As an
Irish-American writer raised in Europe and currently living in Texas after many
years in New York, I sometimes wonder if there's an ideal place for me
anywhere, or if it matters at all. Any of the places I've lived in would suit
me fine, if I moved back, but if destiny decrees Texas from here on out, so be it. The Lone Star State has
many virtues, not the least of which is the ease of leaving it by air for
faraway places. And anyway it's where you've been, and your ability to revisit
such places on the page, that matters. "Writers really live inside their
heads and on the page, and geography is merely a circumstance," observes,
accurately, the Indian novelist and diplomat Shashi Tharoor (The Great Indian Novel). His famous compatriot
Salman Rushdie, who knows something about changing addresses, declares that
"[l]iterature has little or nothing to do with a writer's home address."
And Ruaridh Nicoll, a Scottish novelist (White
Male Heart), says, "Writers will always live wherever suits them best;
the experience and the insight to write can come from anywhere." All very
true. But, given the choice, I'd take the above view outside my office window
over the one I currently have (rickety fence, parking lot).
