MB:
I do not believe you!
I never wrote any of this! I never thought of it at all.
I drew a picture of the road in my mind. I thought I wanted
Ria living about a third of the way down, and I just threw
Colm at one end with his restaurant, and Gertie with her
launderette at the other. And I put the old people's home
in there. I just did it all at random, so if you see anything
significant, then we had all better hold on to something
fast.
CS:
That's really not the answer I was expecting. I just assumed
you meant it.
MB:
I never thought about it at all. I write so quickly. I write
like I talk. Once somebody said to me, "You don't write
better when you write slowly," and that was like a
green light to me. If I write quickly I'll be finished.
It'll be done and I can go on to the next bit. I don't go
back over it, and my agent she's a bossy woman, she's
even bossier than I am always sees these things.
But
she's never seen anything about the numbers. So I'll tell
her that now. She'll be amazed that she hasn't spotted it.
I shall tell everybody about it and pretend I thought of
it all by myself.
CS:
I'll back you up on it.
MB:
You can blackmail me later.
CS:
I'll be sure to keep the tape.
Well,
with that topic now deflated let's move on to the next question,
which concerns the figure of Mrs. Connor, a strange and
ambiguous fortune teller. Where does this character come
from?
MB:
Well, I'll tell you where I got the idea of Mrs. Connor.
I have a friend in Ireland, a very successful hairdresser,
and she told me that many of her clients, who can afford
chin-tucks and such, also go to this fortuneteller. And
she says, "You have no idea Maeve how much they pay
her. They pay her fifty to a hundred pounds, and they go
out to her house, and she's got no signs of wealth."
And I asked her, "Have you ever gone?" "No,
I've never gone," she says, "I'd be afraid to
go." All of these women run their lives by her. It's
like the church was when we were young.
CS:
But none of this reflects your own beliefs, does it?
MB:
Oh, heaven's no. I believe entirely that we are responsible
for our own lives. I don't believe in God anymore. I don't
believe in Heaven or an afterlife. I believe we are here
for a short time and that while we're here we have control
over our lives.
I was on a French television program once called Apostrophe.
The guy was terribly, terribly, uh, what I would think of
as pretentious, but it was a huge honour to be on his program,
and I speak very bad French I speak French exactly
the way I speak English: with an Irish accent and very quickly.
So, on this program he asked me what was my philosophy of
life. And I had never been asked my philosophy of life
ever. Here I was with maybe eight million viewers and I've
got no philosophy of life.
I knew I had to answer and the thing going through my head
was, "I don't know anybody in France so it doesn't
matter if I make a fool of myself." But what was I
going to say? And then I thought, "Well, say what's
true, don't you think?" So I said that my philosophy
of life is that we are dealt a hand and we have to play
it.
I cannot think of anything more banal to say, but whatever
you're dealt you play.
In
my case, I was dealt the good family, the happy family,
a secure background, enough brains to scrape past my exams,
enough money to pay for an education at a time when you
had to pay for education, and a cheery personality because
I was brought up in a happy home. That's the good side I
was dealt. On the bad side I was fat, and that's bad to
be a girl and be fat because that is unacceptable. We were
always on the edge of having enough money to get ahead,
which sometimes is worse that being poor. And then as I
got older I got arthritis, very bad arthritis. So I was
lame and fat, and I was a school teacher which is not considered
in Ireland a hugely good job, and I didn't have a fella,
and all these things were bad. That was the bad hand, those
were the poor cards that were dealt.
What I got out of it all and I'm not patting myself
on the back, I've made lots of mistakes along the way
is that I've played that hand for the best that I can do
with it. And that's my philosophy in life. And I wouldn't
take any help from God. Even when I had a very serious operation
and was told that I could die, and a nice Chaplain came
in to me. "I'm just coming in as a matter of course
now," he says, "and maybe you don't want anything
to do with me." "No, I don't," I said, "it
wouldn't be fair, just because I'm going in for an operation.
I can't ask for something from some person I haven't dealt
with in over thirty years."
CS:
You are that rare breed, the atheist in the fox hole.
MB:
That's it. And I'm also the un-guilty one. When I decided
to be the "atheist in the fox hole," I decided,
"That's it; I'm not going to call on Him or
Her or It in times of trouble." And that's for
fortunetellers, or for psychics, or any of the others. I
have such good friends who believe in a lot of things I
don't believe in at all...who believe in the healing powers
of crystals...who believe in lots of things, and they do
believe in them.
When
I was very, very lame my friends were concerned about me.
I was hardly able to walk and was bent double, and they
would tell me about Seventh Sons and various healers and
things with faith because these people had actually cured
people. But I said, "There's no point in going to them
because I would be going with a hypocritical heart, because
I believe that you always have to try to do it for yourself.
In my books there are no "makeovers." In novels
of the same type and going to this same audience, there
are "makeovers": the fat person becomes thin,
the single person becomes married and the poor person becomes
rich. Well, I've seen enough thin, rich and married people
who are dead unhappy, and that's not the way to get your
redemption in life.
I felt I became a better novelist, and a better person,
when I stopped believing that there was somebody up there
who was going to look after it all. Because now I have to
do something. If I see somebody lying on the street because
they're homeless I'm not going to take him home,
I'm not Mother Theresa I have to do something to
help. Whereas, in the old days, we were more inclined to
think of the Sermon on the Mount, "Blessed are the
poor for they shall see God."
In
Tara Road nobody gets a Makeover, nobody gets life
easy. And it's the only thing I hate, when people say my
books are "cozy," because they're not. And also
in my book there is a lot of my own philosophy about secrets.
I don't feel you have to tell everybody else your secrets.
I allow people I know to live in ignorance, and I'm sure
I'm living in ignorance about things myself. I don't believe
Gertie has to be told that her husband was a shit. I think
she should be allowed to think, "Okay, he's dead and
he was a wonderful person," if she wants. If she wants
to remember it as a beautiful marriage, give her that.
CS:
What about your next book?
MB:
I already know what it's going to be about. It will be about
a couple, a young man and woman. These two are brought together
by an impassioned urge for cookery. There will be twelve
chapters and it will be a different story each month.
CS:
How hard is it now for you to make a book deal?
MB:
Well, I told them all of that about the book
on one page and handed it to them, and now twenty publishers
in different countries have answered back, "Go ahead
and do it." So that's all I need to do now. I'll start
that book in September of next year and maybe be done by
March. It takes me about six months to write a book.
CS:
So you write yearly?
MB:
I write one book every two years.
CS:
As a brand new Maeve Binchy fan, I am looking forward to
it.
Reprinted
from Celtic Curmudgeon: Arts & Entertainment Review,
Volume 2, Issue 1.