Anne Tyler - Author Interview
Thursday 13th December 2007
Pulitzer prize-winning author Anne Tyler on what inspires her and why she prizes her privacy
Did you always want to be a writer?
I never wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a painter. Writing was something I more or less backed into, thanks to the helping hands of high-school teachers and English professors along the way.
Does your work follow a regular pattern every day?
I dread, dread, dread starting, but every weekday of my life I go into my writing room as soon as my morning chores are done, and I write until lunchtime. (The earliest I allow myself to eat lunch is 11.35am.)
Do you have any writing rituals?
I deeply believe in writing by hand. (Sometimes it feels more as if I'm knitting a novel.) I used to have a sort of fetish for Parker fountain pens but then I discovered the new gel pens. They're so frictionless that I don't have to think about them, let alone refill them or give them their ammonia baths, etc, etc. And I like plain white paper – no ruled lines.
Have you embraced new technology?
Once I have a chapter on paper, I type it into a computer, yes. But for the final draft, I write it out by hand all over again, because that seems to be the only way I can “hear” the words in my head.
Who do you ask to read your books first?
No one sees a word of a book until I send it to my agent, Timothy Seldes. I trust his judgment completely and I depend on him to tell me if publishing would be an embarrassment.
Where do you find your inspiration?
Daydreams, pure and simple. Oh, and sometimes a fragment of a newspaper story that sets up a sort of “What if…?” in my head.
Which is your favourite novel?
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, because it's the one that comes closest to the book I had in mind to start with.
Is there a novel by anyone else that you would like to have written?
I remember having an almost physical pang of envy when I was reading Iris Murdoch's A Word Child. There was a moment in the plot where the whole pattern of the hero's life became clear and I actually laughed aloud. I thought, “How did she think of that?”
What is it about writing that you enjoy?
I love the moment when my characters suddenly come alive, and say and do things that seem to have no relation to me. It's rare, but when it happens, it's as addictive as opium, and it keeps me at work for days afterward in the hope it will happen again.
Have you been influenced by any other writers?
I owe the fact that I write at all to Eudora Welty. I discovered her when I was 14, living in the small-town South she wrote about, and her books gave me my first inkling that my own world could be a fit subject for literature.
What is the last book you read?
The book I finished last night was Amy Bloom's Away. She does something I haven't seen before: she'll break out of her story every now and then to tell the reader what's going to happen to certain characters long after the end of the novel. I loved the luxury of that; it's something we don't get to have in real life.
Do you have a favourite book to give to people?
Lately, I must have given away, or at least recommended, Per Pettersen's Out Stealing Horses to a good dozen of my friends and relations. To me, it seems not just a good book, but a great one.
What's your greatest indulgence?
Reading fiction in the daytime.
What's your greatest fear?
That they will stop manufacturing those gel pens.
In an age of celebrity, why do you guard your privacy so carefully?
I seem to do best in quiet places, without too much outside interference. That's the only reason.
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