Col Tobin’s visit to Baruch college was an intersting experience as well as a rare opportunity to get up close and personal with a renowned author.This was my first experience in actually personally seeing an author. There were many interesting points he made in his speech. In his speech he mainly discussed his background of his life, his inspirations for the book “Brooklyn” which was our text for freshman seminar as well as some of his motivations toward this book and analogies that relate to thus book as a whole. The main points addressed about his background were basic, he was born in a small town in Ireland, experienced many travels before he became an author, his many of these trips inspired many of his works nonetheless.The points addressed about his inspirations toward this novel were mainly focused on his Irish background as well as some people he met. He stated that a woman he met claims that this book is about her mother. His main motivations in writing this novel was mainly concentrated again on his Irish heritage as well as his research on cultural norms of Irish Americans in the 1950’s. The analogies he made for the book mainly focused on examples of social and cultural norms of Irish Americans nonetheless. Overall most of Tobin’s subjects addressed in hsi speech clearly related to the novel Brooklyn in some way.
Overall I found Tobin’s speech interesting since he gave additional interesting information related to our Freshman seminar text. I learned that many of his inspirations were based on experience while some were based on research. I learned about his strong attachment to his Irish heritage as well. There were also some parts of the speech that were more uninteresting such as many of the analogies he made toward to book as well as his sections that had little relation to the novel as well. I also had some trouble understanding certain parts due to his accent. But overall I can say that Colm Tobin’s speech was a very informative one. learned many different ideas and inspirations about his life and the novel. I appreciate the opportunity I had to get up close and personal with a well known author.
