Extended Interview: Ann Tyler

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See full terms at mintmobile.com. This is Jane Pauley. Author Anne Tyler has written more than 20 novels and won the Pulitzer Prize, but she's still got plenty to say in her newest novel and in her conversation with Sunday morning's Robert Costa. What do you think about your parents these days? Well I think they were well ahead of their time. I suppose they were basically we all grew up on a picket line of one sort or another and I think they would be watching events today and say we warned you about this or we could do something about that. They were progressive? Yes they were Quakers from originally from Minnesota. And they cared about civil rights? Civil rights, the war. My father was a conscientious objector in World War II and then the Vietnam War.

I actually have a picture of him standing alone out in front of his office building because he spent every lunch hour holding up a placard against the Vietnam War. What was it like to see that kind of passion, commitment from your parents? Oh we were all very proud and I'm just sorry that none of us are such go out and do people as my parents were. I hope they weren't disappointed as we all agreed in the same things and I spent time on those lines but it's not so much a part of my life as it was of theirs when they were around. You've said you have vivid memories of being a little girl in North Carolina. Is that still the case? You think about it from time to time?

I do. For some reason my memories, I know that my first memory happened between seven and ten months old so I think I had a better memory than I do now but the years in North Carolina in a small intentional community of mostly Quakers were there were only five years but they were very formative years. It was a beautiful place to be and to grow up in but formative in the sense that coming out of a place like that you have a sort of sense of distance from the rest of the world for a little bit. Everything was sort of new and it's as if I were a foreigner going to the regular life. We moved to Raleigh and I remember I was in I think seventh grade and the first day I went in I was wearing my little hand smock dress that my mother had made for me with a Peter Pan collar and all the girls were in these roll-up red jeans rolled up to their knees and bobby socks and they all gathered around me and they were sort of touching the smocking and looking me over and they were very polite and nice but I could sense that they were being so polite that they felt a little sorry for me and one of them said, do you have a boyfriend?

And I said, I'm 11 years old and she said, I know do you have a boyfriend? And I just thought this is this is a very different world that I'm in now. I just have hit a new place and I think that helps writers when they when they write their books to have that tiny bit of distance from from other people even as they feel close to their characters. Have you always felt like an observer?

Yes I have. I'm not exactly a participator very much. I have been an observer, yes. How do you see Quaker life?

Peaceful, very intent upon hearing the other person's side of things so much so that there's an actual rule about it has to be totally everybody agree on every vote which can really hold things up sometimes but yeah it's quiet and respectful kind of society. I feel almost like an imposter to be speaking for in any way because the fact is that when I was seven I was washing my hands for lunch one day and I looked in the mirror and thought I'm going to be one of those people who can't believe in God. So I go through life calling myself a Quaker and not of course being a true Quaker but that's just the way it is.

I think there are people who can believe in people who can't. You love listening to people. I love listening to people. I like to hear them nattering on sort of yes. Even when you're in a grocery store or coffee shop? That's why the pandemic hit my writing career very hard because I love to just be walking down the street and you hear somebody say two words and then you sort of as I go on I think I wonder what that was about.

You know I bet such and such was happening and that's where stories begin. I've heard for example you'll sometimes read or maybe all the time read on tape your entire manuscript just to make sure it has the sound you want for the language in the conversation. Well the reason I read on tape is for much more mundane purposes that I rewrite quite a bit and then but in but in between I write in longhand and in between I put what's finished on the computer every day so I'm able to read it easily the next day. Then I rewrite it again in longhand. So then how to compare the longhand with the old computer version you can miss a word here or there so I just thought oh well I'll read it on tape and then follow it on the computer screen and the side effect that I hadn't even thought about is that it also tells me oh that sounded so artificial when I said it out loud so I didn't even expect that to happen but it helps when I'm writing a lot I think it's made changes in my writing. What's it like when you put the pen to the pad the notebook versus typing on a computer? It's hard to explain but I feel as if something comes through my fingers in a way that if I were ever to get arthritis I'd have to give up writing because yes oh yes I'm amazed that people can dictate books or something like that that that's I suppose it's possible if you have to but I feel as if it's very much a handicraft that I'm doing like crocheting. Is it a private experience always alone in a room? Yes I'm jealous of people who like both of my daughters are artists and they can listen to music or conversation when they're working but writers can't do that.

No music for Ann Tyler? No it would totally color what I was doing if I were listening to a folk song I might get all sentimental and folksy I don't know. When you were growing up little women how much of an effect did that have on you as a little girl? Well I loved the book. I used to say I'd read it 22 times I'm not sure that I was right but I that was about interactions with people.

