I didn't show it. But you're then you're fucked.

I was acting all humble, yeah. You're fucked. I was acting humble, but I didn't feel humble. I felt like, I was thinking, I actually am the best writer in the world. I was thinking, I had thoughts like that, frequently. And then I sat down to write this collection and I hadn't, I had nothing.

And then there were lies that was full of shit. And this went on for ages and ages. And eventually, and Marie was pregnant with our second child. And she came home from work and revenue commissioners and she wasn't in great form at all. And I was lying down in the kitchen crying. And I really was crying, I don't cry very much now.

Lying down is the best. Yeah, I was lying down and I was like... Lying down, like crying in the kitchen is bad enough, but when you're using it as a bed. Yeah. And she said, she literally said, what the fuck is wrong with you? And I said, I can't do it.

Will you ring double day and tell them to get the money back? I don't want this. I'm going back to work and this is just, I can't do it. And she just said, get the fuck up off the floor and write a story. And that's all I needed. And I wrote a story called Tommy and Moon. And like you said there, I can't, if I went back to try to figure out what made that story good or what made me happy with the story, I have no idea. Maybe it was the fear. Because Annemarie was in the graveyard

farm, she was banging pots and pens around the kitchen. And it wasn't fair on her at all. And I wrote the only story I actually love of my own. The story called Tommy and Moon. I actually loved that story. And it came out right the first time. And remember my editor saying, geez, Donal, you must have spent months on that story. I said, yeah, I spent four months writing it. Four months.

In reality, I spent about two hours writing it. But the thing is, you might have spent four months writing it and that four months was the pain. That's it. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like sometimes I'd writer's block for a fucking a year. I'd writer's block for a year after a bad review

because the bad review made me doubt my ability altogether and for me what it did too is I wasn't great at school. I had a very hard time in school you know and teachers weren't nice to me at school. I had a very hard time in school, you know, and teachers weren't nice to me. And what I have to be very mindful as a writer is that I'm always looking for the teacher to tell me that I'm a good boy. Always. And sometimes I project that teacher-ness onto critics. So when my book goes out and a critic writes about it in a paper, as an adult I'm like, it's just, that's their job and they're getting paid to do it. Emotionally I'm four years of age and I just want today tell me I'm a good boy you know because I was mad in school you know what I mean and I'm trying to deal with an adult problem from a child's perspective you know and the interesting thing with creativity

my inner child is very very important to my creativity but there's two children we have inside ourselves. There's the adapted child, and this is from psychology, from a psychology called transaction analysis. There's the adapted child. This is the child who was scolded, the child who learned you're not as good as that other child. This is the child who wants love and approval from parents. The child who can't emotionally regulate

because they don't have the maturity. There's that adapted child. And then there's the free child. The free child is the one who had fucking tons of crack and was curious and played with Lego. The free child is the one who doesn't care whether what they're making is good or bad because they're simply making.

You know what I mean? And I need that free child in order to create. But if the adapted child comes in, I'm fucked. Yeah, it's great to have that excuse. It's a great excuse to have, seriously. No, genuinely it is, I have no excuse. I really wish I could say that myself. I might start lying actually

and saying something like that to people because like I was so, I was told. Honestly, God, like I was told it I was told, honestly God, like I was told I was brilliant my whole life, my parents, my teachers. Fuck off, you were good at school, yeah. Oh yeah. You were good at, good at. I have to say now, like I...

You didn't have to train, you got A's. Kind of, well in English, in history, geography and stuff, yeah, anything to do with the humanities but nothing, maths and stuff, it was terrible. But like I teach you for Junior Cert English, Deirdre Cahill and leaving Cert English called Martin Slattery and they both said to me, Ryan you're a genius. And I, and I, well I couldn'tte English, Deirdre Cahill, and even Sirte English called Martin Slattery, and they both said to me, Ryan, you're a genius. And I, well, I couldn't accept it, you know? And the last day of school, Martin said to me, Ryan, will you promise me

you'll do something with the writing? And I said, yeah, I will, Martin. And every, and like for 10 years, I spent 10 years trying to be a writer, and hearing Martin saying, Ryan, promise me, you'll do something with the writing. And I felt like I was letting him down, you know, because he had such faith in me.

And my parents were the same, like they were always telling me it was great, but I still couldn't believe it, could never take it in. I don't know why. Even my friend, Conor Kremen, is here tonight. I remember saying to Conor years ago, about 20 years ago, I'd love to be a writer,

I'd just love to fucking get a book written, and Conor said, you'll do it, man, and it'll be great. And I still didn't believe him, believed nobody. I believed in Marie, all right. Actually, well, it wasn't a belief, really, it was kind of that I really wanted to impress her and she's really hard to impress, like you couldn't impress Anne-Marie. I was on a plane one time that nearly crashed, Boeing 747, the landing gear didn't come down

so they had to do an emergency landing and they let us all ring our loved ones. Oh my God! They do this thing where they can actually make your phone work so I said Annie, the plane might crash and she goes, well if it doesn't will you get milk? So she's heard, like she doesn't really get too excited about things. So I had to write a really good novel to impress her. And it couldn't just be any old novel, like you know I had to really do great things. That's really why I started being a writer. Can I hear more about this plane crash, man? Well, it all started in Newark, in New York. There was a delay taken off and there was an old lady, well she wasn't that old

in all fairness, let's say she's only maybe 71 or 72, and she was going home for the first time in about 40 years to Ireland with her brother Mick who was sitting way across and up the aisle from her. I think they'd fallen out in the airport. But she said to me, I have a feeling something's wrong. I have a feeling something's wrong with the plane. I don't know why. I just have this terrible feeling something's wrong. And she started kind of freaking out. And she got so bad that the pilot was brought down to her. He said, Madam, I can assure you the plane is fine. There's nothing wrong with

the plane. We have a slight delay because of air control. There's nothing wrong with the plane is totally fine, and she was alright alright She looks he's a pie he must know wasn't he she goes to me. I said yeah. Yeah, I'm sure he's fine actually Miriam Ali I was talking to you about her earlier she was with us and so the plane took off and Flew to Shannon was fine took about five and a half hours and just before he landed took off again and you'll say I you'll have noticed we didn't land in Shannon because our Our left hand landing gear hasn't descended. So no one really said much, it was fine. He said, I'm going to ring the guys in Boeing to get an in-air fix. And then he

came back and he said, Boeing couldn't give us an in-air fix, so we're going to have a rough landing, folks. That means I want someone to fly a plane up to our plane and fix it using a plane. That's what I was kind of plane. That's not what I was thinking. That's not great. But it was very similar to the final episode where the landing gear and the lads were trying to get down. So he burnt off all the fuel and cut the engines and glided into Shannon and did all the stuff. Oh my god, so he had to get rid of all the fuel so it wouldn't explode. So the sparks of the fuselage and the concrete wouldn't make the engines explode.

How did they address, we're going to turn your phones on because you might die? Okay, that's an exaggeration, I made a pit up. Well you know what I mean, like he's a fucking... That story right in there, there you go. When we landed I rang him Marie and he goes, we nearly died in the plane, we nearly died, the field didn't come down, we nearly died. She goes, yeah, you'll get milk in the bay home. So that did happen.

But you know what? That's fucking, that story writing right there, that's the bit that made that. Yeah, I'm proud of that. But actually, the lady who was going home for the first time in 40 years, when we were coming into Shannon and we all thought we were going to die, she started shouting at her brother going, Mick, Mick, I love you! I love you, Mick! Look at me! And there's no way he turned around. And you can see, he was so embarrassed, his ears were bright red, and he was just sitting like this going, Fuck that, Jesus, fuck that, fuck that.

