What greatly annoys me is sometimes you see the short story being described as a training ground for the novel. Kind of like an apprenticeship. And in lots of ways, it’s a far harder form. Kevin Barry Read Quote
At one point I would read nothing that was not by the great American Jews – Saul Bellow, Philip Roth – which had a disastrous effect of making me think I needed to write the next great Jewish American novel. As a ginger-haired child in the West of Ireland, that didn’t work out very well, as you can imagine. Kevin Barry Read Quote
I’ve had lots of people saying very nice things about the work. But I genuinely feel in the course of a writing career you’re going to have people say very nice things and some not-so-nice things, and if at all possible you should try to ignore both. Kevin Barry Read Quote
I wanted to write about Jews in Montana, so I went there by plane and bus, only to discover that there are no Jews in Montana. It didn’t deter me. Kevin Barry Read Quote
Very first thing in the morning, I spew some rough genius directly on to the laptop. Then I have coffee and rewrite for three hours. Kevin Barry Read Quote
Don DeLillo’s ‘White Noise,’ which I read when I was 19. It showed me that a book can be funny as hell and deadly serious. Kevin Barry Read Quote
It was quite risky to open the book with one of my quieter stories; I’m kind of trying, I think, to lure readers into a false sense of security and then assault them with a couple really loud, really strange stories. Kevin Barry Read Quote
I go into my workroom seven mornings a week. There will only be one or two mornings a week where it seems to be going well, but to earn those days you have to go through slow, slodgy days where your mind feels like porridge. Kevin Barry Read Quote
One of the things I’ve been most excited by is U.S. television drama. For my money, it’s some of the greatest narrative art of our time. Each series is like a 19th-century Russian novel: you need to do a lot of work in the first few episodes, just as you do in the first 50-60 pages of those books. Kevin Barry Read Quote
