On Wednesday, May 6th, The Friends of the Crestwood Library held a lively talk with Irish Author Colum McCann at Paideia School 15 in Yonkers. As part of the library’s centennial celebration, McCann was joined by writer/retired NYPD officer (and former Paideia School 15 student!) Ed Conlon and Friends of the Crestwood Library president Cathleen Walsh to discuss McCann’s work.
McCann, originally from Dublin, has lived in the United States for nearly 40 years, and has published eight novels, three short story collections, and one nonfiction book. His work has been translated into 40 languages and received the National Book Award for his 2009 novel Let the Great World Spin.
From Dublin to New York and Around the World
McCann may have planted his roots in New York but he, as friend Ed Conlon states, “really just doesn’t stay still very often.” This is true of both his personal and his literary lives. When he first arrived in the United States, McCann biked thousands of miles all over the country. “His books are restless as well,” Conlon stated. “He’s a very greedy listener. He just wants to hear more and more and more.”
McCann makes an effort to not only set his books in a variety of places, but to educate himself on the lives of the people living in said places, a testament to his curiosity, as noted by Cathleen Walsh. From Mexico, to the American West, to Russia, to Palestine, to his homeland of Ireland, and right back to New York City, McCann immerses himself in the culture and time each book takes place. McCann believes that stories are the way we connect with each other, a fact even echoed by Pope Francis in his afterword of the May 2022 book The Weaving of the World, sharing McCann’s words that storytelling is “one of the most powerful means we have for changing our world.”
In a time where we are “diseased by certainty,” as McCann stated during the talk, it’s key to admit what we don’t know, and seek out answers by listening to people and observing how they live. “I came over here in my early 20s and I bought a typewriter and I was going to write a novel,” McCann recalled. “And after a summer of typing, when the A key didn’t work and then the E key. I realized I hadn’t got a whole lot to say. I went across the United States and for a year and a half into Mexico, I went to Canada as well. sleeping out more or less every night, but listening to people.” This led McCann to a variety of adventures, including staying with the unhoused people in the subway tunnels, going to the West Bank, and meeting French highwire artist Felipe Petit.
“The question is,” McCann went on to explain, “how do you access these characters that you want to write about? Well, have to do an enormous amount of research. You read any oral histories that are there. You look at every photograph that you can get. You sort of gobble up every available bit of information that you can get.” And once the research becomes too much, it’s the personal accounts and lived stories from real people that help to shape the work.
Storytelling and Connection
This ties into McCann’s belief about storytelling as a means of connection. “The shortest distance between us is the story,” McCann said. It is this very belief that has led McCann to co-found Narrative 4 with Lisa Consiglio and a number of authors who met in Colorado.
Narrative 4 is a non-profit whose mission is to “harness the power of stories to equip and embolden young adults to improve their lives, communities and the world.” It aims to seek out what the highest form of storytelling is—and that is, to McCann and the folks behind Narrative 4, the ability to step into someone else’s shoes. With that prompt, they decided to create a program that takes this idea and places it in schools, allowing students to connect (oftentimes virtually) and exchange stories. In this exercise, groups break off into pairs. In the pairs, each person tells the other person a story about themselves. Then they go back to the larger group and tell the other person’s story in the first person, as if it had happened to them. “It’s all about radical empathy,” McCann explains, “when you’re telling someone else’s story, you’re accessing memory, you’re accessing imagination […] And suddenly the world is messy and they’re not so divided anymore. And I think this is what stories can really genuinely do, and I think it’s what good literature can do. This is why we do what we do. And it can actually bring us together. ”
Narrative 4 is utilized in 37 countries around the world though, McCann laments, it’s been the hardest to get it into American schools because of our non-standardized education system.
The Importance of Libraries and Education
McCann joked that he had “the worst possible childhood that a novelist could have,” since he grew up in a loving working class household with an ordinary Irish education. However, McCann noted the great discrepancy between an Irish and an American education.
“In the 1950s, a civil servant came along and said, there should be free and universal education for everyone, and we should all have access to it. And that revolutionized the Irish society,” McCann explained. He then emphasized the importance of teachers in America. “It’s shameful that we don’t look after our teachers better, treat them better, give them better pensions, respect them more,” McCann lamented, “see them as a more, you know, higher on a hierarchy than they are, because it will affect everything that is to come […] the attitude towards not just literature, but learning in general should be more profound. And I think if we’ve got to confront anything, that’s one of the things that we should create.”
McCann held a similar sentiment towards libraries as well. “I do think that libraries are an essential part of our democracy,” he said. “And not only the democracy within a community, but the democracy of stories that you get within the place too. I think [the people who work in libraries] are heroes along with teachers.”
The Crestwood Library’s Storied History
The event took place in a particularly fitting venue, as the site where School 15 now sits was, back in 1921, the site of the original Crestwood Library. The Crestwood Library was conceived of and founded by the Women’s Club of Crestwood, later incorporated to become the Crestwood Library Association for the purpose of advocacy and support. It was due to the tireless advocacy of the Crestwood Library Association, that they were able to get the city to commit to building the Crestwood Library that still stands today, all the way back in 1925 and opened in 1926. 100 years later, there are still tireless advocates in the form of the Friends of the Crestwood Library, who work to supplement the needs of the Crestwood Library through active engagement and fundraising.
What’s Next for the Crestwood Library
On June 6th, the Crestwood Library will be hosting a talk with author Simon Winchester. Additionally, the Friends of the Library have also advocated for the building itself, and the city of Yonkers has committed one million dollars for improvements in the library, including ADA upgrades, so that it will be fit and accessible, welcoming, beautiful, inspiring for another year.
If you’d like to support the Friends of the Crestwood Library, you can sign up to become a member on their website. Membership dues, donations and grants go towards creating and sponsoring programming for the community, including author readings, chamber music afternoons, and a myriad of children’s programs. They also fund materials not covered by the library budget including books, magazine subscriptions and DVDs.
Consider supporting the Friends of the Crestwood Library to keep Yonkers a vibrant place for literature, music, and more!
