Colm Tóibín is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic and poet. Tóibín is currently Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and succeeded Martin Amis as professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester. He is 63.
‘The nurse noted a great number of details about me before asking me if I drank much alcohol. I thought it wise to respond that I was sober in all my habits, a quiet-living person. The nurse did not seem fully reassured by this. And then she told me that people who drank a good bit of alcohol found chemo easier, since chemo was, like alcohol, a sort of distilled liquid with a poisonous edge that could change your mood and cause you aches and pains and generally damage your system. The more alcohol you had drunk in your lifetime, the less shock chemo would be to your system. In Ireland, there are people who have taken a pledge not to drink ever; they are often members of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association of the Sacred Heart, founded in 1898. When I was growing up they were simply called Pioneers. You don’t hear much about them now, except in the deepest countryside. Nonetheless, the young nurse now invoked their presence. ‘Among those who have chemo,’ she said wistfully, ‘it is the Pioneers who suffer most.’ CT