And she goes, Turn around and look at me, Mick! There's no way he would. A fair play to him. A question about your first book, right, it's Spinning Heart, right? So that's a novel, right? But each chapter is like from the perspective of a different character. So why is that a novel and not a short story collection? Yeah. It's only a novel because towards the end of it, I decided a better put in a story. And I wrote Spinning Heart being in a state of absolute conviction that it would never ever get published because I'd written the thing about December, which is published after it. But while writing that and after writing it, I sent out queries to every single agent and publisher in Ireland and the UK and loads in America and no one wants to know. They all didn't say it was

crap, but they said, no, no, no, no way. And you're nobody at this point. I'm a lad from TIP and I want to write a book. I had a letter published in a newspaper that I wrote for my father because he knew I was a better writer than him. Of letters, you know. So yeah, that's all I had published. I had no reputation, no one knew who I was. So I mean, I had no expectation at all. But it had gotten to the point where I'd gotten a no from nearly everybody I could ask. So I thought, all right, I can either give up now because I've been roundly rejected or I can write one more thing just to have two things finished.

And I just wanted to have two things finished. It didn't matter what they were, you know? And so it didn't matter to me whether the Spinning Heart was a short story collection or a series of monologues or something for the stage, you know, but I just wanted to get these voices out because it meant't matter to me whether the Spinning Heart was a short story collection or a series of monologues or something for the stage, you know, but I just wanted to get these voices out because it meant a lot to me and meant a lot to me because they were so familiar and all of the people in the Spinning Heart were experiencing things that I was going through myself at the time.

So I was very close to it. You know, I mean, we were broke. We all were in the recession, like we had to like we both had pay cuts. So our House of Lincoln wasn't wasn't meeting our outgoings in a month. And it was kind of scary and everybody in the spinning heart is kind of scared. And it was a real kind of catharsis in that. And also I was really busy in my job. Are you saying there was a catharsis in channeling your own pain into these characters?

Yeah, well just the worry really, like I felt less worried when I wrote it. Because you're getting feelings out on the page, even though it's in a different character. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Strange thing like it really is. But you do you know yourself, like how you can forget yourself when you write. I mean, I like that's part of the thing that drives me towards writing, you know? I mean, even that story there about the donkey, like I didn't do any of that shit with a donkey, but like when I was 19, when I was 19, my dad got a brain tumor and what's been described

there about dementia, it's a lot of feelings I had when I was that age, seeing someone you love change so quickly. So that catharsis for me, if I'm doing that, if I'm channeling my own sadness, things that I have difficulty speaking about and I'm channeling that into writing, the therapy of it fuels my confidence. Do you know what I'm saying? Absolutely. And this feels right, this feels right, this feels right. And now when I'm going this feels right, I'm not saying this is good or this is bad, this

feels right. Oh yeah, it's very important. Because this is good and this is bad, fuck that. Absolutely. But this feels right, then it doesn't matter about good or bad because it's about authenticity. No one gets to judge that because it feels right. For sure, yeah. And is that feeling of this feels right?

Is that part of your stick? It really is, because I just wrote a sequel to Spinning Cart this year, actually, and it's in the exact same format, but the same voices speaking the same sequence. And I wrote it, I started to write it after my mum died. And I could really, like, you know, it did, it really was a way of channeling

and dealing with the grief, you know, and just being still and silent, with nothing moving except your hands. And there was a way of channeling and dealing with the grief, you know, and just being still and silent with nothing moving except your hands. And there being this kind of unconscious connection between your brain and your fingers and the word just coming out. And that feeling of rightness is so important. Like, I think it's what every writer and artist is looking for. The feeling of rightness in the moment of creation really is important. That's I mean.

Why do you do it? Why do you do? Why do you it? Why do you do it? Why do you write? Why do you create art? Well, besides the fact that I have to keep impressing Marie, so she doesn't leave me. But even outside of the, like, I mean, now you do it for a living,

but I'd imagine even if you were self-publishing and no one bought it, you're still gonna be writing. I'm still gonna be doing my thing, even if someone, you know what I mean? You see, I think everyone has a creative impulse and some people marshal it more and some people ignore it but I think it comes out in everybody in different ways. You know, I don't think anybody is completely non-creative. Even the way people use language in normal speech, in a normal conversation, you will be creative because you're literally

creating a story every time you speak anyway. So everybody is creative. Even if you don't use language, even if you know you don't use language in a traditional sense, you will express yourself some way. And every every method of expression involves creativity. So everybody is creative. Like we couldn't communicate otherwise. So it's just it's an instinct in all humans, I think. But I think with fiction, especially, I think there's a kind of sense of us attempting to make sense of things that are just senseless because

If you look around the world and how crazy it is Like I know how just mental everything is in the news these days like how just nothing seems to make sense You know two and two isn't four anymore like you know, and it does seem as though it probably will always was that way It's just it's more visible now We have a real need to make things make sense. I mean, like nearly all stories resolve, nearly all novels have some kind of resolution. They're all trying to solve some kind of problem.

You know, there's always an attempt to put order on the chaos to make this inchoate universe somehow have a kind of balance and a sense. You know, I think that that need for further to be meaning to life is something that drives creativity. Even like over Covid there, like everyone in the audience kind of lost a friend to madness a bit. Like everyone knows someone who their body went mad conspiracy theory, you know. And there's a way to look at conspiracy theorists, especially the way now it unfolds in Facebook. They're effectively they're collectively writing a fiction

because they are unable to deal with uncertainty. Like humans are terrified of uncertainty. And a lot of conspiracy theory stuff, we're trying to find certainty here, but this story is the most interesting one. Like I heard that Anne Dyle eats babies recently, you know what I mean? She doesn't, like, she does.

She probably doesn't. I got obsessed, I really got obsessed with conspiracy theories actually during COVID. Nearly on the first day of the first lockdown I started googling stuff about this project Bluebeam. Oh, that's the alien one, is it? That's where it starts, yeah. That's where they're going to, yeah, there's going to be an alien invasion but it's going to be projection. We're not going to know this and actually it's going to get to the point and that's why we had the vaccine. Is it be an alien invasion, but it's going to be projection. We're not going to know this. And actually, it's going to get to the point. And that's why we had the vaccine. Is it a real alien invasion or are they going to fake the alien invasion? It's going to be fake.

But we'll be able to see, hear and feel the aliens because of the vaccine. Because the vaccine... Ha! Yes! Not saying it's true now. I just got obsessed with the idea of it. But like that's good science fiction. That's the thing. But I think the people writing this are not aware that they're writing science fiction.

That's the amazing thing. There are tens of thousands of people adding to the story every day. And it's this big collaborative process. And they've created this huge reality for themselves. And they're completely convinced. And I mean, and conviction, even if it's a rational conviction, I think absolute conviction is really dangerous. You know, whether you're convinced about alien invasions or you're convinced

that your political view is right, it's dangerous dangerous. You know, whether you're convinced about any invasions or you're convinced that your political view is right, it's dangerous. Because, you know, the person who's completely convinced is the person who can pull the trigger or strap the bomb in their back and go in to look for the people. That's what conviction does. Or can lead to, obviously, you know.

But I mean, we should always be in doubt a little bit. We should always be open to wonder, be open to being shocked and having our minds changed about things, for sure. Something I'd love to ask you about is, like I just said at the start here when I was introducing you, the fact that you just live down the road and you've got all these accolades and you're a serious writer and your words are downed and you're just living down the road and I can go farther up the road and Kevin

Barry is there. We've a lot of fucking writers. We really, really punch above our waist. The Americans don't do it. The Brits don't do it. Ireland for some reason, for a tiny country. What the fuck is going on? Why do we have so many? This is something that we don't say very often in Ireland, but Irish people are really intelligent. Of course. We're the most intelligent people in the world, honest to God. And there just are loads of people in Ireland who are able to put words together and able to create and able to do different things and we do it. And I think even though there's almost kind of an embarrassment, it's almost kind of a fear of making a show yourself for an Irish person. But I think the impulse overrides that and offer that we just do it. And I think the fact that we have such a tradition of in language,

I mean, going way back in history, you know, I mean, like the oil of saints and scholars is a cliche now, but it was a real thing. Like the oil of saints and scholars, you know, Irish nation describes even before Christianity, you know, we were making records. What I love about that Donald is, if we think of, we'll say before St. Patrick, so St. Patrick, with Christianity you've got fucking writing in Latin, but even before that is the oral tradition. And what I love about it, we've an Irish oral tradition, could be maybe two or three thousand years old, even longer, going back to New Granger before.

