believe that literature has power? Certainly. I have to believe that. And every writer who has ever lived under a tyrannical government knows that a lot better than I do.
FM: Ireland is in the midst of a huge economic boom. Some of that means that the Roma are coming in from Bosnia, from Romania, from Slovakia, along with thousands of other immigrants. Ireland is in the midst of a cultural boom, or bust, depending whom you talk to. You started writing about other cultures at a young age. Do you think you were, in a way, writing the history of your country in advance?
CM: Well, I don't know. I do think writers anticipate things, though they're not necessarily conscious of it. Fiction suggests trends and then has to come around, afterwards, and re-interpret them.
I will tell you this, though. I remember writing a story called “Fishing the Sloe-Black River.” It was a magic realist story about emigration, women fishing for their sons. I thought at the time that it was cutting edge. And I never thought it would be anything but that. However here I am, almost twenty years later, and that story strikes me as decidedly quaint now. It seems so old-fashioned. It's strange. Life is gloriously unfinished. We never know what it's going to deal us.
FM: Great steps have been made in Ireland in recent years. Why not write about those? Why bother with what you call the “small, dark anonymous corners”?
CM: Because I suppose every story is a story about Ireland. To expand the consciousness of what it means to come from that little, dark, shadowed country and then to realise that it's not dark and shadowed at all. As Whitman says, every atom belonging to me as good as belongs to you.
FM: You, Sebastian Barry, Colm Toibin, Roddy Doyle, and Joseph O'Connor have all wandered from Ireland for subject matter. Is modern Ireland becoming too rich for your taste?
CM: Well, it's become too expensive, that's for sure! I can't recognize it when I go home. I think the new emigration (as a problem) is the problem of return. It's not so hard to leave anymore. It's hard to go back. Brodsky talks about the notion of not being able to go back to the country that doesn't exist anymore.
Also, I think we ‘re at a time when a lot of us are looking out. We will have to look quickly inward again and write the Irish novel from within. But there's nothing wrong with being outside for a while. It gives us perspective. I think we're getting ready to jump back in, feet-first. I know I want to. I want to go in and take it all on. Just when everyone starts thinking that I'm not an Irish novelist at all, I want to go back and find the voice of my land. Because that is where my voice came from. And I have a deep love and appreciation, and maybe a healthy dose of skepticism, of and for Ireland.
FM: And the next project is … ?
CM: That said, it's a New York novel that has 9-11 implications, though it's set in 1974. And it's about joy and technology and faith and all those crazy things. After that, the Irish book.
Jesus, that's looking into the future, isn't it?
For further information, readers can go to colummccann.com
Questions for Discussion
1. Many Romani scholars have argued that the portrayal of Gypsy communities in the mainstream media is partly responsible for ongoing negative stereotypes. McCann opens the novel from the point-of-view of a journalist who seems to be sympathetic toward Zoli, but as the novel progresses the journalist's attitude seems to be benign but superficial. What does the journalist represent?
2. What do we, as readers, learn on a deeper, more substantial level about the life of the Roma from Zoli's story?
3. Zoli's story—even when raw and terribly sad—is told in smooth, bold, simple strokes, almost as if she is whispering in our ears. The Roma are known for having a predominantly oral culture. How much do you think that Zoli (and, by extension, the author) value the art of intimate storytelling?
4. Zoli is asked by a little girl how she can be both “on” the radio and on the road at the same time. “But something lay behind it, Zoli knew, even then: both places at once, radio and road, impossible alongside the other” (p. 151). How can old traditions survive in the modern world?
5. In the 1940s and ‘50s, Zoli becomes a poster girl for socialism. But then the socialists try to put her and her whole culture in the “Gypsy jam jar” (p. 119). As a result, her own people blame her for what happens. Soon, she is betrayed on all sides. Is Zoli a prophet of sorts? Are prophets inevitably doomed to banishment?
6. Stephen Swann falls in love with Zoli. At times he believes that the love is fully requited, but is he just deluding himself? Is he a reliable narrator?
7. “We had interrupted her solitude in order to compensate for our own,” says Swann (p. 128). Why does Swann feel so lonely and outcast before Zoli's banishment? Is he a forerunner of a certain type of international wanderer? Is he at heart, ironically, what some people might have called a “gypsy”?
8. Is Zoli a poet or a singer? Or are they the same thing?
9. When McCann first embarked on this novel he says he knew “little or nothing” about the Romani culture. What was your own experience of the Gypsy way of life? Has it changed now after reading the novel?
10. Not the least of McCann's achievements is the realism of the voices of his characters. How does he achieve the verisimilitude?
11. “One always loves what is left behind,” says Zoli (p. 258). Is our view of Romani life solely based on some sentimental folk memory of something that does not exist anymore?
Will
ignorance prevent the embrace of true cultural diversity? Or will memory and/or poetry carry it through?
12. This epic story encompasses the twentieth century's battles with fascism and communism and idealism. Yet it comes back to the fundamental search for home. How much do the politics of our times define where our true homes are?
13. The epigraph quotes Tahar Djaout: “If you keep quiet, you die. If you speak, you die. So speak and die.” How much faith or strength do you think Zoli would put in these words?
14. Zoli says “I still call myself black even though I have rolled around in flour” (p. 277). What do you
