tDQ: Describe yourself in three words.
Roper: Words fail me.
tDQ: When was the first time you thought of yourself as a writer? And today, why do you,
in George Orwell’s phrase, continue to “put yourself through it?”
Roper: I write but I don’t think of myself as a writer.
| "Exile? If by exile we mean
forced absence, I don’t think there are any. Name an Irish writer sent
into exile? Writers are often better at creating fictions about their suffering than they are at creating fictions
with words on the page. Writers have nothing to complain about. No artist ever has anything to complain about." |
I don’t know what “being a writer” is.
I write and read and teach. It’s hard to get the words right but writing is easier than most jobs. I’ve worked
in factories and companies and corporations and writing is easier than all of those environments. What people
who write put themselves “through” compared with the average worker is a luxury. I’ve given my life to words
and words have been good to me.
tDQ: Who would you describe as early influences on your work? And who is
important to you now?
Roper: Parents were a big influence. Down-to-earth, no-nonsense, and dignified in the way they met
the world. Growing up in the part of Dublin I grew up in was a big influence, too. Parents are still the big
influence, bigger as I grow older. I admire them more, how they’ve coped with life. My parents see people for
who they are. It’s been useful, seeing them see people.
tDQ: Your first novel, Gone exhibits a strong sense of place
(though the place changes in the course of the narrative). As someone who grew up in Dublin, and now lives
in New York, you join an exalted tradition of the Irish novelist-in-exile. How, if at all, is this manifesting
itself in your recent writing?
Roper: Exile? If by exile we mean forced absence,
I don’t think there are any. (And I think chosen
exile is a misnomer) Name an Irish writer sent into exile? Writers are often better at creating fictions
about their suffering than they are at creating fictions with words on the page. Writers have nothing to complain
about. No artist ever has anything to complain about. No one needs art in the way we need food. The farmer has
reason for complaint. The farmer works, is necessary, suffers. Art is never necessary. Art is luxury. Art is
afterwards. I suppose living in New York has helped me see Ireland more clearly, see myself more clearly.
tDQ: One of the great strengths of Gone is its lacerating emotional honesty.
It is in many ways a courageous novel, not least in its willingness to say the unsayable. Did you have any
sense of this when you were writing it? Was there any temptation to self-censor?
Roper: I did censor. Censorship is natural in all things. Discretion is a better word. I had a sister who
died. Her death was horrific for me, far worse than the death in the novel. And some of the actual things that
happened to my sister at the hands of both doctors and priests were worse than the implications in the novel. If I
had told what happened bluntly it would have read badly. It needed toning down. And yes, I did have a sense that
I wanted to give utterance to difficult feelings, the unsayable as you say. One of the reasons I write is to say
what is not said. To describe life as it really is.
| "I suppose a nice way to look at it
is that it [Novel] prepares you for life. I’ve lived through some personal
sadness and all the art in the world fades by comparison. Just as art fades in comparison to the sunflower sitting
on the table in front of me as I write this. Art approaches life but fails. And that’s enough, that art approaches
life."
|
As a child and as a teenager I got a lot of my living out
of books. I think I thought that books were more real than life. I was especially enthralled by intimate relationships
between women and men. But as I got into my late twenties I realised that the books I had valued did not, in fact,
tell the truth. All novels are hopeless failures. I write fiction and nonfiction. I learned the difference in the
two working at Iowa. It’s interesting that some books are written the wrong way round. Fiction as nonfiction,
nonfiction as fiction.
Gone could only have been fiction. The only purpose of fiction is to say what cannot
be said in any other form. It’s why a great deal of fiction is of no interest, it’s invented, artifice, sham.
The best fiction is never invented. It comes from a core of truth deeper than any mere fact.
tDQ: In Gone, the narrator writes to his girlfriend: “I have what I think is a
common affliction. I want to be liked. It makes for both bad writing and uncomfortable living. I writhe inside myself.
I don’t always behave in a nice fashion …..I have pretended to be clever. I made the mistake of wanting to
seem intelligent to some unknown reader.” To what extent is this an expression of the artistic journey that resulted,
finally, in Gone?
Roper: We all want to be liked. “Wanting to seem intelligent” is one of the more insidious failings in writing,
especially because it is sometimes rewarded for it’s own sake. Someone writes a book that is intelligent and
someone intelligent writes that the book is intelligent. Intelligence swarms around itself. Yes, I suppose the
novel is a struggle to be as open as a child in a world that does not often appreciate openness. Oddly, the world
of the arts is full of dishonesties. That surprises me.
tDQ:In your opinion, can the novel console?
Roper: It could console me when I was younger. Not now. I suppose a nice way to look at it is that it prepares
you for life. I’ve lived through some personal sadness and all the art in the world fades by comparison. Just as art
fades in comparison to the sunflower sitting on the table in front of me as I write this. Art approaches life but fails.
And that’s enough, that art approaches life. I was about to say that the writing of the novel has supplanted the
reading of it. But that’s not true. I suppose in a way the novel can do whatever the reader wants it to do.
Ultimately it’s escape. Nothing more. Carnival, no matter how serious, it’s carnival.
tDQ: What makes you laugh that shouldn’t?
Roper: Human misery.
tDQ: How do you find your sense of humour translating into your writing?
Roper: I like to laugh. I come from a family where the humour is harsh. I wish I could be funny on the page.
There’s a dark humour on the page I think. Quite unlike my everyday humour which gets sillier as I grow older.
tDQ: I know it’s bad form to ask about “work in progress”, so here goes…What are
you currently engaged on? Can you tell us anything about it?
Roper: Another novel. Another failure. There’s the humour. I should sell feathers with my humour and we
could tickle ourselves to death.
* * *