And what I adore about Irish oral storytelling is, when you don't have a writing system, the landscape becomes the story. So in order to hold knowledge, and you'll see this in even, you know, you go up the river there by UL, and you get as far far as Loch Durg and you go, what does Loch Durg mean? And Loch Durg means the Dagda and then you go, what of the Dagda? And they were a supernatural race that came to Ireland and then there's a little cave beside Loch Durg called Fintan's

Cave and you go, what the fuck's going on there in Fintan's Cave? And it's like when Noah's biblical flood happened Noah warned his granddaughter and she came over here to Ireland with all her friends and one of the lads was called Fintan and the waters were rising so Fintan decided he was going to turn into a salmon so he lived in there for a thousand years and there's an area there in Limerick called Fintan's grave and he's the salmon in Ollage but what I love about that story is in the same area, they have like down near Castle Connell,

they've found a 9,000 year old site with axes. So humans lived there 9,000 years ago. But also what was happening 9,000 years ago, the actual Ice Age ice caps were melting. So you could have there just from the name Loch Darg, an oral storytelling tradition with no writing, where you're talking about someone who remembers what it was like for the ice caps to melt. So that's there in our culture.

Absolutely, yeah. The other thing that I think makes us unique in terms of, so we as the Irish, we punch above our weight, literally, historically as well, you know, the greatest writers in the English language are often considered to be Irish. The best way to find this out is you buy a book called 100 Best British Writers and they'll have James Joyce there at number one. And I'm telling you, what I compare it to sometimes is, if you think of music, right, like another group that really punch above their weight when it comes to music would say would be anyone who's of the African diaspora, so that

can be African American people or Jamaican people, anywhere where African people went or whether they were enslaved, you tend to see, Jesus, they're quite good at music. It's there culturally, it's part of the culture. And one theory about this is that, like there's two theories, in West Africa, first of all, some people speak with click languages. So the way that they speak can often involve clicks, which we can't understand at all. Like we've got a few things in the West.

If someone knocks on the door, I know, all right, you want to come in. Oh, you're kind of half friendly. And then if it's really hard, you know, get the fuck in, you've got drugs. But in West Africa, there's languages with multiple different cliques and that can carry meaning.

And they said, that's a theory as to why, well, like with multiple different cliques and that can carry meaning. And they said that's a theory as to why, well, like with rap, for example, rap is when you take words and turn those words into a drum. You know what I mean? So within the culture there and within the knowledge, it's a completely new, different way of looking at music. Also as well, in West African music, there's more notes than there is in the scale that we have. So when enslaved people from Africa, their descendants eventually found

themselves in the likes of Mississippi and blues music was being invented. You'd have like a blues musician and he's got a guitar but the guitar is a European instrument and it only has fretboards and a certain amount of notes but this person is descended from a culture that has more notes, so they get a slide. And what the slide does is it opens up more notes. So what you have is a culturally completely different way of looking at and addressing an art form. With us, with the Irish, we speak fucking hiberno-English.

We speak the English language but we use our grammatical structure that belongs to Gaeilge. I actually wrote an article about this. It's jazz music with words. We do jazz with words. I said exactly that in an American magazine and Jesus I got nearly killed for it by a few smart guys. Fuck'em. Oh yeah, fuck'em was right. I was called a bootlicking something, a bootlicking fucking

petty Irish men or something like that by some fucker. Whose boots were you licking? I was licking nobody's boots. But some fella on Twitter who had... Ah, that doesn't count. It still was hurtful. It hurt my feelings. But I said the same thing. But my point was that we were colonised for so long and Irish was pretty much, you know, it was nearly illegal to speak Irish. It was almost illegal to be Irish. Well, it was illegal. The f***ing penal laws.

Yeah, exactly. And Irish is a hyperbolic language. It's full of exaggeration. Like, you know, you don't say, I'm very hungry in Irish, you say, Tadhgchras an Dóinam, the hunger of the world is on me. So like, it's hyperbole. It's a beautiful exaggeration. Like it's a story in itself. And it's so, and so and as you say, totally correct. Like we overlaid English syntax and we fractured English syntax because we retained the Gaelic syntax and it left us with that language of lies and exaggeration and and deflection. And it's just beautiful. And I think it's why we write so well.

But Nat, I think what it does too is we don't go at English in a rule-based way. Exactly. It's very, very flexible. And even a beautiful video that exemplifies this is a video on YouTube called English people giving directions versus Irish people giving directions. They go to these English people in the street and they're like, how do I get to the police station? And all the English people are like, straightforward, forward there to the left, you get to that

corner then you take a right and there's the police station. Time and time again. And then they go to the Irish fella and it's some owl lad. An English person pulls up and says, how do I get to the county fair? And the owl lad goes, well Jimmy McGinty's is up there but if you've gone there you've gone too far so you need to back there, but then you'll find yourself there. Now there might be a sheep there, but there might not. And what he's doing, he's not, he's giving directions, but he's telling an entire story of the landscape. And I fucking love that because to me I'm going that's the storytelling tradition right there. This isn't just directions. This is the storytelling tradition. And I do think, I think more people

need to look at that more. People need to put more value on even something. Now my fucking grandad had a theory about this that I heard from my dad. Now this again, this might be a bit mad, but. So my dad used to tell me, my grandad was in West Cork in the 1920s, right? And he was in the IRA. So their life basically was auxiliaries and black and tans. And he was 19, we'll say, in the 1920s, my granddad. And what my granddad said to my dad was, no matter where we went, we were getting searched, right?

No matter what we did, we were getting searched. No matter what question we were asked, there was no such thing as a right answer or a wrong answer. So we answered in a way that confused the Brits. So if... And that's how... His theory was that's how we end up with sentences like... Like, if I was asking, are you going to the shop?

I'd say it to you, are you going to the shop? You are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. An English person would go, I'm sorry, what? Are you going to the shop? You are. Or there's a viral video on TikTok at the moment where a fella says, the guards are to be called. What?

The guards are to be called? But that's hiberno English. Totally. And there's another one actually, if you say to somebody not from Ireland, bring that away with you. They have no idea what you're talking about. Bring that away with you. Because everywhere else in the world, bring only works in one direction, you know, bring, it has to come towards you.

If you say you can bring that away with you if you want, you go, and this has happened to me in England, you go, pardon Donal? You can bring that with you if you want. Donal what are you saying? You can bring that with you, bring it away with you! And it can be booked like, and they just kind of walk off shaking their heads, they have no idea. We have it as well, like I know it's's chaos, but I do like this about Ireland. Like I like the way that like even. Like a single yellow line, right? Don't park.

Double yellow line. Definitely don't park. And are during fucking Covid, right? Like during Covid, right? Like, during COVID, right? Do you remember when they were bringing in the restrictions in COVID, so they had this system of level one, level two, level three, right? So the government like spent millions going, right, here it is now, lads, right? We're going to be level one, level two, level three.

And then after they unveil it, a journalist says to whoever the fucking government minister was, what level are we at right now? Two and a bit. And it's horrendous because it's the government, it's horrendous but at the same time that's the same shit with writing. Fuck your rules. Rules don't apply here this is a post-colonial language and it's fucking jazz music. If you see a traditionalist critique in jazz you know from the perspective of classical music it's like you're supposed to read the sheet music and jazz musicians are like no we're not we're playing what we feel and the song today might be different tomorrow it does a complete and utter flexibility.

