in interview with Declan Meade

Claire Keegan is a short story writer from County Wicklow. In 1999 Faber & Faber (UK) published her first collection of short stories, Antarctica. This interview took place in 2000 shortly after she had received that year's Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Antarctica was published in the United States by Grove Atlantic in March 2001.

When did you start writing?

I started writing in 1994. I was unemployed and I got a story shortlisted in a competition that was run by 'Live at Three'. [Sorely missed RTÉ TV programme] There were 10,000 entries and I got in the Top Ten. It was the first story I'd ever written. It was a very poetic story - I think I was trying to imitate John McGahern at that time. That gave me encouragement and I said maybe I'll be good at this. I suppose that was the time I started writing, though I wasn't at all serious about it.

How did you come to write the story for the competition?

I saw the competition advertised. It had big money. I was broke and it had a £1,000 prize. I just sent my story off.

Was there a background of reading and writing in your family?

There was not a background of writing at all. I grew up on a farm, the youngest of six children. Three boys and three girls on a mixed farm. We had tillage and cattle and horses and sheep and pigs and fowl. I was raised on fowl money when I was young: my mother used to send the turkeys off to Dublin. My mother's a great reader and both my sisters are great readers. My brothers don't read very much and my father never believed in reading anything that was not in a newspaper. He said it was nonsense. He didn't believe in that which was not factual.

What books did you read while you were growing up?

We lived about four miles outside of the radius of the travelling library so there really wasn't much. I had little or no access to books. There was a small library in school but it was mostly full of Enid Blyton and that really bored me. I did find a copy of Daphne Du Maurier's Frenchman's Creek when I was about ten. I remember reading that, reading the betrayal in it, and being deeply interested. So then I went off and I read Rebecca and I still think the opening paragraph of Rebecca may be the best opening paragraph I've ever read.

So when did you become more serious about writing?

In 1994, after I got shortlisted for that prize, I thought maybe I should go off and do a Masters. I missed university. I loved university. I still do. I still want to be a student and have access to this wonderful library. So in 1994 I submitted an application to study a Masters degree in the Teaching and Practice of Creative Writing at the University of Wales. I was accepted on to the course and then I thought, my God, they've found me out, now I have to write something.

I did that course and lived in Cardiff and had a very pleasant year there. And it was there that I discovered to some degree what my voice was. I experimented with lots of ways of writing and threw most of them out. I went from imitation to that which was sacrosanct to myself. I learned that you just cannot imitate and that was a good lesson. It was then I became serious about writing, maybe the end of 1995.

What is it that attracts you to the short story form?

I find the short story form deeply attractive. I think it's just slightly beneath poetry for me. Poetry is the highest form of literature. I cannot write poetry. I'm the most dreadful poet in the world. The short story is like a poem in that there is nothing lost. Everything is savoured. There is a strictness about it which I really admire and it takes your breath away if it's good. It leaves you more breathless than poetry in some ways. Poetry runs off the tongue. A story doesn't. It resonates in your head. I just think it's the most beautiful genre there is. It's wonderful for me to get a collection of short stories published and to be considered a short story writer. That's all I want to do, really.

How did your collection Antarctica come about?

In 1996 I won fourth prize in the Francis McManus Short Story Competition for a story called 'Storms' and I met David Marcus. He said to me, 'Do you have any more?' I had about half a dozen. He said, 'You have to get a collection together and you must send them to me.' He explained that he was the literary scout for Giles Gordon at the Curtis Brown Agency in London. I went off to Achill then for a while and finished the manuscript. David published 'The Ginger Rogers Sermon' in Phoenix Irish Short Stories 1997 and he sent the manuscript of my stories to Giles. Giles accepted it and he sent it to Faber and they in turn accepted it. That was the process of getting published. I just found David Marcus's encouragement to be greater than anyone else's. He has been so generous and genuine in both his criticism and his interest in the stories.

What about discipline?

I have little or no discipline. Although when I'm not writing I feel guilty. When I am writing the world disappears and I don't seem to do anything else other than write. I actually stop eating when I'm writing well. I don't care much for anything other than what I am doing, constructing sentences. I think the short story writer must love sentences.

How does a story begin?

It begins with a mood. The mood nabs you and you know it's good and you know it won't go away. You have lots of stuff going on in your head, but some stuff goes away. The good things never go away. It doesn't start with a concept or an idea: I'm going to write about so and so because that's interesting. That never occurs to me. When I begin a story I have no idea how it will end. If I knew how it ended I wouldn't bother writing. It's just a nagging feeling and a mood that takes over. You have to find the language to express it. It's an act of discovery.

How do you go from feeling guilty to actually sitting down to write?

