Anne Tyler
Anne Tyler is an acclaimed American author known for her insightful exploration of human nature through her novels and short stories. Gaining recognition with her work "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant," Tyler has established herself as a significant voice in contemporary literature. She is celebrated for her polished writing style, strong sense of irony, and ability to create memorable, relatable characters. Born in a large family, Tyler often reflects themes of family dynamics and community in her narratives, primarily set in her long-time home of Baltimore, Maryland.
Graduating from Duke University, she pursued graduate studies before marrying psychiatrist Taghi Modarressi, with whom she has two daughters. Throughout her career, Tyler has received numerous accolades, including the Pulitzer Prize for her novel "Breathing Lessons." Her works often feature eccentric characters navigating the complexities of modern life, emphasizing the importance of personal growth and connection in an ever-changing world. Notable titles include "Noah's Compass," "A Spool of Blue Thread," and "French Braid." Despite her success, Tyler remains a private individual, preferring to let her writing speak for itself rather than seeking publicity.
Anne Tyler
Author
- Born: October 25, 1941
- Place of Birth: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Biography
Although Anne Tyler’s books have always been popular with general readers, acclaim from critics came more slowly. With Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, however, Tyler’s position in American literature was firmly established. In addition to her many short stories and novels, Tyler is much in demand as a book reviewer. She has achieved her greatest success and recognition as a witty yet serious and compassionate observer of human nature, with a polished style, a strong sense of irony, and an uncanny ability to create memorable characters and reproduce their speech as if she had heard it.
Tyler is the only daughter of Lloyd Parry and Phyllis (Mahon) Tyler. There were also four boys in the family, a circumstance that appears in reverse in Tyler’s first novel, If Morning Ever Comes (1964), where the main character is an only son with six sisters. Tyler denies that her novels are autobiographical.
Tyler graduated from Duke University in 1961, having begun college at sixteen. A course on the short story taught by the writer Reynolds Price greatly impacted her, though not her style. After doing graduate study in Russian at Columbia University, she married Taghi Modarressi, a psychiatrist, in 1963, and the couple had two daughters, Tezh and Mitra.
A longtime resident of Baltimore, Maryland, Tyler has set most of her novels in various parts of that city. She has used other locations only briefly and secondarily, including small towns in North Carolina and Pennsylvania and such cities as New York, New Orleans, and Paris. She once said that what she did in her novels was populating a town—not with people she knew, but with people she had written about. Such comments are rare, however, as Tyler shuns publicity, does not give readings, and rarely grants interviews.
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1986, The Accidental Tourist was filmed in 1987; the film also won awards, though the reviews were mixed. Critics responded to Tyler’s next book, Breathing Lessons, in much the same way; while the book remained on best-seller lists for several months, won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 1989, and was filmed in 1994, some critics found it sentimental, slapstick, and banal, while others were unreserved in their enthusiastic praise.
All of Tyler’s novels draw on a family or a family-like community as a context to observe how the characters play out their lives and their relations with one another. The author’s viewpoint varies over many possibilities: a young boy in If Morning Ever Comes (1964). A teenage girl in A Slipping-Down Life (1970). A wife in Earthly Possessions (1977). An older, dying mother in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), in which each also tells parts of the story of the woman’s three children; and a young uncle, turned single parent, who shares the narrative with two nieces and a nephew in Saint Maybe (1991). In The Ladder of Years (1995), a woman runs away from her family on a beach vacation. She reinvents herself in the image she feels more truly represents herself, while the protagonist of Back When We Were Grownups (2001) starts the novel with the realization that she had grown up to become “the wrong person” and attempts to discover whether it is still possible to become the right one. In 2012, she became the twenty-fifth winner of the annual Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence for her lifetime contribution to the literary field. Her further works include Noah's Compass (2009), A Spool of Blue Thread (2015), Clock Dance (2018), and French Braid (2022). A Spool of Blue Thread was short-listed for the 2015 Man Booker Prize. These examples show how Tyler varies her narrative voice, which is always sure and credible.