That's, I adored that about writing as an Irish person. Like, sometimes just to get out of writer's block, I just write how I talk. I love that. What actually did get me out of fucking writer's block the last time, what actually, something that really dragged me out of it. I Read the fucking butcher boy by Pat McCabe. I read the butcher boy and and the opening sentence in that book is

I'm gonna end up with a paraphrase, but it was like The whole town was mad at me after what I'd done to Mrs. Nugent Do you know what I mean? And I was talking to Pat on a podcast and he said, when he submitted that to his publishers, they said, fucking great book, but you're going to have to change that first line. And he's like, no, no, no. If I change that first line, the book doesn't make fucking sense. The whole town was mad at me after what I'd done to Mrs. Nugent. Yeah. That is so important, actually, that we celebrate that, the way we speak, thematic language. And it's actually, that's what allowed me to be a

writer myself, the fact that I could write Spinnin' Heart in devices, in my own voice and devices of my friends and people who were from the place I'm from and people I loved. And literally I did that, I said I'm going to try to be as true as possible to the locutions and constructions of my own people, you know, so I'm gonna write the way I speak. And I was thrilled with myself and it worked out. And actually the very first review I got in America for the Spinnin' Heart, of my own people, you know, so I'm gonna write the way I speak. And I was thrilled with myself and it worked out. And actually the very first review I got in America for The Spinning Heart, before any big newspaper or anything was in,

it was supposed to be in The Huffington Post, which is a satirical newspaper. And so I got an email from my editor in America going, Donald is gonna be a review, the first US review over here is gonna be in The Huffington Post. And the review was so bad, The Huffington Post didn't actually publish it. And your one got ticked and wrote it, and she put it on her blog, and her blog was called Books and Ball Movements. So she had a column of books and a column of ball movements,

and I was consigned to the ball movements column. And she said, The Spinning Heart is the worst book ever written. I shouldn't even say it was the worst novel ever written or the worst book she'd ever read. It was the worst book ever written. So she started with Hippolyta, and she must have been Irish in fairness because she started with a gross exaggeration and she went on to explain why she thought it was the shiest book she'd ever read in her life. And she was kind of convincing. I was nearly convinced by the end of it. But

then at the very end she said, I'm sick of hearing, because at the time it was actually number seven in America, briefly. It was selling really well over there. end she said, I'm sick of hearing, because at the time it was actually number seven in America, briefly. It was selling really well over there. And she said, I'm sick of hearing people praise this guy, Donald Ryan, I'm sure she called me Donald. For his use of thematic language, because all he's doing is using the slang and grit of his own people.

And I was just, actually she redeemed herself in the last line of the review by saying that. Was she English or American? She was American. She's a wasp. Oh she definitely was, yeah. But I was really thrilled. I asked my US publisher to use that as a blurb for the paperback.

Yeah. Because I was thrilled with the whole review actually was gone out of my mind. All I can remember of the review was her saying that and those lovely words about that. Because I was so proud of her. She's shit at reviewing like that I mean there's no other way to say that she's shit at reviewing because she's taking cultural supremacy that's basically that's going no I speak this way and you must write books this way no great art gets made like that you know. No exactly and she actually she deleted the review in

fairness to her now because she became an agent Afterwards and I suppose she'd might to have enemies in the field, you know But I don't forget I'm not We're after going over time for our little interval hill and these people need a piss in the pint Oh, so we're gonna have a little break for about 15 minutes and we'll be back out, alright? As good a time as any, as good a time as any to have a little ocarina pause. Right now, I don't have my ocarina of course. You might notice a slight difference in the sound.

I'm in my home studio. I'm not in my office. The sound here in the home studio, it's not as good as the office. There's a slight echo, which fucks with the EQ in my office. The sound here in the home studio, it's not as good as the office. There's a slight echo, which folks with the EQ in my voice, slight bit of an echo. But let's have a pause. I don't have my ocarina. I don't know why I call it the ocarina pause anymore.

I just do out of habit. I've grown tired of ocarinas. What have I got this week? I've started eating this type of Baltic yogurt called Kvarg. It's a high protein Baltic yogurt. I quite enjoy it. Works as a dessert. But it's a way to get extra protein in when I'm hitting the gym and it's tasty. Those fucking protein yogurts that you buy, you know protein yogurts are a big deal now,

it's just kevarg. That's all it is, it's kevarg. This isn't an advertisement for kevarg but what I will be doing is I'm going to be gently hitting a spoon into the inside of an empty kevarg pot and then you're going to hear an advert for something that's not kevarg related. Here we go. Bit of a disappointing sound.

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Okay. There you go, that was the Kvarg pause. Support for this podcast comes from you, the the listener via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast. If this podcast brings you joy, mirth, merriment, distraction, whatever, please consider paying me for the work that I put into this podcast. Because it's my full time job, this is how I earn a living, it's how I pay the rent of my office, it's how I pay my bills. So if you enjoy this podcast, please

consider paying me for the work that I'm doing. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month, that's it. You'll get four podcasts for that price which I think is fair enough. But you know what, if you can't afford that, if you don't have any money, whatever reason, don't worry about it, you can listen for free. Listen for free. Because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. So patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. And if you are joining Patreon, by podcast and if you are joining patreon make sure you're joining up as a paid member and not a free member. Patreon have introduced this free member shit recently. I see no benefit if you become a free member. I don't earn any money from it. It just means Patreon gets your data.

The only way for me to get rid of the free member option is if I have Patreon tiers and I'd rather not do that because I want people to be able to give what they can afford rather than having predetermined tiers and also with Patreon I like to suggest the donation model. I want everybody to get the exact same podcast whether you pay or not. Also Patreon means I'm not beholden to advertisers. If anyone advertises on this podcast, they do so on my terms. No advertiser can influence the content of this podcast in any way.

Each week I genuinely show up and speak about whatever I'm passionate about. My voice is a little bit too ASMR-y this week. I have to turn the mic up real loud and speak closely to it. So live podcasts next week, England, Scotland and Wales. I've got my tour come along. A lot of those gigs are sold out. I've got Newcastle, Glasgow, Nottingham, Cardiff. People keep asking me who's my guest in Cardiff. I'll tell you, I'm gonna be chatting with Charlotte Church. She's a singer but also a very outspoken person with a lot to say. She listens to this podcast and I reckon we're gonna have loads of crack so I'm really looking forward to chatting to Charlotte Church in Cardiff. Then I'm on to Brighton on the 28th.

Cambridge, Bristol. And then on the 1st of May, my biggest gig ever, London at the Hammersmith Apollo. And I've got an incredible guest for that one too. And then after that, 31st of May, in the Pavilion in Dunlairy. Small little gig, only a few tickets left for that. And

then June, June I'm in Vicar Street on the 18th, because I can't resist a Vicar Street gig. My gigs in Vicar Street in Dublin are so much crack. Back to the chat that I had with the magnificent, fantastic Donal Ryan. It was too hot and I had to take off my jumper and then I'm like fucking wearing a Cyprus Hill t-shirt. Unintentional Cyprus Hill t-shirt. They played the Fela. That's right I remember. Were you at that film? Were you at the Fela that was Cyprus Hill Raids Against the Machine? We never went into the Fela because we never had money so we got on Shift Girls and tried to buy drugs around the streets of Thirlis. What drugs were available in Tardis? Oh, there was a lot of acid coming out of Tardis

from the bikers. I don't know, I don't know. I don't know any more. I said too much. You eat a lot of bikers in, there was Tipperary was great for the bikers. We loved the bikers. Actually I was-

And Bard Hill, Bard Hill was great for bikers. I was a biker. I'd never had a bike, but I had long hair, and a biker jacket, and I had t-shirts the whole lot, and I had friends with motor the whole lot and I had friends with motorbikes so I was kind of curious. Do you still want to be a lorry driver? I am a lorry driver. I'm proud to say actually. I have a C license so I can drive rigid lorries

and I do occasionally and I really enjoy it. And actually I really was thinking last year I'd just give it up the hell and drive a lorry, but there isn't as much money in it as there is at the moment in being a writer and a lecturer. But if the equation changed- Have you, I know a lot of people, I know someone who did leave his job to become a lorry driver and he really regrets it now.

