Oh,Write that Thing!

“I didn’t start writing till I began teaching,” says Doyle,who at 21,became a teacher at a primary school in Dublin. “Writing was nice but it wasn’t a job. Even after my books were published,if anybody asked me what I did,I’d always say I’m a teacher till somebody would yell,he also wrote The Commitments (which was made into a film in 1991),” said Doyle.

But Ireland’s a great place to be and write. “In 1993,after I won the Booker,there were people asking me for interviews and to open supermarkets and kiss babies. But if you keep saying no long enough,people stop asking. The Irish like their writers,they know that writing books will not affect their economy,” said Doyle,who believes he is a political writer but one who does not engage in politics. “My politics come with a small ‘p’. I share my politics with a million people but don’t feel the need to lecture on it.”

Although he doesn’t teach at school anymore,Doyle has opened a creative writing centre for students in Dublin,called Fighting Words. “I find it invigorating. We have a creative writing class and I’ve read some wonderful stuff written by children,” says Doyle. He’s also busy with a new book,the last part of the trilogy on Henry Smart,that will be out in April. And then there is a screenplay,“It is about the dogs the Russians sent to space in the 1950s. It will be like Babe,in a sense,the animals will talk. All the dogs were female because the Russians thought they would be easier to control. How naïve they were,” chuckled Doyle. Ha ha ha.