Carrying mother on my back
Just for a joke.
Three steps: then weeping—
She's so light.
--Ishikawa Takuboku
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Week 4
Class Ground Rules
Read all the assignments before class.
Keep yourself on mute unless called on.
Raise your hands electronically.
Focus your comments only on the question at hand rather than straying to other parts of the story.
Refrain from offering a review of the whole story or jumping to the end.
Try to support your comments by referring to details from the text.
Listen to and respond to others with respect.
READ (at least twice) two stories from Colm Tóibín's collection Mothers and Sons, (2007, Scribner.)
"A Song," PDF posted below.
A son picking up friends in an Irish pub hears the mother who abandoned him sing a song about lost love.
Think About:
Who is Noel and what is his history?
Who is Noel's mother?
How does the narration and the writer's style shape your feelings about the story?
How would you describe Noel's reaction?
"A Journey," PDF posted below.
A mother retrieves her troubled son to return to his family home.
Think About:
The relationship between Mary and David when he was a child.
Mrs. Redmond.
Mary's reminiscences about the early years of her marriage to Seamus.
The car ride.
Mary's feelings current feelings about David and Seamus.
Click on the top right corner of each story below to open.
Colm Toibin - A Song better copy.pdfColm Toibin - A Journey better copy.pdfPurely Optional - Listen to Colm Tóibín Talk About Writing
Photo: Guillem Lopez/age
Colm Tóibín Biography
Colm Tóibín Biography
Colm Tóibín is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, and poet. Tóibín was born on May 30, 1955 in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland and studied at University College Dublin.
He is the author of ten novels, including The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; The Testament of Mary; and Nora Webster, as well as two story collections and several books of criticism.
He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and has been named as the Laureate for Irish Fiction for 2022–2024 by the Arts Council of Ireland. Three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Tóibín lives in Dublin and New York.
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