“Mystics live outside of time. Novelists live in it.”
These, words spoken by Professor David Yezzi Wednesday night, served to introduce Colum McCann as the second keynote speaker of the President’s Reading Series.
McCann, a citizen of both Ireland and the U.S., shared selections from his novels Let the Great World Spin and Transatlantic. Although many of the passages he selected were heavy with themes of death, war and starvation, McCann managed to weave lightheartedness into his talk by providing humorous commentary intermittently throughout the readings.
“I’m probably the least cool author in New York City,” McCann said. “Why? I don’t live in Brooklyn; I live on the Upper East Side.”
Immediately following his joke, McCann segued into a passage that painted the inner workings of a mourning woman who lives on the Upper East Side and whose son died in the Vietnam War.
This pattern is reflected not just in hindsight, but also in the novel itself. Let the Great World Spin is an allegory for the September 11th attacks and takes place during the 1970s, a low point for New York City. However, McCann deigned to also include a cameo appearance of himself in the form of an anonymous bald man who is recognized as the local weatherman by a prostitute only after realizing that he is missing his hairpiece.
McCann’s novels are dominated by both real and fictitious characters. His latest novel, Transatlantic, follows the lives of six people over the course of three centuries in the U.S. and Ireland. Although the three excerpts he shared with the audience were centered around Frederick Douglass’s experiences in Ireland in 1845 and Senator George Mitchell’s attempts to find a peaceful solution to troubles in the country in the 1990s, the four main characters are all fictitious women.
“Personally, I do not see a huge difference between fiction and non-fiction,” McCann said. “Its all about storytelling. History gives us the big picture, but we use fiction to make our characters more relatable, more human.”
When he set about creating the character of George Mitchell in his novel, McCann specifically avoided any interviews with the man until he spent six months developing the character himself.
To prove his point, McCann introduced Senator Mitchell by making him change an infant’s diaper.
“That is something you won’t ever see in a textbook,” McCann said.
When the real senator finally read what was written of him, he wholeheartedly approved.
Unlike many writers, McCann says that he is more comfortable crafting characters of the opposite gender.
“I don’t know why, but I’ve always felt more comfortable writing in the voice of a woman,” he said. “Women have a deeper emotional wardrobe than men do and there is so much more potential in their development.”
McCann was born in Ireland, but moved to the U.S. in the 1980s after working as a journalist in his home country for several years. Unlike many of his countrymen, McCann was not running away from anything when he emigrated.
“I left because I was curious,” he said. “There is something special here in America where an emigrant can be here and in their home[land] at the same time. Not a lot of countries are like there, where you can be accepted as both.”
Students enjoyed McCann’s reading. Freshman Alana DiSabitino especially enjoyed his reading from Let the Great World Spin.
“I thought he was great,” DiSabitino said. “He was a good speaker, he acknowledged people’s reactions and he kept people comfortable…although I had not heard of him before, I’m glad I came for my IFP class.”
