This is just perfect from Colm Tóibín, a five minute film on writing generally, and specifically on fictionalising family trauma. I agree with him about having to write the loss: using fiction to fix it and 'get it back'. A kind of rearranging, putting things back in place. I strongly feel my own writing of fiction is a response to catastrophe. I also love his comment about being able to go back to a piece of writing ten years later (what I'm currently doing, my progress is a just faster than glacial but I'm happy with the words I'm getting down). And I've been listening to Hanif Kureishi snippets on Radio 3's 'Essential Classics' - he always has gems. He says that in a world of 'lies and silence', we need art and music and novels - especially novels - to tell us the truth (1 hr and 45 mins in). I've fallen in love with this Bach piece - Prelude in B minor - from the same program (1 hr and 38 mins in). And writing this I have realised I have something in common with both these writers: like Colm Tóibín I lost my father at a young age (though I was younger), and like Hanif Kureishi I have a Pakistani father. I don't think, though, I have anything in common with Bach.
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