{"id":299080,"date":"2025-10-13T05:05:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T05:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/299080\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T05:05:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T05:05:11","slug":"technology-is-allowing-us-to-become-even-more-cowardly-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/299080\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Technology is allowing us to become even more cowardly\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since the publication of her debut, Pond<\/a>, in 2015, Claire-Louise Bennett has quietly become one of the most revered writers at work in Ireland today. Her second book, the 2021 novel Checkout 19<\/a>, was a New York Times top 10 book of the year. Her latest book, Big Kiss, Bye-Bye, is published by the discerning Fitzcarraldo Editions, which has a habit of publishing writers that go on to win Nobel Prizes<\/a> (laureates Annie Ernaux<\/a> and Jon Fosse<\/a> are on their very select list).<\/p>\n

Bennett grew up in working-class Wiltshire in England, and studied literature and drama at the University of Roehampton London before moving to Galway<\/a>, where she has lived for more than two decades. We meet in the suburb of Oranmore, in a newly opened restaurant called Fawn. Bennett is warm and open, brimming with energy, curiosity and an honest desire to connect, much like her latest book.<\/p>\n

Big Kiss, Bye-Bye follows the relationship of a female narrator with an older man called Xavier, and the detransition of their relationship from romantic to something else. \u201cThere\u2019s something very irrational about the relationship,\u201d she says, over exquisitely prepared small plates of food. \u201cI think in dating culture as it is at the moment, it just seems very rational. There\u2019s a lot of assessment and self-presentation and it\u2019s all very consciously done. It\u2019s as if people know what it is they want and I don\u2019t really think you know what you want in the context of love, I just don\u2019t think you really can.\u201d<\/p>\n

The relationship also acts as a literary device, in that it operates as a conductor through which Bennett can explore bigger ideas, like what it feels like to experience memory, time, love and loss. She has said that Big Kiss, Bye-Bye is the beginning of a new phase of work for her that gets into areas of private life that she has wanted to explore artistically for a very long time. \u201cI wanted it to be very feeling-driven. That was one thing I remember coming across in the Beckett archive, where he said, \u2018I\u2019m no intellectual, all I am is feeling.\u2019 I was so struck by that because with any creative challenge or interest, you can approach it intellectually \u2013 which is fine, and I do \u2013 but I really just wanted to come at this with a very different sort of intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book is a rare experience to read, managing to be almost overwhelmingly emotional while also being linguistically, formally and philosophically engaging. Language is at the forefront of Bennett\u2019s work. \u201cAs much as whatever I write might be drawing on intellectual interests or direct experience, I\u2019m also very aware that writing is words \u2013 it\u2019s not experience, it\u2019s not me, it is words. I have very particular ways of thinking about what words are. They feel very active, I\u2019m very conscious of them as things. I think that\u2019s why I maybe get a bit frustrated when invariably conversation turns to how biographical [my books] are, because the work is very made, it\u2019s very crafted. I enjoy the creating element, and I wouldn\u2019t want to feel restricted, which I think I would if I had to write in a more straight-up autobiographical way. It wouldn\u2019t interest me at all to write like that. I\u2019d find it really quite dull.\u201d<\/p>\n

She traces the origins of the novel to a series of events in her life. One was a house move from Galway city to its outskirts. \u201c[Moving house] is a huge upheaval and it does show you very clearly the life you have accumulated. For someone who has a bit more stability in their lives and a home they stay in for years on end, they\u2019re not really put in this position very often, where they have to go through each and every thing and weigh it all up. I\u2019ve got lots and lots of old notebooks and diaries that cover things I might be interested in intellectually or as an academic or just creatively, and then more personal writing \u2013 letters, unsent letters \u2013 a whole sort of paper trail of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another catalyst was a stint spent as a creative fellow at Reading University, where Samuel Beckett<\/a>\u2019s archive is held. \u201cOf course, he was a great archivist in his own work and he was really concerned with memory and preserving memories, so that was something I became interested in.\u201d Reading through Beckett\u2019s archive and discovering how he thought about the past, gave her a path into her own book. \u201cWhen I was doing it on my own, I felt quite vulnerable. It can be quite upsetting going back over old things, so in a sense having this external, more objective element of Beckett made me feel like I had some sort of ally helping me through.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"SamuelSamuel Beckett in Paris, 1960. Photograph: Ozkok\/Sipa\/Shutterstock <\/p>\n

She was also thinking of people from her past, which made her curious as to how individuals can continue to exist in our psyches, long after contact may have ceased. \u201cIt\u2019s difficult to know exactly how it is they live in us, but they have some sort of ongoing, post-reality existence.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wonder what drives the urge to write. \u201cI like doing it,\u201d she says simply. \u201cIt just feels like this very interesting interplay between me and language, it\u2019s like we\u2019re both figuring each other out. That\u2019s why I suppose I don\u2019t write straightforward narratives. As much as anything, my books are an expression of that interplay.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bennett has no interest in explaining her work. She wants readers to have their own personal response. \u201cWhen you write a book, you really want people to be able to have a very one-to-one experience with it. It\u2019s great the way reading culture is, but it\u2019s also very public and very communal. I love the feeling of being with a book and feeling like you\u2019re the only person in the world who has read it. The feeling is just so personal between you and the book, and I guess I just want to revive some of that in a way.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Claire-Louise Bennett: \u2018Most people were being sold a bit of a lie\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

She will go so far as to say the novel is about love and time, and how people come and go from our lives, and she writes with great tenderness about that aspect of relationships. \u201cA lot of the time these things aren\u2019t handled that well; we\u2019re just not that great at handling each other. It\u2019s kind of shocking in a way. It feels like technology is allowing us to become even more cowardly and callous. Well all right, you might not have any use for [someone] any more, or you can\u2019t fit them in any more, but you can send them on their way with their heart intact and feeling okay, because they haven\u2019t actually done anything wrong by being interested in you. People don\u2019t feel like taking those risks any more because there\u2019s so much shame around it, there\u2019s all that vulnerability. But it\u2019s just the most important thing in the world, it\u2019s the only thing in the world \u2013 being close. It doesn\u2019t matter if it\u2019s a sexual thing or a friendship thing, just spending time and paying attention to someone, and someone paying attention to you, is the most beautiful thing. It makes anybody feel better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Big Kiss, Bye-Bye is published by Fitzcarraldo Editions<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since the publication of her debut, Pond, in 2015, Claire-Louise Bennett has quietly become one of the most…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":299081,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1022,152342,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-299080","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-claire-louise-bennett","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115365119676533866","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}