Another book that I loved when I was a child was Tree Grows in Brooklyn you know just where you're you're watching people day by day conversing and getting along with each other or not. So you're studying you're learning you're going about your going about your life and then in 1962 you meet your future husband. What do you remember about the first time you met him? Well I was not happy to see him because I thought I was going out with a married couple for a quick middle of the week supper and they brought along this strange man. Well his first complete sentence to me was it wonders me why you are so hostile. But we got married seven months later so that worked out a whirlwind romance and again I think I mean we would probably neither one of us ever said it was love at first sight it was we got to know each other and fell in love and got married as most people do but I do think that there is an element in that of for me of the same way I felt when I decided to major in Russia.

It's like oh I now I will be doing something different and not expected of myself even and you know by myself in my life. I don't know what I'm doing with a guy from Iran but I love him so it worked out very very well it was a perfect choice. What drew you to him? He himself actually was a novelist back in Iran and he was much better than most American men at talking about people and the interactions between people and thinking about people.

I think it was so easy to define things to discuss with him. It's true also that he was a child psychiatrist but I don't associate that with his particular gifts that he always was that kind of person. In fact his own family said his family in Iran said you know he was always a bit of an outsider here because it is strange for men to be so quick to just discuss inner things going on.

I don't know not to generalize wildly but and he always said I guess before there were so many refugees in the world but he said you'd be surprised how many times you see somebody in this country or in a country other than his own who's there because he never felt quite at home in his own country. And marriage has been a running line through your work? Oh is there anything more interesting than marriage?

Tell me why. And that's well because we choose the people. I mean it's interesting to see how let's say you know a mother and child get along together but they didn't choose each other. Why did the married couple who gave birth to that child choose each other?

And you know it's it's a mystery and sometimes they make a mistake and have to do it over but it's it's just fun to watch and to imagine myself in either row. We'll have more from our Sunday morning extended interview after this break. This episode is brought to you by Hay Day.

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Get started at vanta.com. As a reader, I sense you respect people and characters and the human experience. Well I do. I think in a way that's I'm almost cheating because I don't ever want to write about somebody I don't like because I'm going to be with them for two or three years and I just don't want to live with them that long. And so the self-selection means you know I've chosen people I can respect that I'm writing about. And there is a respect too perhaps in how you don't veer into the bedroom.

You write so much about love, loss, family, decisions, but you never go down a certain path. No, I've never written any very explicit sex scenes or anything like that and nor am I comfortable reading them. It's not just respect for their privacy but also that well it's hard to explain. I'm probably stumbling all over myself but when I'm reading a scene that gets too explicit, I feel that after all it doesn't reveal as much as you might think. You'd be revealing more in a lot of other areas of their life than just how they act in bed together.

You know it's just not it's in a way that's too just maybe without I don't know obviously I'm not comfortable talking about that. You say you like your characters you get to know them yet you throw away all your notes after you finish a novel? Yes, I don't well for one thing when I finish a book I feel that the reason I ended it where I ended is that I have their lives settled now for better or for worse and I will not be writing a sequel or anything like that and I always think that you should resist the urge to sort of be economical with your material and say well I'm not going to write that into this chapter but I'll save it for something else because it'll come in handy.

No, throw everything away start over the next time. Have you ever thought about writing a postcard to a past character? Do you ever want to check in? How are you doing? I kind of feel I know how they're doing.

I do. Sometimes I'm sad at how they must be doing but I yeah I've moved on and I always tell people I'm like a mother cat who meets her grown kittens in the street and doesn't even know she's related to them. I can't remember who's in which book or what was the title of such and such a book. But you must imagine some of them from time to time. Well I will say that Ezra who ran the homesick restaurant in the book The Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is somebody who's stayed with me forever and he's not a very interesting person I would say but I have periodically dropped an Ezra into some scene in a later novel that nobody will ever notice just to give him a chance to read it.

Or notice just to give him a tip of my hat. But that's the same Ezra? Same Ezra yes. That book endures it sticks with people. Well I think of it as one of my children in my heart so to speak. Anytime I turn a novel out into the world and say okay the publishers can have it now I wouldn't do it if I didn't like the book and think it was worthwhile but then what I can't predict is on down the road is one of them staying with me and seems to be really embedded in me and I would say The Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is one of those. Home is such a theme there and in other books. That's true.

I like the idea I mean I like Ezra's idea of just basically the point of his restaurant is to kind of nurture in spirit just by giving them homey foods and so on it's a very trite idea but you know he's doing it. But he sees it all. Yeah yeah. Kind of like you. Oh I wish. There's an element of Ezra maybe in your own life experience.