Really, I'd say with two occurrences, yeah. It's very romantic, like I too wouldn't mind like- That's it. See, and Marie says this, she goes, you're talking tough now, you think you're a great fella, you'd be one day driving a lorry and you'd hate it, you'd be home here crying again, you know? So, when I'm doing it to help out a friend now and again,

it's grand, but she goes, no, you wouldn't. And she's right, because she remembers her dad driving lorries and having a really tough time, and it'd been really long hours, and a really hard, arduous job, you know, and I probably would. Like, it's when, like I'd be coming home from a gig, coming down from Dublin at two in the morning, I see all the lorry drivers and I just go, you fucking lucky prick, I bet you're in there

now listening to Slipknot having fun. But like they're not, there's someone screaming at them going, you need to get to Acti at 4am. Oh yeah, for sure, and I know that for a fact actually because I did, I worked as a labour inspector for years and I know exactly how tough those lads had it, how they'd be under techograph mandated breaks because you know, you've got techographs, you have to stop for a certain number of hours and loads of fellas would have bosses ringing them going,

what the fuck, I don't wanna get back in the road, and completely illegal, because you've guys then that are on the verge of sleep, driving these huge machines because they're being forced to do it. Maybe people are treated so badly sometimes in jobs. you ever seen those train or the lorries in Australia that are just like trains yeah crazy yolks which is Australia we win Australia no I was never there but I've seen the documentaries I don't like

please I don't like flying anymore so I'd say I hardly make it to Australia Australia's mad I was there in themth, and they had the oldest building in Perth, right? And it was a windmill. And they had like red tape around it and everything. Like, you couldn't go near this fucking the oldest building in Perth. It was from like 1860. Like, Mary Eyre there is probably older than that. Like, completely fetish is probably older than that.

Completely fetishising something from 1860. And they have bats called flying foxes that are literally just like a fox with wings. Huge cunts. Jesus. One of them shat into my Mai Tai. But it's probably why Australians are so confident and so kind of arrogant a little bit, you know, because they've nothing to be ashamed of because they haven't been around for too long.

But things haven't gone too wrong for them. Oh, I found something fascinating about that. So Indigenous Australian people, right? They have the same. Oh yeah, that's what it is, yeah. They have Indigenous, or they have an oral tradition the same as the Irish, right? And there's an area there, I think it's off Sydney, right? And geologists were trying to study, right,

what was this area of coast like 60,000 years ago? And the geologists reckoned, we think there was an island there, there was an island there, because the sea level was different. So the geologists went and found out, yeah, there was an island there, an island there. And then level was different. So the geologists went and found out yeah there was an island there an island there and then the indigenous people are like yeah we know we have this fucking story. They had a story that

was unbroken for 60,000 years that spoke about the exact geology of the area. I mean again speaking about the oral tradition, like only the most interesting story has to survive. Like there's something to be said. I've been studying a lot recently about, you know, what was the benefit of the church coming to Ireland, right? The real benefit was writing became a thing, right? Latin script. And what Ireland did with the monasteries, especially St. Columba, we went over to Scotland where they had the picks and we gave the Scots writing. And what writing basically did is it allows civilisation to move to another tier. You're kind of stuck at a certain point but when you can write and write down how much grain you have in

trade then your civilisation goes further. but what you lose then is a complexity of language what you lose then is stories. That's right absolutely I got I got kind of obsessed a few years ago with Tom Bocconia and everybody got sick of me talking about it because I was insistent on talking to her about it because there was nobody else to talk to about it. I tried to make a version of Tom Bocuyn set in Limerick in 2011 with RTE and they wouldn't let me. Ah fuck them anyway. Did it ever happen now? They commissioned Damo and Ivor instead. Fucking Damo and Ivor instead. The cunts. Go on. I mean it goes way back it goes back thousands of years like it's pre- all the

stories in the town are pre- Christian obviously and they're ancient and they're so beautiful Thomas Kinsley's translation is just incredible but the story of Ferdi and Coughullan fighting you know day after day trying to kill each other and then every night before they go to sleep hugging each other and crying and going I don't want to fucking do it because I love you you're my best friend you know and that wasn't Kinsley that was what people were saying to each other about how Coughullan and Ferdi had their battle. And when Coughullan met Éamar for the first time he asked her for a titwink.

That's definitely the ton. It's true. I remember talking to Emory about that. I want to lay my sword between your hills. Yeah, it's all there. And it's like thousands of years old. I remember Miriam Alley, the poet, my friend telling me Donal the Tawn is one of the most incredible pieces of literature in the whole world and she said, like you

said, it started people sitting down telling these stories and they're probably, probably all is based in fact, there probably was a cattle raid in the North, you know, there probably was something like that. Well, like cattle was, we didn't have money, like, so cattle, cattle like you can look through the Irish annals and a king was worth 40 cows. So if you killed a king you had to pay 40 cows. Like if you wanted to become king in Ireland like 1500 years ago it was just whoever owned the most cows or the most pigs. That's how it was, there was no money. Yeah kind of the same now really but it's not fair of it when you think, yeah.

And those ring forts, the ring forts often were a way to keep cattle inside. But there was also an interesting old Irish tradition, which lived up until the 1930s, called bullying. And what bullying was, was it was a way that people in the countryside would move with their cattle, right? So you'd have like, and they did it up in Kerry and parts of the Iron Islands well into the 1950s, you'd have your cows in the winter and then when the summer hit, you move the cows up

to the mountain because there's thicker grass on the mountain. But all the people would move to a bullying village. But what it did was, if that village over there and there, everyone's meeting on the mountains, it's how stories were shared, it's how music was shared, it's how craft was shared. Moving with the animals to go to this one space was cultural dissemination of all types of cracking. Yeah, for sure. Droving is an art that's gone because of lorries, obviously,

but moving animals, it was such a huge thing. And the drover was a really respected elder of the community. The drover, the person who moves the cows. Did he have to have an ability to speak to the cows? I'd say he'd have to. Something like that, all right. There'd have to be some kind of understanding between the drover and the cows, for sure or at least the toughest cows who were kind of leaders

of the pack. He'd have to have some kind of contract with them. Because the bull would be leading, wouldn't it? I suppose so. Well, I don't know if you could have a bull and a load of cows together trying to get him from Nina to Ross Gray, I say. But an interesting thing, all the early Irish saints, right? So the interesting thing about the early Irish saints, like, oh yeah, they're holy people, but if you read about them, they all performed like mad acts. Like St. Ciaran, I love this story about St. Ciaran, he, a fox robbed his shoes, so he hypnotized an otter into getting them back. Do you know

what I mean? But a load of these early saints, like there's a fellow up in Tula called Saint McCullough, and he was able to tame bulls. He could tame a bull so the bull could go to the other monastery and bring food back. But you see the taming of animals has been something with these early saints. So I'm assuming it's what you're talking about, the drover there, this was a respected person

in the community who could hypnotize cows. Yeah, exactly. There's a character in Michael Harding's novel, Bird in the Snow, which is one of the most underrated of all Irish novels, I think, was a drover. And I think he would have been kind of the dying days of the profession of droving because it would have been kind of the early part of the last century. I just thought of it because that's a great book that I really love that no one seems to have read, unfortunately. Bird in the Snow by Michael Herding. I had Michael on the podcast. He's a lovely fella.

Yeah, he is. You don't mind us just talking out of our arses at each other, no? I'd love it if like some serious literary person is here in the audience tonight. I'm sure there is. Jesus Christ. I'm trying to see now, because I do actually have questions. I just haven't looked at any of the questions.

Hold on. Oh yeah, this is something I'd love to know. So, there's a master's course in UL, a creative writing course, and you're like a teacher on it, you're a professor on it. Like, does that not fuck with what you do? Like in your day to day job you're teaching people how to write and

there's all, like you can go at writing in a systemic way. Does that not fuck with your shit? This is why I have a C-Class license to drive a rigidurries, so I can I can leg it. No, it's not really. It does just kind of a strange thing about the idea of teaching creative writing. I don't think you can, to be honest. Like, I can say to you, this is how you do it. This is what you have to do. Because if I say here is a prescriptive list and here's a prescriptive list,

these are the things you have to do and these are things you can't do. It's going to start to limit things for people. And everyone's approach is different. Like everybody's view of the universe is different. Everyone's actual universe is different. Like we all create our own reality from the way we interpret things around us. And so there's no way I can say to somebody,

you're doing it wrong. You know the way critics will say that blind boy did it wrong in that story, blind boy did it wrong in that novel. You know, that happens all the time to us. And they're always wrong saying we're wrong. And I would be wrong to tell somebody in my class, that's not the way to write that poem, that's not the way to write that story. So what we try to do on the MA and UL is we create the

most amenable environment possible for a person to be as creative and as happy in their creativity as possible. And authentic to their... because the thing... like I've been doing this shit since I'm 16, right? I was about 32 before I found what I would describe my own creative vice. As in literally, that's me. You know? Before that there was bits and pieces, but there was a lot of copy and other people. Same, yeah. Years and years and years. And even, I was speaking to you backstage about Kevin Barry. Kevin Barry wrote an article before where he said, his attempt at a novel he fucked off to America and moved to a place called

Boot which I thought it was called Butt because it's spelled I said Butt on a podcast and then a lot of people from Butt got on to me and said don't be calling it that It'd be like calling Nina Nenna Kevin he went off to Butt, Montana, Butte, and tried to write a Cormac McCarthy novel and was like, this is a piece of shit. But through that failure, then found his own voice. I think it has to happen. I think it has to happen.

