Culture That Made Me: Author Eoin Colfer picks his touchstones
Eoin Colfer is one of the authors reading at Dublin's International Literature Festival.
Eoin Colfer, 58, grew up in Wexford. In 1998, he published his debut book, Benny and Omar. His Artemis Fowl series has sold over 25 million copies. In 2008, he was commissioned to write the sixth instalment in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. He was Ireland’s Children’s Laureate between 2014 and 2016. He lives in Dublin with his wife and their two sons. He will speak at the International Literature Festival Dublin, Merrion Square, Saturday, May 27, 10.30am. See: www.ilfdublin.com
Growing up, I gravitated towards swashbuckling books. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas was a big influence. It's a very Victorian thing to do – to set somebody up, everything is going fantastically, and then you just rip it all away. You strip them down to bare bones and dump them, usually in a prison cell. I love stories where someone’s characteristics and strengths help them to build themselves back up, and retrieve the life they had, or an even better version of it. I love books with a revenge plot. There's nothing like seeing a bad guy get his comeuppance.
The strength of The Three Musketeers – also by Dumas – is that the characters are very recognisable. There's a religious guy. A guy with an alcohol problem. A strong man and then there's the kid coming in, who basically represents us – we're coming into that world. In spite of all the odds against us, we manage to become one of the Musketeers. You have a slimy Cardinal Richelieu. A virtuous queen, and Lady de Winter who was as evil as she was beautiful. Dumas had that ability to create characters you could root for within five pages of meeting them. He managed to ally that with wonderful adventures that were half political saga, half sword fight.
Earlier this month, I saw with my wife Some Like It Hot, the musical, on Broadway. It got 13 Tony nominations. It’s absolutely amazing. The old story from the famous movie by Billy Wilder is there, but there's a very new story within it as well. Not to mention the dance and the songs and the witty dialogue. Anybody with the chance, should go and see it.
I discovered CS Lewis when I was maybe 10 or younger. They're so beautifully and evocatively written that if you're a little fella in his bedroom, you can allow yourself to pretend that possibly your wardrobe is the next portal. I kept returning to those stories to see how the Pevensie children get to Narnia. I loved him. He had such a fluid style. He was able to invoke that Arthurian atmosphere where there was a code of conduct, where baddies were super bad and heroes were super good. No one really had an internal life. Nobody was thinking about changing. You were bad or good and that's the way you were going to be.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams was a massive influence on me. I remember first getting my hands on it not being impressed by this little, thin book, being miffed it was a satire on what my friends and I loved, which was sci-fi and magic. But when I read it, the scales fell from my eyes – you can poke fun at something you actually love, and it doesn't harm that thing. It makes it stronger. It gives it another dimension. I loved the humour and the creativity of his stories and the wackiness. I’ve always loved that English humour of the absurd, that silliness.
I remember watching Rising Damp with my dad. Why it was so great to watch with my dad is he could see myself as the young guy in the series and I could see my dad as Rigby, the older guy played by Leonard Rossiter. We thought it was hilarious. My dad was nothing like Rigsby, but I could say, “That’s you, Dad – ‘Turn off all the lights.’ Always worried about the radiators.” Then he’d say, “Yeah, look at that idiot – that’s you. He never gets out of bed. He never gets a job.” We both really loved it. Possibly the reason I love British comedies from the 1970s is that we watched them as a family. That doesn't really happen now. Not in my house anyway.
My friends and I were in a Christian Brothers School, so rebellion against organised religion was inbuilt because we were all getting beaten up and down the corridor by Christian Brothers. The film was banned for a long time so we didn't see it until someone got a copy on VHS, and passed it around. The scriptwriting is so brilliant. It's so quotable. You could latch onto quotes and shout them at each other. Say a throwaway line like, “You’ve got to think for yourselves! You’re all individuals!” “Yes! We’re all individuals!”
One of my favourite crime writers is Galway’s Ken Bruen. He's reshaped noir with his character, Jack Taylor, who is an alcoholic, a kind of drug addict, a bad friend. Most of the adventure story is him trying to get through a day. Around that the crime fits in. Jack is such a fantastically dour, grim character. You feel sorry for him because you know he's never gonna win. Ken puts him through the ringer. He gets legs broken, arms broken. He gets shot. He loses his hearing. His friends all die. It's always his fault. It's misery but there's also a lot of humour in it. I find it hard to read anything that's completely po-faced, where there's no acknowledgement of the absurdity of life. I like someone like Ken who occasionally has a wink towards the camera.
I’ve seen Billy Roche’s play The Cavalcaders many times. Druid did a production of it last year. It came to Dublin to the Pavilion. It was fantastic. Super pros in the parts. All the bits made sense. I can see why it's considered a modern classic of our theatre. It has music too – and I love musical theatre.
I love searching through the BBC radio archives. They've remastered these live radio shows from the 1950s. They're absolutely hilarious. They have Round the Horne, with Kenneth Williams and Kenneth Horne in it, for example. I didn't realise how gifted Kenneth Williams was as a live comedian. The show is brilliant. It has this cast of crazy characters, a bit like The Goon Show. The BBC Sounds app is a real treasure trove.