Well the guilt is part of it. The guilt is what makes you sit down. You know that you have the capacity to write and you have something in your mind that will not go away. I think that's what makes me sit down: the guilt combined with the obsession. I'm an obsessive person. And when I get obsessed with something I just have to bring it through to fruition. Even if I destroy it in the end, I have to go and do that. I'm not temperate in my nature. I think that's wonderful for the short story because you can just let it out and get it down. Then you can go back and you can fix it. I love that part too. I love being brutal with the first draft, paring it down and seeing the skeleton of the prose. Edna O'Brien said that good writing breaks open the chest bones. I always think of that when I'm going back on a first draft. You actually have to break open the sternum of the first draft and see what is necessary to the vitality of the work - and get rid of everything else.

The stories in Antarctica are set in a variety of places. In Ireland, England and the US. What role does place have in your writing?

Setting is something I'm not very good at. I can't imagine a place thoroughly without having been there. I think I can imagine anything else. I think I am blessed with a good imagination but not with regard to place. I want to see the place and smell the place before I can write about it. I have been in England and in Ireland, obviously, and in America and so I draw on those places because that's where the mood begins. Then I can invent a character, that's no problem to invent a person, but to invent a setting is quite difficult for me.

Some of the stories in the collection would appear to spring from real-life news stories.

Fiction isn't about the truth. Short stories aren't about real people. And at some point even if you begin with something that is factual, it gives way to fiction. Fiction is greater than fact. The imagination is more powerful than reality. I think our modern world actually tries to destroy that, and makes us believe that the facts and the reality are more important than the fiction but our imagination is what carries us through. Our imagination is actually more powerful than reality. I'm convinced of that.

How much, if any, of your writing is based on your personal experiences? Are there subjects relating to your family or friends that you would choose not to write about?

My family don't read very much, so maybe that's just as well. My mother reads everything I write and I suppose at times there may be moments when I hit on something which I don't even realise myself is autobiographical which will be picked up by her. I don't think about that. If you're a writer you write. If you're a fisherman and you put your hook into the Atlantic Ocean, you don't really worry about what you are going to catch. In a way I am amoral with regard to what I write about. I just write. If there are repercussions on a personal level with my writing, then I will deal with them on a personal level. I will not be bound by some kind of self-imposed censorship.

One of your stories, 'The Singing Cashier', relates to the Fred and Rosemary West case. How did that come about?

I went to a play one night. I wasn't actually at the play. I was the woman at the door taking the money. It was the new theatre in Tallaght. Everybody had gone in to see the play and I was reading the newspaper. It was a very dark winter's night and there was this whole piece written by a psychologist about Fred West. When I read that, I thought people don't know anything about the people they are living next to any more. It terrified me. I started thinking about neighbours and what neighbours are. My mother was 42 when I was born, so in a way I grew up in the 1950's. I was so late coming that I inherited an upbringing which was more like the generation before me. I inherited my mother's whole notion of neighbours. Then to read that Fred West story, what stunned me was not necessarily what they did, or the macabre nature of what they did, but the fact that nobody knew - and their neighbours had no idea. So I got the idea of neighbours and I created these two girls who lived in this house who actually knew Fred West and just read about him in the newspaper. I started off with the character of Cora and she's one of my favourite characters. She's a survivor. She's practical - she's like the woman in 1984 who gets the coffee and sleeps. She is a practical person.

A lot of the characters in the stories are practical people, people who manage, who cope.

I like coping. I think short stories are about coping.

A lot of your stories deal with terrible events: rape, murder, suicide . . . and how people survive these traumatic events happening around them.

Well, that's life. There is a point where people relent, and they do not give up their authenticity as people because they do. It is an act of generosity. It is necessary to get on. And there is a point where people know that if they continue on the vein they are on they will sacrifice that which is their own. So they become relentless and a switch takes place. That interests me. And suddenness interests me. I like sudden people. You can see it boiling up in somebody and you know they're going to switch and I like that point. It's revealing. And it's lovely for the short story writer because it is revelationary. But it's inevitable and as Flannery O'Connor said, good endings must be inevitable.

There is quite a sudden act at the climax of your story 'Sisters'.

Yes, it's sudden but the aggression is there to make the circumstances ripe for a sudden act. Betty has been pushed around all her life and this, for her, is justice. So it may be sudden, but it's no surprise‹there's a difference.

Do you want to talk about the story 'Men and Women'?

What do you want to know?

I suppose I found it more subtle than some of the other stories in the collection. There was something terrible going on, but it wasn't so manifestly terrible.

I find that story more terrifying than the others. I wrote that story in 1998. It's just a child's desire to be big, to be an adult, and then learning what the adult world is. It's manifested in both her realisation that her father is committing adultery and also that Santa Claus does not exist. Those two things push her into the adulthood which she desired.

The girl in the story interrupts her father dancing with another woman. It's a big, I suppose brave, thing for a young girl to do.

