Interview with Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler's body of work, spanning 19 titles and almost 50 years, is rich with sharply observed characters and the everyday details of middle-class American life. Her first book, If Morning Ever Comes, was published in 1964 (though Tyler tells Goodreads that she'd rather you not read her early efforts). The now best-selling and much-decorated author often uses her long-term home of Baltimore, Maryland, as the setting of her novels, including her 1989 Pulitzer Prize-winner Breathing Lessons and her best-known work, The Accidental Tourist. Tyler's latest novel, The Beginner's Goodbye, also takes place there. The new work delves into the grief of Aaron, a middle-aged self-help guide publisher whose wife dies when a tree falls onto their house. He begins seeing her around town and has conversations with her as he learns to move on. Tyler spoke with Goodreads about the many characters lurking in her subconscious and the possibility of an afterlife.

Goodreads: You are noted for your skill in writing character-driven novels. Do you consider yourself a student of human behavior? When working on character, do you turn to people watching or daydreaming—looking outward or inward for inspiration?

Anne Tyler: I figure we're almost all students of human behavior. That's how we get along in the world—by trying to make sense of the people we have to deal with.

When I'm working on character, I search my memory for telltale traits or gestures that I may have noticed in some random passerby. For instance, the other day I met a delightfully scatterbrained woman who was wearing a plastic bracelet the size of a giant bagel. When she tried to write a note, her bracelet was so thick that her fingers couldn't reach the pad of paper she was resting her wrist on. I loved that; I thought it said reams about her.

GR: Goodreads member Catherine writes, "I am interested in the seed that initiates a new book. For example, Alice Munro has said that the seed for her stories often is an image, say the image of a man with an ax coming over a hill. What tends to be the starting point for your novels? Can you talk about the seed for The Beginner's Goodbye?"

AT: I have known a book to start with an image, certainly, or an overheard remark. With The Beginner's Goodbye, the remark was one I heard only in my imagination. I heard a man's voice speaking the book's first sentence: "The strangest thing about my wife's return from the dead..." I found the sentence baffling and decided to ignore it. But then a while later, the same man announced that he had a few handicaps. And a while after that, he added that he also had a little speech problem. That's when I began to pay attention.

I know how insane it sounds to talk about characters speaking to me. I suppose it's really my subconscious letting thoughts surface that I didn't know I was thinking.

GR: The Beginner's Goodbye is told from Aaron's first-person perspective. The reader gradually learns certain traits: his height, his handicap, his relationships. What vital attributes do you need to know about a character before you can write from his or her point of view? How do you begin?

AT: Before I start the actual novel, I write as much as a page of "back story," as actors call it, for each major character. What the character's childhood was like, how he feels about food and clothes and social occasions, his enthusiasms, his anxieties—any detail that occurs to me, I'll write down. Most of this will never make it onto the printed page, but it helps me know how that character will react within a given situation.

GR: The Beginner's Goodbye touches on the notion of an afterlife. What inspired you to write about this topic, and is the afterlife an important concept to you personally?

AT: Side A of my mind says, "There isn't any afterlife," while Side B says, "But if there isn't, then where does all that energy and character go when someone we love dies?" With The Beginner's Goodbye, it was Aaron's imaginary voice in my head, speaking the book's first sentence, that inspired me to write on the subject. I couldn't have been more surprised to find that that was what my next book would be about.

GR: Goodreads member J. Hennessey writes, "Many of your characters are written as 'average joes' with quirks. There are quirky deaths involved as well. If you had a choice, what kind of ending would you foresee for yourself? A novel one, I hope."

AT: I'll have to disappoint you, because my preferred mode of death is pretty unexceptional. I'd like something quick and relatively painless, like a heart attack, but with about half an hour's warning so that I could phone both of my daughters first and tell them how much they have added to my life.

GR: After 19 novels, what is your reaction to your body of work? What do you do differently now as a writer?

AT: If I had the means, I would buy up every copy of my first four books and destroy them. I didn't yet know what I was doing when I wrote those—I just wanted to write a novel, and it shows. For the others, well, I view them the way a mother cat views her grown kittens. They seem very distant to me, although I nourish a special affection for Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.

What I do differently now is that instead of pronouncing on a situation, I try to step inside it. I try to listen more to my characters, or even to become them, for a while.

I've read small parts of my past books from time to time because when I'm writing, I'll occasionally think, "Wait, didn't I say that in an earlier book?" It always surprises me to see how the same themes and observations seem to pop up over and over in my work, completely unintentionally.

GR: Goodreads member Sukey asks, "Anne, if you were asked to write a nonfiction piece on any current event going on in the world today, what would the topic and essence of your article be and why?"

AT: I would like to write a profile based on an in-depth interview with a major terrorist—ideally, Osama bin Laden, if he were still alive. I'd like to say, "Just explain, is all I ask. I don't understand what's gone wrong here." And then I would listen for as long as he talked, hoping that after he'd delivered the expected rant, he would quiet down a bit and start telling me what really, really the issue is.

GR: Goodreads member Peg Bachenheimer writes, "I would like to ask Anne Tyler how aging has influenced her writing. I'm an artist and am 67 and feel that my age influences what I paint and how I feel about creating in a positive way."

AT: I agree with you; I feel aging has done only good things for the creative part of my life. I'm more trustful of my characters, I'm more willing to take risks, and I'm more patient with myself. It surprises me that although I tire sooner, which means I've had to cut down from six or so hours daily to more like three, I seem to get the same amount of work done.

GR: Describe a typical day spent writing. Do you have any unusual writing habits?

AT: My first writing teacher in college, Reynolds Price, used to say, "The creative urge is like a small child; it craves routine." I'm a great believer in the powers of routine. Every single morning I take a walk through the woods, and although I may begin my walk thinking about a recipe or a house-maintenance problem, by the time I'm on the homeward loop my characters are all at once talking in my mind, and I go directly upstairs and start writing down what they've said.

I suppose it's unusual in this day and age that I work in longhand. I use a Pilot P-500 black gel pen on unlined white paper, and I rewrite, rewrite, rewrite before I finally type a section up. At the end, I rewrite the whole book in longhand all over again, and then I read it into a tape recorder. This was originally so that I could follow along on the computer screen and see where I'd made any changes, but I've found it has the added benefit of showing me when something sounds unnatural, particularly in dialogue.

GR: What authors, books, or ideas have influenced you?

AT: My single lifelong influence has been Eudora Welty, whose short stories first gave me the idea that the small-town Southern life all around me could be a fit subject for literature. Beyond that, I've been subtly influenced by more books than I can count. I don't know how many times I've thought, "Darn! I wish I'd written that!" about some pivotal moment in a plot or some leap of language, and then eventually, in my own different way, I try it myself.

GR: What are you reading now?

AT: I've just finished Russell Banks's new book, Lost Memory of Skin. I was dreading it, because it's about a hard subject—a convicted sex criminal living under an overpass—but I found it touching and absorbing, and I learned a lot from it.