Were you glad to leave Wexford?

I liked going to Dublin and then to Spain and then it seemed natural to come back to Dublin and make my home there. But I always missed Wexford. Not the people or anything, but the landscape and the light, or maybe just a certain section of the Wexford coast, and the towns of Wexford and Enniscorthy. I am writing this now with the Wexford night outside and the sound of the wind coming up from the sea. I am spending a lot of time here and hope to spend more. I am nearly happy here. And when I am not here these days, I dream about it and wish I was here.

What happens when you don’t write? When you take a long break (for whatever reason) do you suffer from any kind of withdrawal?

I never don’t write. Maybe a week or 10 days a year if I am moving around... Or if I have a hangover, which is not often now. But otherwise I work most days, usually seven days a week, or at least I think I do, but it often seems like nothing. I don’t suffer any withdrawal, but always guilt for work not done. And then I do it. Then I work.

You travel a great deal. Are you able to write in hotel rooms and airport transit lounges?

Not in transit lounges, but if there is something on my mind – the beginning of a new story, for example, I can write it in a hotel room. I wrote the story ‘A Song’, which is one of the stories I am happiest with, in a hotel room in a few days in between readings and interviews. Obviously, I re-wrote it when I got home (I wrote it in longhand), but as far as I remember I made very few changes.

I don’t really travel a great deal. I have a house in a remote village in Spain, a place I have been going to since 1976, and I spend three months of the year there and I work intensely while I am there. I seldom leave. Only to play tennis in a place a few miles away. I swim a few times a day there in a pool in the garden. I also spend three months of the year now in the US, and I do that partly for the solitude, partly for stimulation. I hang out in London or New York a bit but always for a reason. And I never travel for pleasure anymore. It would bore me too badly.

Which of your books was the most difficult to write? Could you perhaps describe a little about the difficulties you encountered?

It’s always difficult because I resist it. But then after a while it’s not really difficult, but it’s never fun or anything. With a few of the books, especially The Heather Blazing and The Master and the new novel Brooklyn, there has been a real problem in not having a sort of breakdown as I worked on a particular passage. I don’t want to go on about this too much, but there is a passage in each of those books which I found almost impossible to write and then harder and harder to re-write. I hope never to have to look at those passages again.

Which of your books did you most enjoy writing?

No enjoyment. No, none.

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