Rob Doyle takes a look at the darker side of life
FOUR young men roam the streets of Dublin in a post-Leaving Cert haze, flirting with the darker side of life in an attempt to flee a reality that they don’t want to face.
Meanwhile, a depressed young man slinks in and out of his job in a vast, grey Dublin industrial estate, while a myriad of other characters chase the fragments of disintegrating relationships through a variety of European cities.
These descriptions of Crumlin author Rob Doyle’s two books, ‘Here Are the Young Men’ and ‘This is the Ritual’ respectively, show the morose yet gripping prose that makes his work so unique.
Now, having seen his writing shortlisted for an Irish Book Award and feature on numerous Book of the Year lists, Rob has recently turned his hand to acting while still continuing to write.
He took some time out to speak to his local paper about his work to date.
You lived on an island in Thailand and also taught English in South America, how have these experiences influenced your desire to write, if at all?
I left Ireland after I finished college, and lived in all sorts of places: Asia, South America, Italy, London, and later, Paris. The wandering lasted for years and that was the period when I started writing seriously. It was crucial. Seeing the world, encountering people and cultures that were new to me, provided huge inspiration. It still does.
You also kept a blog when you were living in Thailand, was that your first foray into writing for an audience?
Yes, it was. I wrote the blog while I was in Asia, India, and then South America, and the experiences I was describing became increasingly hedonistic and dodgy, and finally quite dark. Writing the blog caused personal problems for me – my family were reading it – but it was helpful in shedding inhibitions because later, when I was writing my books, I didn’t worry about going into extreme, explicit, uncomfortable, or personal material. I tend to write about characters on the edge, life in visceral and intense circumstances: isolation, drugs, sex, heartbreak, madness.
How would you describe your writing style?
It has changed, and is changing still. My first novel, ‘Here Are the Young Men’, is about a group of young guys in Dublin who have finished school and are drifting out into the world, increasingly consumed by drugs, alcohol, video games and recreational violence. So for that book I used a lot of Dublin dialect and raw, visceral language. ‘This is the Ritual’, my second book, is set in locations all around the world, and much of it is quite autobiographical. I tried to find a new voice for every character and situation. For instance, there is one character having a total breakdown after taking drugs in San Francisco, and his story is told through a desperate, frantic email. Another is more like a biographical essay about a disturbed writer who disappears into the depths of the Berlin underworld.
Your debut novel ‘Here Are the Young Men’ was named after a Joy Division lyric, and music seems to be a feature of that novel. Does music tend to influence your writing or character development?
That novel was quite autobiographical – even though I denied it in interviews at the time, as the destructive behaviour the lads get up to would have made people think I was a monster – so I enjoyed including a lot of the music my friends and I listened to at that age. I still listen to loads of music, but I’m not sure that it influences my writing much. I especially like music with good, clever lyrics, whether it’s great songwriters, rap stuff, or whatever.
How did releasing your second novel ‘This is the Ritual’ compare to the release of ‘Here Are the Young Men’?
I was less nervous, maybe. My first novel had gone down well and won lots of critical acclaim, which was great. So with ‘This Is the Ritual’ I wanted to show people that I was expanding, ambitiously going into new areas, rather than just repeating a formula. People were surprised at how different it was. The books do have some things in common: edgy, visceral characters, explicit sex, drugs and so on.
What writing are you working on at the minute? Third book? Short stories?
Two books. One is a sort of memoir-novel, an autobiographical book about travels I’ve taken and experiences I’ve had in recent years, very personal (but funny too, I hope). And the second is a non-fiction book I wrote in collaboration with an English writer. We wrote it by email, during a period when I was living in France and she was here in Ireland. I’m also editing an anthology of Irish literature for the publisher Dalkey Archive, which is due out in the autumn.
What’s been your best experience so far as an author?
The great satisfaction of seeing my books in print, holding them, after many hard years struggling to get published. That’s probably been the happiest experience in my life so far. I hope to write many more books: it’s the best feeling.
You played the lead role in the film ‘Hit the North’, what prompted you to get involved in acting?
Out of the blue, a filmmaker from England got in touch and asked if I’d be interested in being in his film, even though I’d never acted before. So he flew to Ireland and we met, and I really liked him and his screenplay – it’s a road movie set in the 1980s – so I signed up. It was a wonderful experience, travelling all over the UK. I found I really enjoyed acting, I would do it again.
You’ve previously described how you received “positive rejections” from publishers on numerous occasions. What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
It’s true that persistence is crucial. Just as important, though, is to keep reading: read relentlessly and widely. The more you have read, the better your writing will be.
You can find out more about Rob’s writing on his website, www.robdoyle.net