It's something she must do. But at the time she doesn't really realise why she's doing it. She just knows that something is wrong. I think it says somewhere that a cloud could drift in and burst and cause havoc and she doesn't know at the time what that cloud is. It's an instinctive act, and she knows that her brother should know it too. And she's disappointed that he doesn't know what's going on. That's thinking on your feet. Sometimes your feet are cleverer than your brain. Sometimes people will do things, and they're right to do them, but they don't conceptually know why they're doing them. They know it's just necessary‹at least, I'm like that.

You're now working on a novel. How did that come about?

I started the novel because I realised it wasn't a short story. I didn't set out to write a novel. I just want to be a short story writer. But I realised at some stage that this very obviously was not a short story. I think the lovely part about the novel is that you have breaks, you have natural breaks, and also you don't feel the same necessity for summation at the end of a chapter. You want to leave the end of a chapter hanging so people will turn the next page. I find that liberating because there's a huge onus on the short story writer to have such a gigantic conclusion, maybe at the end of just a five-page story. You do have to make it all merge into that which is conclusive. Whereas at the end of a chapter you just want to leave a thread that people will pull. I find the length of it daunting but I try not to think about that. If you think about that, you'll just be intimidated by it, and think: My God, I have to do another 50,000 words before this ends. You just don't think about it.

What is it about?

There's two parts to it. The first half is set in 1941. It's about a maid who works in an old house for a Protestant man called Swann. She becomes pregnant and hides in the house for the duration of the pregnancy. The second part is about the offspring of that relationship. She does not know who she is or where she was born but she inherits that house. I suppose it's about secrecy and the effects of secrecy on relationships and how secrets in the end are impossible to keep.

How far on are you with it?

I started on the 1st of April and I have seven chapters done. I think about chapters the way I think about drafting stories. I just write a chapter and some chapters are longer than others. Then I leave it and I'll start off with another character in the next chapter.

The lovely thing about the novel is that there is a type of leniency in the language. You don't have to make every single word count. You can take a breath in a novel. There's no breath in a short story. It's about lack of oxygen. The novel is about breathing.

Are you writing every day?

I don't write every day. I'm not a banker.

How do you manage to keep ideas flowing?

I have no shortage of ideas. I think a lot of writers I know seem to scout for ideas. They seem to be bereft of ideas. Whereas for me, anyway, it's not the idea that counts, it's the character that counts, and the mood that counts. So I don't go searching for anything. I have so many ideas right now. I've lived a childhood, I'm the youngest of six children, I've lived on a farm in a kind of strange place, I've had a fairly strange life. I can't imagine not having anything to write about. My problem is that I can't keep up with what's in my head. (Pause) Maybe that's why I don't want to write everyday - because I would actually catch up with what's in my head!

Which writers do you most admire?

In Ireland: Bernard Mac Laverty, John McGahern and William Trevor - they are my favourite Irish writers. And then I love Flannery O'Connor, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Raymond Carver, John Cheever. I love Ian McEwan's short stories. I love Thomas Hardy and Emily Dickinson and Philip Larkin. I like Theodore Roethke's work also, I like some of Mark Strand. I like T.S. Eliot and I really liked Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy and I also loved Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of The Day - I thought that was a beautiful novel.

Do you read while you are writing?

I'll read anything. It doesn't affect my writing. I don't avoid reading novels because I'm writing one. I took Margaret Atwood's advice. She was asked in an interview, 'What do you advise the writer to do?' and she said, 'Read as much as you can and write as much as you can.' It never occurred to me not to read when I'm writing. It's all fuel.

What do you make of the literary life?

I don't see myself as having a literary life. I get up and I walk the dog. I drink wine in the evenings. Somedays I write, somedays I don't. I cook, I talk to friends, I go out, just walk around the streets. I spend a lot of time in the country and I travel a lot. So I don't see this as a literary life.

Are you comfortable with the label writer?

Writer. Yes, I'm very happy with it. I like being a writer.

At what point did that happen?

I think it happened when Faber accepted my collection of stories.

At the Rooney Prize Award Ceremony, you said that you felt that the occasion was the closest you'd come to getting married? Was that a reference to the sacrifices you're prepared to make as a writer?

There's always sacrifice. I don't care what life you live there's always sacrifice. And I think the writer may make less sacrifices than most. I live a privileged lifestyle. I work for nobody; I work when I feel like it. I don't know how long it will last. But with regard to my acceptance speech for the Rooney Prize, that was a joke. The man had read out all the telegrams from the people who couldn't be there and it just reminded me of a wedding ceremony and some best man coming up. The telegrams weren't quite as lewd as they'd be at a wedding.

So there was nothing more to it?

Yes, I suppose it was a half joke, and there's nothing as serious as a half joke. Are you asking me if I'm going to get married? I suppose that I'm married to writing. I suppose that nothing will ever be more important to me than that. Unless I meet a Scottish crusty. You should put that in: a Scottish crusty, who'll put up with me.