I don't know maybe yeah. Food certainly factors. Oh food is huge. You love people love how you write about food. It's very revealing people's attitudes toward food. Some people don't actually care about food which really interests me because but I don't think I've ever written about anybody like that. I think it's it's revealing what they like how they treat food whether it's a you know a passion or just yeah I you could you could write an entire character sketch just based on what their menu looks like in a day I think. Women love your work so do men. I love to hear that.

One of the biggest fans might be my father. And why do you believe you have such appeal not only to women but so many men are pulled into your work? Well I wonder if it's because I don't think of men as being that foreign to me as in when I when I was growing up it was a little difficult with my mother but my father was the one that we turned to and I had three brothers and two excellent grandfathers and it just seemed that I'm I'm very comfortable feeling for one thing I'm very I'm very happy to write about men or even occasionally as a first person male character without feeling too presumptuous because I feel as if yes I've been sort of looking at men closely and appreciating them for all of my life you know. So I I would think maybe men can sense that as they read the books I mean although they're still not very so-called feminine topics sometimes but but I'm glad that at least some men are are receptive to them. Well so many of the men in your books they're not just villains or side characters they're fully drawn. Yes well as real life men are.

We would hope. Yes. When you think about you said you're you're working on a book right now where someone is selling. He's designing kitchen remodels. There are many eccentric jobs throughout your books. Where do you come up with some of these jobs?

Well I don't know. I had no idea I was interested in kitchen remodeling. I just want I want a job that's well you anything anybody does just about reveals character so much. He has these little you know quirks about what he believes should be happening or not. He would never design a kitchen without one of those little desks in it that'll hold a phone and a notepad and pencil.

You just need one of those you know and people sometimes argue with him he says they have to have them. So I mean I like things like that little little touches I find out about people and it does feel as if I find out. It's not as if I manufactured his interest in desks in kitchens it's that it was it was filtered down to me so to speak.

I'm often embarrassed when I at least was when I was in writing in a house where there were other people that sometimes my characters would say something and I would laugh out loud as I wrote it down and I always said I'm not laughing at my own jokes. This is the character just suddenly took over and stepped in you know. I start a book and they're just these paper puppets that I'm pushing around and I'm saying oh let's give him such and such a job and oh no no make him something else and I'm just you know and they're not they're not very inspiring and they just and then all of a sudden one will say something and I'll laugh and say oh and there we go. I mean they they've taken over the book and I can sit back and enjoy them. You write about pets and how they are not just props in a life but they're often key characters. Oh they are characters yes.

There's a cat in Three Days in June and and it's looking for a home and my daughter's claim that in trying to find her a home I am trying to atone for what happened in the last book when a woman at the end just takes a cat in and dumps it at the SPCA and it's not having any more to do with it. Well are you atoning? Are they right? Are your daughters right? Well I am.

I didn't consciously atone but they're they're right that that was unforgivable and I did feel bad doing it. When you begin a novel do you have a plot in mind or just the characters? I have a plot in mind but it's usually it covers maybe half a sheet of typing paper.

Just that? Yeah just suppose somebody does such and such and I think he would do that and I wonder what would happen after that and that gets me going and I always think as I'm writing down this half page or so that I know how I plan to end it but I think almost more often than not I've been wrong about the ending because that's the other factor in having your characters come and talk to you and pull their own direction. They say no it would not end.

I planned for celestial navigation to have a happy ending and devoutly wished it for my character and it just couldn't happen. So often when people get older they worry their lives might get a little boring yet so many of your characters in different books when they become grandparents their lives suddenly get more interesting. Yes I do think it's like a sort of spreading out in all directions. It's nice when your grandchildren are interested in something you never thought of being interested in.

You know it's all sort of rivers going in different directions. Just for fun maybe pick out one card and just tell us what's on it without detailing it in a way that would destroy the editorial use. So that's the one I just picked. Oh it's about a child who may be…I'm trying to think how to phrase this… Broadly is fine.

One of her children remembers a past life and she's wondering whether that could be a past life or is it just some dream the child had. It seems like you're making good progress on your next book. I am.

That's the one I'm never going to end so I'm a little worried about that. You say it's never going to end the process but you always say that to a point it seems. Well this time I mean it now. You really mean it?

Yes. One of the worst days of my life is handing in a novel saying, oh you mean somebody else is going to be seeing this. Is there a sense of vulnerability or what?

I guess you could call it that. Just exposure. Being exposed. And then the bad stuff happens like publicity. The fun part was actually producing the book.

Just writing it day by day. Get ready to laugh until it hurts. You're going to love this.

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