An interview with Frank Delaney

Tipperary-born author Frank Delaney has written eight novels and several works of non-fiction including James Joyce's Odyssey: A Guide to the Dublin of Ulysses and The Celts. His latest book, Ireland: A Novel is a tour de force. Using a young boy's search for an itinerant storyteller as his framing narrative, Delaney tells stirring stories about the history of Ireland. On a recent trip to Dublin he spoke to the Techie about ending his apprenticeship as a writer.

Why did you become a writer?
I don't think I've ever been asked that question! Simple answer - I didn't have any choice. It's been an impulse for as long as I can remember. I think about writing all the time. You know the soundtracks you have in your head? The longest running soundtrack has been writing. The whole business of writing from every single aspect - how you do it, the look of the word on the page, the words that appear in my mind (and they always appear in my mind in type), the structure of a story. I haven't considered in any serious way anything else as a permanent option. I've always felt that no matter what I did, writing would always take me away from it.

The Irish writer Brian Moore said there were those who were in love with the idea of being a writer, and then there are writers. I've never been in love with the idea of being a writer because it's very hard work but I'm so lucky to be doing it that I sometimes pinch myself. If you want to get it right, writing is the hardest thing you'll ever do. I've frazzled myself to a shred. I sometimes don't finish until 1am having started that day at 5.30am/6am. Even then you can't get it right and you know, the moment the book is published, you'll think, "God that could have been so much better". I have to say, this is the end of the apprenticeship. This is the first book I would not rewrite. But every other book I've wanted to rewrite - absolutely.

When it came to writing Ireland: A Novel, what inspired it?
That dedication to Ed Ficter is exactly how it happened. He's an American living and working in England, an old, old friend. We were having breakfast one morning and I was telling him the story about Newgrange. He said, you have to write that. I agreed that it was great idea but I didn't do it because I was involved in other things. We'd meet a couple of times a year and every time, leaving the conversation, he'd say, "don't forget Ireland: A Novel".

In 2000 I switched to his agency and became his client. Now, I knew I wasn't ready to write the book. I was writing the screenplay for The Pictures, I'd just been commissioned to do the screenplay for Goodbye Mr Chips and I thought, "no". So he kept on pressing and pressing and we finally carved out the treatment that became the selling document about 17/18 September 2002 and he sold the book in November. I started writing the book proper in December.

So how did you go about researching it?
I'm very, very boring to live with because I talk all the time, and I tell these stories all the time, so I have them all in my head. Also, when I was a young bank clerk here I often took my holidays in late October. Often in Ireland the weather in October is lovely, so I hitched around.

I don't think there's a village with a population over two or three hundred that I've missed. I walked a lot of it because I was hitching all the time. I met a lot of characters - oil lorry drivers and hearses coming back from funerals were my staple. Until you travel around Ireland on foot, you don't really know how beautiful it is and that's a big part of the informing of this book.

Did you enjoy writing the book?
I absolutely loved it, loved everything about it. I've never enjoyed writing so much. This book settled a lot of things for me. It taught me to enjoy writing for the first time. I couldn't wait to get into it. I used to be panting to get to work at 6.30am. It was incredibly exciting to do because the book wouldn't let me contrive anything. I learned more about writing on this book than on the previous 16 books.

One of the things that interests me about books is that if a writer loves writing a book, does the reader picked that up? Every time I ask myself that question, I refer myself internally to an incredibly moving book by JP Donleavy called The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B. I know from him it is the book he really enjoyed writing and you can tell. There's an exuberance, the pages are moving and you're touched by them, you're moved to tears many times.

I found this book like an exercise in exuberance. I was tireder finishing it than I've ever been in my life and for about two months I couldn't do anything. After that I couldn't let it go, I couldn't think of anything else - and yet there was nothing else I wanted to do to it. When the proofs came in, it was the first book of my own I've ever read. I've never read another book of mine. So it really does mark for me the end of an apprenticeship, big time.

I also knew when I was writing it that I didn't care who said what about it. Critics could say what they liked but the fact of the matter was the book was in existence and that was crucial. It was a growing up book. I had to do things in this that most writers wouldn't attempt. I had to take an immensely complex structure and make it look as if it wrote itself. I had to make it look so simple, so completely easy, and that was some trick.

What was the last good book you read?
The last great book I read was a truly great book - Volume One of Hilary Spurling's biography of Matisse. What else? Anna Karenina I'm loving. I'd never, bizarrely, read it. I love the short stories of Alice Munroe. I'm just about to start reading Edna Ferber who wrote Giant and Cimarron and Showboat - all these big American stories. I've re-read Gatsby and still love it. I'm also about to read David McCullough's biography of John Adams, one of the finding fathers of America.

I always have four or five books going. I love anything by William Trevor. Haven't read Lucy Gault yet. He'll tell you himself that he's a short story writer. He will do a description that will stop you in your tracks, he fixes his description in your mind forever. He's terrific. Some people find him too dry - I don't. Are you familiar with an Indian writer caller R K Narayan? He's worth reading.

If you were stuck on a desert island and you were allowed to bring one author with you, who would you bring?
Easy, peasy, japenesy. Joyce, Joyce and only Joyce. Because the short stories are so wonderful; the Portrait Of The Artist is so cantankerous, you can have an argument with it all the time; Ulysses has something new every time you go to it and you can spend the rest of the time deciphering from it as well. He's the perfect desert island author.

Frank Delaney was in conversation with The Techie

To read our review of Ireland: A Novel click here

Also by Frank Delaney
At Ruby's