Colum McCann: “The most important things may lie beneath the surface of the text”

Colum McCann appears on screen from the bright, glass-and-white kitchen of his Connecticut home, with a green garden visible behind him. “I’m in Connecticut, in the countryside. I’m very lucky,” says the Irish writer, who moved from Ireland to the United States in 1986 at the age of 21, already determined to become a writer.

His new novel, What Brushes Past Us Beneath the Surface, takes place aboard a ship that repairs internet cables laid on the ocean floor. It combines the maritime novel and adventure story with a delicate exploration of how people can remain disconnected in an ultraconnected world.

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I’m in Connecticut, in the countryside. I’m very lucky.

McCann has often recalled the young man he was when he arrived in the United States. The son of a journalist, and a journalist himself, he imagined writing “the great Irish-American novel.” But he knew he had not yet lived enough to write it. He took to his bicycle instead, crossing the United States for two years and covering 12,000 kilometers while moving from one temporary job and encounter to the next.

During that journey, he listened to the stories people shared with a stranger who knew how to listen. McCann is invited to the Livre sur les quais literary festival in Morges this weekend.

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the great Irish-American novel