Skippy Dies
is a 672-page book, and while it reads like a breeze, it must still have been
somewhat daunting to write. Did you envision such a long book when you started?
The book started as a short story--it was going to be a two-hander, essentially, between Skippy and Howard, the history teacher. But I found that I really liked writing about the school--it gave me the opportunity to have a really broad, disparate cast of characters, with a lot of scope for both drama and humour. So I stopped thinking of it as a story and just ran with it. It ended up being well over a thousand pages long, so much of the writing period was spent revising and refining and cutting back. I knew when I started the book would take a long time to write, but I didn't know how long, or rather, I didn't know what that would feel like. It gets to the point that you don't ever think you will finish. I still get surprised sometimes when I see the book on the shelf.
You have the boys' voices down pat--the banter, the casual insults, the serious insults. But you also know the girls' voices, the, like, Valley Girl chatter and rudeness. How did you do that?
Most of the book is set in a boys' school, so I really enjoyed it when the plot allowed me to switch over to female characters and to explore the differences between their voices. Teenagers in the part of Dublin I'm writing about tend to be pretty Americanised, and this is especially pronounced with the girls--a lot of Abercrombie, Juicy Couture, OMG!s and, unfortunately, even the dreaded Valley Girl turning statements? into questions? In Skippy Dies, the girls are less naïve and more cynical than the boys, which I think is a fair reflection of the true state of affairs. Teenage boys are loud and crude and annoying, but not that difficult to read. Teenage girls, on the other hand--well, a friend of mine has a teenage daughter, and says it's like living with the CIA. You never really know what a teenage girl is thinking. I tried to get some of those differences across in their voices. The girls are less bawdy, but there's a hardness about them.
The boys seem adult in one sense--cigarettes, drugs, sex (although that's mostly wishful thinking)--but in another sense they are children, like in their fright at the Ghost Nun story. Adolescence is swinging between extremes.
That's what adolescence is all about, I think--pretending to be more grown-up and in control than you actually are or feel. Teenagers are always grasping after the signs of adulthood--or rather, what they think are the signs of adulthood: hence, cigarettes, excessive drinking, unwise sexual situations. But I think the adult world increasingly shares in that confusion. We're obsessed with youth and with what we think are the signifiers of youth--expensive gadgets, various Apple products, listening to gangsta rap while driving home from IKEA, whatever. Living in a consumer-driven society, you're constantly pushed towards materialism and self-absorption, towards dramatising yourself and grasping after big emotions. We forget how little fun those big emotions were when we actually were teenagers. In the book I wanted to explore the various illusions we chase after at different stages of our lives, while ignoring what's actually happening around us.
There are parts of Skippy Dies where I literally laughed until tears came, and then I was whiplashed by some real cruelty or tragedy.
Well, part of the fun of writing about a teenage world is that teenage lives tend to be quite extreme. School is really a very difficult, oppressive environment--you're oppressed by your teachers, you're oppressed by your psychotic classmates, you're oppressed by boredom and dependence. One way out of that oppression is humour. You form very strong friendships in school--you have to, if you're going to survive--and humour is both a kind of private language through which you and your friends can communicate, and a means of escaping the sometimes quite Stygian darkness you can find yourself in. Again, I found the world of teenagers was a good way of exploring the tendencies and values of society at large. What gets us down? What gets us through the day? Why do we keep making the same mistakes over and over, what rainbows are we chasing?
How did you get interested in string theory and quantum physics, seeing as how your degree is in English literature and creative writing?
I don't think those interests are mutually exclusive--quite the opposite. The math can be offputting, but for anyone with an imagination, the concepts of string theory and quantum mechanics are exhilarating and even strangely liberating. The idea of parallel worlds, the idea that an electron can be at two ends of the universe at the same time, the idea that reality at its most fundamental is lawless and duplicitous and paradoxical--those ideas make you think again about what you thought you understood about the world in a similar way to a work of art.
What does the American reader need to know about schools in Ireland? Or present-day Ireland?
Well, the book's set in 2003, so it's right in the middle of the huge boom that transformed Irish society. From being quite a poor country, an economic backwater with high emigration and a conservative, Catholic outlook, Ireland in less than a decade became a secular, very wealthy society obsessed with money and status. The kids in the book are the first generation in Irish history who wouldn't be expecting to leave the country as soon as they leave school. But they're also the first to be raised in the strange ethical vacuum that is this new, non-Catholic Ireland. Their parents are no longer really have any moral compass, and they don't really have any idea what to tell their kids. Who consequently find themselves getting quite messed up.
The teachers are so unaware, so wrapped up in their own frustrations. How do adults become so clueless so quickly?
I think, despite our obsession with youth and acting young, we forget really quickly what it's like actually to be young--not to know how the world works, not to know how human relationships work or even to understand your own mind. Teenagers put on such a show of bravado that we can forget that they need guidance--they need people they can trust, who will tell them the right and the wrong thing to do. And we live in strange times: our own understanding of ourselves, our own belief in right and wrong is constantly being undermined by various sinister forces trying to sell us things. To the point, as I said above, that we start to think that teenagers know more than we do.
School seems so vicious. Is that the way they really educate students to be ready for the world? Is there no solace in school?
Someone in the book compares school to the trenches of World War One --99% boredom to 1% terror. I think that pretty much sums it up. School is all about preparing you for the job market; it doesn't really give you many cues about what life is actually like--lessons you could genuinely use, such as, for instance, that the ceaseless pursuit of success and wealth probably won't make you happy. I think education, as a concept, is a good thing, but in practice, it all too often promotes conformity and conservatism and the belief that bullies always win. I went to a single-sex school and it's very difficult, in that environment especially, to see the positives. That said, I still have close friends from my schooldays, who I value very highly. So it's not all bad. It's just mostly bad.
Do you have some favorite characters, aside from what I'd assume to be the obvious ones (Skippy and Ruprecht)? I was surprised at how much I liked sex-obsessed Mario.
I feel a lot of affection for all of the characters, but Mario is a standout for me too. It was so much fun to create a character like that, who will just say anything. I did wonder when I was writing his parts if some of his statements might sound a bit extreme... but a lot of women readers really seem to like him, whatever that says about them.
You are a former bookseller (and this is your second book). Does that change how you approach book signings?
As a former bookseller, I'm acutely aware of how difficult it is to sell new titles. I used to watch piles of new books arrive and sit on the tables for three months and then be sent back without selling a single copy. Working in a bookshop is a really good way of killing off any illusions you might have as regards the romance of the writing life. It's hard work, and to succeed you need to have both a certain amount of luck and a certain amount of help from outside. Booksellers play an enormous part in the success of a book, so I take bookstore appearances pretty seriously.
Neil Jordan has just signed on to direct Skippy Dies--does this fill you with elation or trepidation?
It's exciting. Signing away the film rights to a book can be a somewhat scary thing, because you have no control whatever over the final product. A studio can produce something that has only the slightest resemblance to your baby and you'll have no comeback. And that, after all, is what they're paying you for; you don't have to do it. But to have a director of the caliber of Neil Jordan pick up your book is the dream. I've been a fan of his work since I was a child. He's an established novelist too, of course, so he knows how a novel works and how to take it apart and put it back together on the screen. So I'm excited to see what he'll come up with. That said, I do think the film is an entirely separate venture to the book. If it gets made, it'll be his vision up there, not mine.