Raymond Carver said it takes five years to write your heroes out. And Julian Goff from Neenah, a great writer, said, oh, he's fucking unreal. Yeah, he's second best writer from Nina. That doesn't mean I'm the best now. He was really supportive of me years ago. I know, he's great. I love Julian. He was in UL for a while as writer in residence, and he was just incredible.

Like, he's unbelievable. And actually, I remember being really inspired by Julian genuinely when he won the BBC Short Story Awards years ago, thinking, God, he's from Nina and he's won this huge award, you know, so it's possible. It's possible, yeah. Seriously. It's so true that I was convinced for years that, I don't know why, because my parents, even though I had no money when I was growing up, like it was the 80s, nobody had money, but they managed to get boxes of books and jumble sales and in job lots at actions and stuff.

So there were always loads of books in the house. So I knew this wasn't true on an intellectual level, but I was convinced that a novelist's voice was a posh English voice. So whenever I sat down to write, I was writing in this kind of weird, heightened, declamatory, posh English tone. Because I thought that's what a novel is. A novel writing is kind of posh. Novelists are kind of weird heightened declamatory posh English tone because I thought that's what a novel is. A novel writing is kind of posh. Novelists are kind of posh people. So this is what I have to do. And it always made me feel sick. So I was trying to write like

Thomas Hardy or somebody. It never made sense. And the very simple expedient of writing in my own voice that I struck on for thinking about Sember and Spitting Heart, it allowed me to feel like it was right. Like you said earlier, you know, the feeling of rightness. I never had it before that. Emotional congruence. What I'm saying and what I'm feeling is the same fucking thing. That's a beautiful phrase. The thing, though, like I think you were searching for that all the time

as an artist, like, you know, but I think everyone goes to that horrible place where you just you're trying things out and it just never feels right and you're thinking it's never going to work and then suddenly something might click, you know, and it starts to feel as though, yeah, what I'm saying now actually deserves to be heard. And I mean, everything that you write has worked. Nothing's wasted ever. But the tenacity to stick with that, like for me, it's obsession, right? I just, I can't not create. I don't know. Like thank fuck it's my job. Like I did, I had a job once, I worked in a call centre and I got fired like after a week for printing out 90 pages about CIA crack cocaine smuggling.

But you know what I mean? Like, because I wanted to know about it, my curiosity wouldn't let me. So whatever I'm doing, the curiosity is there and I'm lucky that this is my job so I get to do that. But like it was 10, 12 years before I went, fuck this is me, I enjoy this. Yeah, I reckon I go 10 years as well. Yeah, 10 years that I lived. But how do you deal with the 23 year old, the 24 year old in your course, who you can tell you're writing like someone else here? I just tell a story I told there, like how we all do it. It's completely natural and

expected to emulate your heroes. And you'll always do it no matter what. Even when you think you have struck your own note completely, there'll still be echoes of the books you love and the voices you love in your own work I mean it's it's going to be there for sure it's it's there with all but I find it um here's it here's what I think I've been thinking about art recently a lot in terms of like a plant right so the fruiting body right that's the flower that sticks up above the soil that's the book that you read that's what you fucking see. That's the lovely story. But what you don't see is the root network. And that root network connects with all the other plants and flowers. And that's all the other art.

That's the intertextuality. Every single piece that you've absorbed that's influenced you, it's there under the surface like roots. That's a lovely analogy. It really is. And that word intertextual is lovely as well. And I'd never heard... You used that. That's the proper word for what I'm talking about. I'd never heard the word. Fuck off, you're teaching a master's course. No, I had, sorry no.

Intertextuality, it's when one text refers to another text. I know that now but I hadn't heard the word intertextual because I hadn't done anything arty in my life until I went to England to do an interview with the London Independent in about 2014, 2013 maybe. So I'd managed maybe to read the word textual, never really to take it in. So this fella goes to me, a really posh English fella, the real thing now, and he said, So Donald, I've read The Spinning Heart and I've read an advance copy of your new novel, The Thing About December, and I've noticed a very brittle intertextual dialectic.

And I literally had no fucking clue what he was talking about. I don't know what dialectic means, I've seen it loads. I'm not sure either, and luckily my friend Connor had given me a present of an iPhone about a week before I went to England, and I'd never had an iPhone before, but I knew I could go to the toilet and Google intertextual dialectic, so I had to go and Google it and come back and tell your man all about it. He knew well. But he wasn't being like, he wasn't being a bollocks, like he wasn't really trying to catch me out, you know, but I think he knew he did.

But there's loads of words, like polyphonic, I'd never heard the word polyphonic until I wrote a polyphonic novel and had been... Polyphonic within writing? Yeah, like polyphonic novel and had been... Polyphonic within writing? Yeah, like polyphonic. I know polyphonic in... It means many sounds. Yeah. What does polyphonic mean within writing?

Spinning Heart is a polyphonic novel because there's many voices. Fuck off, how? Because there's 21 speakers, there's 21 voices. Oh! So the same fella actually, before he asked me about the brittle, intellectual dialectic, he said to me, he was talking about spinning cart and polyphonic, and I was going, what the fuck does that mean?

And you see, if I hadn't panicked, I'd have worked it out, thinking, yeah, well, poly is many, and phonica sounds are voices, so obviously it means many voices, but I was just panicking. Why can't you just say, you've loads of characters in your book. Exactly.

But it's true, he's saying, you've a lot of characters in your book. That's that, it's the cultural capital again. Absolutely. It's cultural capital. How can I polish this thing in a different way and make someone else feel excluded? You know yourself, Blind Boy, as soon as you publish a book people will presume you know all the words and will really be shocked when you don't. I remember telling somebody that their short story was an exposition of middle-aged NUI and they went like NUI is in National University of Ireland. And I was going no NUI, E and NUI and they went

oh you mean ennui Donald don't you? Oh fuck anyway. I don't even read the word fucking ennui I never heard anyone say it like because people don't say on we in our temporary I was like that as well man I knew the word segue you were the same yeah fucking segue yeah I thought it was a segue when it's written down is see SCG UE yeah we see gently to this I definitely have said that for sure and then and then I'm like this is a segue SCG WA that's that's a fucking scooter you go around them You'll always hate the smart pick that points it out to you that you're wrong as well, you know, even if you do really kindly, you hate them for life. I'm going to open up questions to the audience and we're going to have 2000s R&B singer Usher has kindly come along to hold a microphone and carry it around. Can we have the house

lights up slightly please so I can I can see who's actually in the audience. Is that possible? Is that a thing we can do here? Does anyone have a question about anything in the whole world? Don't be shy. It can be a question about dogs. Where's Usher by the way? There's Usher. What's the crack? Usher you can, you can, we've two fucking ushers. A quantum superposition of ushers. He had a very interesting hairline usher. He did, completely straight across. Go on. Hiya, I was wondering what your thoughts are on how Irish literature impacts world literature. Where is the person?

Up yonder, there on the left. I'm going to assume you're Canadian. Are you Canadian? Sadly, no. American. Do you know what? I knew you were American. No, but here's the thing.

Here's the thing. If you hear an accent from that part of the world, always assume Canadian. An American doesn't give a fuck if you assume they're Canadian, but a Canadian will get very offended if you assume they're American. So just always go you're Canadian. Like he's not, but he's not offended. If it was a Canadian person he'd be like, no, no, I'm from Canada, sorry. How has Irish literature impacted world literature? Fuck it anyway, I thought you were gonna answer. Well, I mean, it's almost a cliche, but it's true.

