September 20, 2021 Issue

I avidly read D. T. Max’s “Secrets and Lies,” a profile of the writer Colm Tóibín, in this week’s issue. Tóibín is one of my favourite writers. I say this even though I haven’t read even one of his eleven novels. It’s his criticism, essays, and travelogues that I love. Unfortunately, the focus of Max’s piece is on Tóibín’s new novel The Magician, a fictionalization of Thomas Mann’s life. But I did learn some interesting tidbits about Tóibín’s writing process. For example: “He took me into his study. He writes first drafts in longhand, in bound notebooks, filling the right-facing pages with his squat, forward-leaning script.” And: “Once Tóibín has figured out what he calls ‘the rhythm’ of a novel, he told me, he doesn’t do much rewriting. A book’s style, he said, ‘has to seem unforced and natural.’ ” Tóibín says something similar in his wonderful On Elizabeth Bishop (2015): “Novels and stories only come for me when an idea, a memory, or an image move into rhythm.”