May 30, 1955

There is a video that has Colm Toibin (May 30, 1955) talking about an incident that occurred when he was writing his latest book, House of Names. (2017) He describes how while he was composing a draft, in a garden, a neighbor's cat jumped onto the table and sat on his notebook, at the exact moment he he was describing the murder of Clytemnestra. And, actually there is a shot in the video of the cat, laying BESIDE the notebook. Based on his comments -- that the cat knew he was writing about a murder -- we may conclude that Toibin knows a lot about writing, maybe not so much about cats.

Colm Toibin's website, has lots of information, very little personal. It lists some of his lesser known works:

"‘The Modern Library: the 200 Best Novels Since 1950’ (with Carmen Callil); ‘Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush’ (2002); ‘Love in a Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodovar’ (2002) and ‘All a Novelist Needs: Essays on Henry James’ (2010). He has edited ‘The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction’. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages."

and notes:

Three books on his work have been published: 'Reading Colm Toibin', edited by Paul Delaney (2008); 'Mother/Country: Politics of the Personal in the Fiction of Colm Toibin' by Kathleen Costello-Sullivan (2012); and Eibhear Walshe's 'A Different Story: The Writings of Colm Toibin' (2013).

Colm Toibin is a major literary figure of our time.