Nearly every writer in the world tiles, as Joe O'Connor put it so beautifully, tiles in the shadow of Joyce. Yes. And we tile in the shadow of Ulysses particularly. It just is the tome, you know, the unread thousand pages of fevered genius. But I think, you know, like you can really see and you can really see the effect of Joyce and Beckett in world literature. But then if you look in more contemporary terms, like there's a

huge revival in the short story. Like people like Jan Carson and Wendy Erskine and Mary Costello and Colin Barrett. And I think that revival has kind of spread out from Ireland to be honest because it's starting to take root again around the world. Like you can really see how if you look at the number of English language books being translated in Germany and France and Spain, those countries, like an awful lot of them are Irish writers of short stories. Because we have the reputation, you know, and it definitely is a deserved reputation. There's nothing being puffed up about the Irish reputation for literature. We are the best in the world at it.

That's really why we influence everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Any other questions?

I'm gonna let Usher pick cause I should have worn my glasses. You'd the glasses, yeah. Do you wanna try them? Can I have a go of your glasses? Yeah. Yeah. It's unrelated to writing,

but Blind Boy, will you do more live podcasts in Limerick? I can't hear you sorry I'm wearing Donna's glasses. I just said it's great to have you in Limerick Blind Boy will you do more live podcasts here in Limerick because we love having you. I try but it's fucking weird. I just feel like I should just be talking on the side of the corner and it's fucking weird. I just feel like I should just be talking on the side of the corner, and it's just odd. I live here, I walk around here.

I'm gonna finish the gig and just go home. I'll try, but it's odd. It doesn't feel like a gig. It doesn't feel like I should be charging you, that's what I'm saying, really. It's just like, I should just be doing it with a megaphone walking up and down a common street. I'll try my best yeah I'll try my best. Also as well it's hard getting fucking guests like I know everybody. I didn't I haven't met you

before tonight but like most of the people that went to interview I know. Huh? No I don't want to be doing that. Then it's too weird. It's too weird. We start talking about my veruca. I don't have one. I did have one. I hope I never get one again. I got it in Childers Road. I did. I stopped going to a gym there such was the amount of veru because it gave me Go on. Hey blind boy. How are you? I just want to say I'm a huge fan. Oh, thank you very much I think I know the teacher you're on about because I I go to the same school as you went to but he's not stood around is he? No, no, no, no this before your time long before your time none none of the people that I'm talking about are

Mr. Crowell, yeah, mr. Crowell, you know, yeah my teacher mr. Crowell. He was my English teacher He was one of the first people that told me I was worth anything Honest to God no, mr. Crowell he was my teacher when I when I was about 13 or 14 and We used to get punishment essays you know so if we were acting the bollocks we'd get a punishment essay and punishment essays were the only time I enjoyed fucking school like they'd say to me like I wouldn't do maths or geography but they'd go write a thousand words about

the inside of a tennis ball as punishment fucking punishment will you stop so I was writing a thousand words about the inside of a tennis ball but in fact Mr. Crowe he said this to the fucking I was real bad in school like I was so bad we were in a class called 3b2 or 3b3 which was the worst class in the school you know and I remember Mr. Crowe saying about me he's got the best command of the English language in the school and it was the first time a teacher ever said anything good about me and I didn't know what that felt like. It was the first time feeling, oh my god I got a pat on the head. Actually he conditioned me to give a fuck about critics. I'm chasing the dragon of him telling me that I was good

when I was 12 and now I'm getting writer's block because of the fucking Irish Times. Keep calling it writer's block. No more slandering real people who live in Limerick City please. I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, but there's so much more to ask, but I'll just say something quick and one more favour. Go on.

But I know in your recent podcast, especially coming up to the new novel as well, you know you were saying The Butcher Boy was a huge influence. Yes. And Ernest Hemingway as well. Yeah. And as someone who's gone into literature in the last year or two, I was just wondering,

what book would you recommend to start with? Ernest Hemingway? And I hope I don't sound like an easy-to-hear book. You don't mind signing your books from me. You can throw it up at the front there at the end and I'll sign that for you, don't worry. Oh, thank you so much. Hemingway, Old Man in the Sea. Yeah, yeah. That's a good, it's a tiny little novella. That's the first thing. But really, if you would, if I was to say to anyone the first thing to start

with Hemingway, it's a two part short story called Big Two-Hearted River. It's just fucking phenomenal. Yeah, yeah, thanks so much man. You're welcome. Shout out to Barley as well. Shout out to Barley? Barley, Barley. Alright, sorry, I thought you were a friend called Barley.

That's one of those names, I want to find out how we earned that. Oh God reviews are horrible that I mean like they could just knock you down. Everything we've been talking about backstage has been bad reviews. Yeah yeah yeah yeah I was telling Blind Boy about the time I was in London and Penguin were really happy with me at the time because I'd just been nominated for the booker for the second time and they thought I was going to win and so they were treating me well they always treat me well in fairness to them now I can't complain but they sent a limousine and a chauffeur to the airport and they thought I was going to win. And so they were treating me, well they always treat me well in fairness now, I can't complain, but they sent a limousine

and a chauffeur to the airport for me. And I was flying around London thinking I was fucking brilliant. And I really was thinking, I've met it now, this is it. And I was going from place to place and everybody was telling me I was great, congratulating me and I was just on top of the world. And then I was back in my hotel and my US editor rang me

and he said, Donald, you know the way you told me once that sometimes you read the New York Times before you go to sleep? And I said, yeah, and he goes, well, don't do it tonight. Yeah. But I think, right... Thanks to the one person who said, oh, there. I think it was Ed Marie who was... I've been devastated by bad reviews, you know, but the thing... Here's what I try to do. here's what I try to do.

Here's what I try to do and it's fucking difficult. I think the only reason, the only way to not allow a bad review impact you emotionally is to not pay attention to the good reviews as well. And by, I mean, when I say pay attention, it's like when you said, when you, with your first book, you went for a time going Jesus I'm a fucking genius. I mean what's happening there is you're allowing your sense of self and identity to become your work. But the thing is, like I always use this analogy when I'm thinking about my, I grew up in a household where I had older brothers and parents, right, and they were a lot older

than me. And when I did anything artistic, if I created a piece of music, I drew something, I did a little story, all the adults around me said, you're fantastic, you're brilliant. And I internalized that to think, as an adult, to think, oh, I must only be a good person when I'm creative. I must only be a worthy good person when I'm creative. And the consequence of that is, if I get a bad review or if I fuck up with a story, I feel like shit. I feel like a bad human being. I self-flagellate.

But here's the thing, if I make a spaghetti bolognese, right, and I fuck it up, I burn it, I'm just disappointed, I'm like, ah for fuck's sake I have to get a takeaway. Do you think I go away and say, you piece of shit, every spaghetti bolognese you ever made before was an accident and your talent at spaghetti bolognese is gone and it's gone forever and everything was a fluke, you've been found out.

Do you think I say that to myself about spaghetti bolognese? I don't. Now if my parents had been chefs maybe I would because the conditions how I've raised have been different. That could be actually a life changing moment for me there. Your creativity, all it is is an aspect of your behaviour. Whether it's a fucking, a short story or a spaghetti bolognese, they're just aspects of your fucking behaviour, that's all they are. What I try and focus on is, was I nice to everyone I met today?

That's an achievable goal. That's the type of shit. I mean, intrinsic valuing. Making sure that my sense of self and value comes from within rather than, what do other people think of me? What do people think of my work? I can't allow that. It has to come from within. I'm better than nobody else.

Nobody else is better than me because humans are too complex to evaluate against each other, you know? And that's not me being fucking, oh this fella knows his shit. That's just psychology. I trained to be a psychologist for a while and then I had a song about a horse and it stopped. Oh man. That's great advice though. I mean it is hard, it's hard to ignore it. Very hard. It no, you fuck up a dinner You're disappointed the work is it's an inconvenience, but there's no self-fagination No, you're right. Because I mean I tried to fix my car recently I tried to change the starter motor and I fucked it up I'd like to bring it flat to come and do it pay him and he was a nice fella like but I knew he was Going fucking idiot. I didn't care. You know, you didn't care. You were just inconvenienced. Yeah

It's just an aspect of your fucking behavior what happens then imagine you fucked up a story and you have to ring up your body and he's to come in and you'd be humiliated wouldn't you yeah would you be embarrassed you'd be crying on the kitchen floor yeah I know I really would but it's it's a thing it's with anything. We can't get our, we can't use external praise to evaluate how we are. But the problem is, we live in a society that wants us to do that. That's how advertising works. Like, if you look at fucking Dove soap, right? What does soap do? Get you clean. That's all fucking soap does. Then why is Dove soap telling me to accept my body? Do you know what I mean?

