Much harder for serious writers to survive now: Irish author Paul Lynch

My writing is designed to reflect human experience in all its richness and complexity, says Lynch

Irish author Paul Lynch, who won the 2023 Booker Prize for his novel Prophet Song, was in India recently to speak at the Kerala Literature Festival held in Kozhikode. The book, published by Oneworld, is set in a fictional dystopia where Ireland is taken over by a totalitarian regime that suspends the Constitution and sets up a secret police force to crack down on dissenters. In an interview with Chintan Girish Modi, he speaks of being a writer in this day and age, what the Booker means, and stillness. Edited excerpts: 

 

As a writer who explores totalitarianism in his fiction, how do you respond to the expectation that readers have of you fighting totalitarianism in real life? Do you feel compelled to speak out against totalita­ri­anism, or is this a burden you don’t want?  

I am not a political novelist, and I stress this again and again. My writing is designed to reflect human experience in all its richness and complexity. I think that the political lens is just too narrow a lens for serious fiction. I did not want to tell just one story. Everywhere I go, people feel that the book is speaking to them in some kind of way, which is a miracle. The book contains a multitude of realities. There is the politi­cal aspect of the book but there are many other layers. For instance, I am always looking at the existential and the humanitarian. I write about individual suffering and alienation. Fin­d­ing yourself in a world that is no longer the world you grew up in, a world where truth can no longer be known, where the real can no lon­ger be ascertained, where law and order, and human rights no longer stand, is very alie­n­ating. This is happening to a lot of people aro­u­nd the world. That is what the book addresses. 

What has the Booker Prize taught you about the business of publishing?  

There are two things that I have learnt. The first is that the verticality of the publishing world has become vertiginous. And unless you are part of that verticality, you are not seen. You have no visibility. Getting shortlisted for a prize like the Booker will actually make your career. But if you don't get a prize, things are going to be more difficult for you. Winning the Booker has also shown me what the Booker actually is. It is a prize for a worldwide community of readers who still believe in the revelatory power of fiction, who believe that fiction is important and central to our lives. They see it as a source of meaning. 

Thanks to the Booker, I have met thousands of readers who still keep their faith in literature. And I have been very moved by that. To travel and meet people for whom books still really matter is heartening because we know that the culture of reading serious fiction is in decline. Wheth­er we want to admit it or not, it is much harder for serious writers to survive now.  That said, here in Kerala, I noticed that a huge num­ber of people who came to have their books signed were young readers. I guess they were in their 20s and 30s. It was so reassuring to see that. This is a generation actively engaging with books, so it is not all doom and gloom.  

This is your second visit to India. How has your experience been? 

Coming to India is fascinating because it's so very different from Ireland and immensely richer. Ireland is a monoculture. India is just the opposite. There is so much colour and light and vibrancy. It is a country that reads, a coun­try where citizens are conscious of what it is to be alive at this moment. But I will never under­stand the traffic. It makes me a nervous wreck. 

At the festival, you mentioned that suffering is the fundamental condition of life. How does this feed your imagination instead of being a debilitating sort of realisation?  

I think it's a problem that we have to question. My writing is always about asking questions and not providing answers. And I come at the problem in many, many different ways. There are problems of circumstance. And there is suffering within circumstance, within power, and within the self. Suffering takes many forms and dimensions. As human beings we are always alienated in some way or other. And I think that when you can locate yourself alongside that still small voice, which requires silence and solitude and space to be heard, that's when you are truly at home with yourself. That's where your authentic self emerges. When Robinson Crusoe got washed up on that island, he encountered that self. The noise of the world fell away.  That's the self that meets the cosmos, encounters the cosmos, and locates the self within. 

One of the predicaments of our age now is that we are so distracted that the still small voice is being lost. Even if you weren't a meditator, you encountered it through the arts or through walking or going to church or crafting a space for solitude in some other way. But it's so difficult now to hear that voice because, even when you go walking, you are on your phone. The solitude is missing. We are divided internally. When that voice is missing, we become profoundly unhappy and alienated within. I think that it is a spiritual problem and a problem of our time. You cannot pretend that the problem does not exist. I am very keen to differentiate between religion and spirituality. I am not a religious person. The self that I am talking about is a psychological fact.  Today, a lot of people are very lost and they don’t know why they are lost. We have a problem that cannot be solved by religion for a lot of people.  

How does your meditation practice help you with your writing? 

I have been meditating for about 20 years, and every day for about 17 years. I tend to follow Dzogchen (a system of meditation), which is Tibetan, but I am not subscribed to Buddhism. That practice seems to suit me very well. I learnt from recordings. It is an essential part of my life. I meditate for 30-40 minutes every day, sometimes an hour, even two hours. It is completely secular. It allows me to access the aspect of mind you could call the transcendent or the deeply intuitive. The Daoists call it Shen. It is an aspect of self that sits back from daily consciousness. It is the knowing self. It knows without thinking. It is the seeing self. I listen to it very carefully. All my writing comes from it. It keeps the door open to the subconscious.  I call it the door into the dark. All the good ideas come through that door.  I am unusual because most people go to retreats and they have a master. But I have never felt the need for either of those things. Meditation felt very natural to me. I just took to it very quickly and I found it easy to go very deep. I read the Daoists a lot, especially Lao Tzu and Zhuang Zhou, so I keep myself sharp that way. Also, going to a retreat is tricky because I have children. After I got the Booker Prize, when I thought I actually needed to disappear for a month, I went to Paris on my own and didn’t speak to anybody for a week. That was a bit like a retreat for me. I meditated and I read and I walked around on my own. 

Where is the space for this kind of inner inquiry in a literary landscape that is now pushing authors to become public figures who are constantly seen at festivals? 

Before the Booker, I always took whatever public-facing work came my way as an honour. I remember what it's like to not sell books. That sense of knowing that nobody is interested in your work is something you don't forget. When the Booker Prize came, I decided I was going ahead with all the public engagements. But there is always a price to pay. Writers always imagine winning a big prize like the Booker or the Nobel but they don't imagine the sacrifice that is required. It is considerable. You give up your writing self for a period of time. 

You have to learn how to pull the shutters down. It is necessary to disappear. Year 2025, for me, will be much quieter than last year. I have not been writing for well over a year. I don't know if my next book will be a novel. But I'm going back to work now. That's all that matters.