Tyler’s characters are often eccentric and quirky, but they are just as often, in the same book, pitiable in their idiosyncrasies, misunderstandings, and failures. Tyler’s world is a comic one where ordinary people make mistakes yet learn to cope with life’s problems, take personal risks, and find alternative ways to survive. Contemporary society constantly challenges Tyler’s characters with its changing traditions and sex roles, urban decline, and clutter. Her protagonists find they cannot cling to the past but must move forward, make adult choices, learn to satisfy their needs while reaching out to others, deal with modern complexity, and tolerate human differences. Tyler suggests the more inclusive and complicated their worlds become, the more vital and fulfilled they will be.
Author Works
Long Fiction:
If Morning Ever Comes, 1964
The Tin Can Tree, 1965
A Slipping-Down Life, 1970
The Clock Winder, 1972
Celestial Navigation, 1974
Searching for Caleb, 1976
Earthly Possessions, 1977
Morgan’s Passing, 1980
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, 1982
The Accidental Tourist, 1985
Breathing Lessons, 1988
Saint Maybe, 1991
Ladder of Years, 1995
A Patchwork Planet, 1998
Back When We Were Grownups, 2001
The Amateur Marriage, 2004
Digging to America, 2006
Noah's Compass, 2010
The Beginner's Goodbye, 2012
A Spool of Blue Thread, 2015
Vinegar Girl, 2016
Clock Dance, 2018
Redhead by the Side of the Road, 2020
French Braid, 2022
Short Fiction:
“The Common Courtesies,” 1968
“Who Would Want a Little Boy?,” 1968
“With All Flags Flying,” 1971
“The Bride in the Boatyard,” 1972
“The Base-Metal Egg,” 1973
“Spending,” 1973
“Half-Truths and Semi-Miracles,” 1974
“The Geologist’s Maid,” 1975
“A Knack for Languages,” 1975
“Some Sign That I Ever Made You Happy,” 1975
“Your Place Is Empty,” 1976
“Average Waves in Unprotected Waters,” 1977
“Foot-Footing On,” 1977
“Holding Things Together,” 1977
“Uncle Ahmad,” 1977
“Under the Bosom Tree,” 1977
“Linguistics,” 1978
“Laps,” 1981
“The Country Cook,” 1982
“Teenage Wasteland,” 1983
“Rerun,” 1988
“A Woman Like a Fieldstone House,” 1989
“People Who Don’t Know the Answers,” 1991
Children’s/Young Adult Literature:
Tumble Tower, 1993 (illustrations by Mitra Modarressi)
Timothy Tugbottom Says No!, 2005 (illustrations by Mitra Modarressi)
Bibliography
Bail, Paul. Anne Tyler: A Critical Companion. Greenwood Press, 1998.
"Books." Anne Tyler, annetyler.com/books. Accessed 20 July 2024.
Croft, Robert W. Anne Tyler: A Bio-Bibliography. Greenwood Press, 1995.
Duan, Yingjie, and Junwu Tian. "‘Failed Feminism’: Anne Tyler's Vinegar Girl in the Chinese Market." Critical Survey, vol. 34, no. 3, 2022, pp. 68-81. doi.org/10.3167/cs.2022.340305.
Evans, Elizabeth. Anne Tyler. Twayne, 1993.
Jansen, Henry. Laughter Among the Ruins: Postmodern Comic Approaches to Suffering. P. Lang, 2001.
Kelly, Mary Louise, Elena Burnett, and Courtney Dorning. "Author Anne Tyler on Writing her 24th Novel and Why She Writes About Families." NPR, 22 Mar. 2022, www.npr.org/2022/03/22/1088097171/author-anne-tyler-on-writing-her-24th-novel-and-why-she-writes-about-families. Accessed 20 July 2024.
Kissel, Susan S. Moving On: The Heroines of Shirley Ann Grau, Anne Tyler, and Gail Godwin. Bowling Green State U Popular P, 1996.
Petry, Alice Hall. “Bright Books of Life: The Black Norm in Anne Tyler’s Novels.” The Southern Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 1, 1992, pp. 7-13.
Quiello, Rose. Breakdowns and Breakthoughts: The Figure of the Hysteric in Contemporary Novels by Women. P. Lang, 1996.
Ravenel, Shannon, ed. Best of the South. Algonquin Books, 1996.
Salwak, Dale, ed. Anne Tyler as Novelist. U of Iowa P, 1994.
Stephens, C. Ralph, ed. The Fiction of Anne Tyler. UP of Mississippi, 1990.
Tyler, Anne. French Braid: A Novel. Vintage, 2022.