Beauty, like anything you get. Fucking Coca-Cola. Why is there a bunch of hot good-looking people in this Coca-Cola ad? I just want to drink something. They're not selling you a product, they're selling you a better version of yourself. So if that's how capitalism works, then they need us to appraise our worth by external things or else the fucking system breaks down. Totally. If I've got high self-esteem, right, and I believe in myself, you can't sell me that pair of Nikes even though I'm wearing these, I know. I just bought these because I needed shoes,

but you can't sell me the thing I don't need. Absolutely. I think that's why I think I've got a slight issue with awards for art. Because it makes art into this place where everything's evaluated. It reduces it to a binary of winner and loser. Which is really unfair because there shouldn't be a winner and loser in art. It's just anathema to the whole process of creating something. It's not possible. All you can be is the best version of yourself. Now when when I win an award, I think they're a great idea, but when I... When I don't...

I think what I just said. But it does, but it does, but it applies a kind of sporting template to art, where you have to have a winner and a loser, you know, and one person's triumphant and one person is second best, and it just really isn't fair. And the strange thing about books, out of any fucking, maybe painting is a bit similar, awards are very, very important because you can have someone who's a booker winner and they sell

fuck all. You know, you can have people with a lot of awards, but in terms of the actual sales and their capacity to earn a living from what they do, they're not actually selling the books. Absolutely. So awards are essential. It's amazing how hard it is actually for publishers to predict what's going to sell them. The huge books they take off, like they sell a million copies or 10 million copies, they're generally flashes from left field. They've no idea. There's a lot of marketing, there's a lot of equations applied to things, but every year there's a good few really, you know,

shock bestsellers in the world, so it really is hard to... And technology can influence it, like 50 Shades of Grey. I was thinking of it actually. But that's fucking, that was huge. It's because of Kindles. As soon as the Amazon, like people were like, no one wanted to get on the train and go, I'm gonna read a book about fucking in front of everybody. but then the Kindle comes about and everyone's like great I'm reading about fucking and no one knows. It's an even my podcast, my podcast does quite well the only reason my podcast does

well or any podcast is because we've got fucking iPhones and earphones that's why back in the days of Horse Outside, that's, Horse Outside was big because it was 2010, people didn't have smartphones, and a viral video was something you watched at five o'clock when you went to your computer and you passed it on to your friends. If I tried to do the exact same podcast now

that's really successful in 2010, wouldn't have been successful. If I tried to do a viral video now, won't be successful because there's no more viral videos. So luck and the industry and everything comes in. TikTok is the big one for books at the moment, you know? Really is, oh God, it's kind of depressing, but then I was thinking,

oh sure, my books will never be on TikTok because they're not cool enough, I'm not cool enough. There's no young one with like a million followers going to have any of my books. But then my daughter showed me a video, a TikTok, of a one who was going to hospital because she had a sore toe or something. I don't know what was wrong with her.

It wasn't very serious anyway, but she had no book to go to hospital with. And she was, oh, hold on a second, I do have a book. And she picked up a book, it was my book. And Lucy kept, yeah, my daughter came across this by accident and I was thrilled thinking, oh, she probably has like 10 million followers now and that book's gonna sell loads of copies.

I don't think she had. She had a few thousand, but you know it might start something from there, you never know. But I do get slightly impressed. Tessa Maschweg, we were both talking about, we both love a writer called Tessa Maschweg, she's fucking incredible. She exploded because of TikTok and the pandemic. Tessa Maschweg's got a book called My Year of Rest and Relaxation and it's a mad book. It's unbelievable. It's a woman goes to bed for a year basically. Yeah.

Yeah, it's incredible. I heard about this book a lot thinking that that has to be shite. I'm not reading that. There's no way that could be a good book and I could not put it down when I started. It's incredible. It's phenomenal. It really is. And that was the pandemic. People were like, I can relate to this person who isn't leaving their house for a year. She's amazing too. She wrote that book. Someone asked her, how did you write my year of rest and relaxation? And she said, I went down to Amazon and bought a book called How to Write a Novel in 90 Days

and just followed that. You know what I mean? Yeah. She's brilliant. If you're looking for new writers, she's got a short story collection called Homesick for Another World. She's fucking phenomenal. I'd love to chat to her but I'd be kind of scared. She's really honest. She's one of the few writers who really just won't pull any punches and won't dress things up and will give you the honest truth.

I think me and you and Atis Máisgfegh really are probably three of the few in the world. Any other questions? are probably three of the few in the world, really. Any other questions? I think this will be the last question now because I wanna make sure that, who's gone for a gentle pint in town afterwards? Wow, I thought it'd be more. But four.

I'm sure they all have their cars here because it's Mary-Eye. Yeah, they're probably finished. Yeah. How's it going lads? Do you think there should be a greater push for literature in education or culturally in Ireland? You sound like you're doing an you as like a large owl.

I can't see you. Sorry buddy, go on. I was asking, do you think there should be a bigger push for literature in the education in Ireland? For people to get involved in literature. A bigger push in education in Ireland for people to get involved in literature? I think so. I think whenever I go to schools actually, secondary schools, I really think that teachers are really enthusiastic about books and they try their best to distribute enthusiasm around the classes. But I mean it's always going to be hit and miss with kids you know. I think it's important that they choose books that young people will relate to and will really get into. If you have the same dusty old homes

and the syllabus. And in fairness, we're pretty good in Ireland for doing that. The list is pretty good generally. But it's hard. You know yourselves as teenagers, to get them to do what you want is nearly impossible, the best of times. So to get a child to read can be hard, you know. I think it starts in childhood, but loads of people come to books later in life as well. But it would be great. You know, I think it needs we need somebody dedicated to that. I think to that project of making literature a real core thing in schools, for sure. I mean, we had a bit of creative writing.

I was always told what I'm writing is too mad and silly. And that wasn't that wasn't a great thing to say to me specifically. Do you know what I mean? Whereas I would have enjoyed someone just to say to me, yeah, what you're writing is valid, you know what I mean? I felt like I had to write what I thought they wanted to hear instead of having crack. I did one fucking short story. I got killed for this. I once said the teacher's name, right, but I wrote a short story about him going to Castle Try Golf Club and eating magic

mushrooms off the ground to the point that he grew a beard of mud from eating the magic mushrooms off the ground. And then when it got to the point of his magic mushroom trip, I took out like crayons and did all the writing in green and yellow. And this was really, really creative. And I was being a little shit like, but I shouldn't have gotten trouble for it. No, it definitely shouldn't. That's the thing, though. I mean, it goes back. It goes back to the idea of telling people what you're creating is wrong.

It's the worst thing you can say to somebody what they've done creatively is wrong. Absolutely. Yeah, there's no such thing. Does it feel right? Does it feel wrong? It is half 10 in the evening. You lovely people need to head home or go for a pint.

Donal Ryan, that was an absolutely magnificent night. I loved chatting to you. It's been a pleasure. Thanks a million. So much crack. Nice, guys. Okay, I'll catch you next week. I'll catch you next week where I'm going to be on tour and I'll be recording some hot takes,

some hot takes in a hotel room, most likely in Glasgow, I'd say. So until then, enjoy, enjoy the lovely fucking the buds and the trees that just popped up this week. The wonderful green, that mad fucking green, that pops out of trees when the leaves are being born, were hurtling towards May. May is beautiful. May is an absolutely beautiful month. A wonderful time for nature. The stench of chlorophyll sweat. Hovering again your nostril.

Dog bless. Too much of an echo in this room I can't even blow proper kisses. No one wants an echoey case. solutions so they can find new opportunities. Because if your business is on the road, we want to make sure it's on the road to success. Enterprise Mobility, moving you moves the world. Thank you.