Anne tyler- biography
Anne Tyler- Biography
Background:
Born in 1941 in Minneapolis, Minnesota as the daughter of an industrial chemist and a social worker. Tyler spent much of her youth in rural areas of North Carolina living among various Quaker communities before the family finally settled down in Raleigh. These years formed the background for her Southern literary flavour which can be seen in the settings of her fiction. Being asked about the writer or work that had the biggest influence on her writing, she replied: “A major influence on my writing was reading Eudora Welty` s short stories at age fourteen. It wasn’t till then that I realised that the kind of people I saw all around me could be fit subjects for literature.”
Education
Aged 19, Tyler graduated from Duke University, Durham, NC, where she twice won the Ann Flexner Award for creative writing.
She became member of Phi Beta Kappa and did post- graduate work in Russian studies at Columbia University.
Many years later in an interview about 1998`s novel A Patchwork Planet, being asked how she came to choose writing as her life’s work and what sustains her in this often solitary vocation, Tyler answered: “I didn’t really choose to write; I fell more or less into it. Its true that its a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them.”
Private life
Tyler married in 1963, she and her husband Taghi Modaressi have two daughters and since 1965 they live together in Baltimore, the working- class city many of her novels call home. Once she stated in early interview: “None of my experiences ever finds its way into my work. However, the stages of my life- motherhood, middle age etc.
- often influence my subject matter.”
Literary work
Her debut novel, If morning ever comes, was published in 1964, cannot be called a overnight success. Tyler admitted being least than fond of both her debut and her second effort The Tin
Can Tree.
Also her next three novels, The Clock Winder (1972), Celestial Navigation (1974) and Searching for Caleb (1975) couldn’t catch the attention of a wider market.
It was in 1977 when Anne Tyler won an award from the American Academy for Earthly Possessions.
She had her first broke on popular literary in 1982 with Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, a novel that explores tensions inside a family seen from the perspective of each member in turn as matriarch Pearl lies on her deathbed.
In 1985 The Accidental Tourist was published, maybe Anne Tyler’s best known work. It was honoured with the National Critics` Award. In 1988 the book was made into a film directed by Lawrence Kasdan, starring William Hurt, Kathleen Turner and Geena Davis.
Tyler earned the Pulitzer Prize for fiction with 1988`s Breathing Lessons, the story of a couple who have been married for 28 years. Maggie Moran is the eternal optimist, daring and enterprising. She is married to Ira who fanatically plays solitaire, and the mother of Jesse, a high school dropout, and Daisy.
On a hot summer day the couple drives to the funeral of the husband of Maggie`s best friend. During their 90-mile trip, Tyler explores the problems of marriage, love and happiness. Edward Hoagland writes in The New York Times “She loves love stories, though she often inventories the woe and entropy of lovelessness. She likes a wedding and all the ways weddings can differ, loves to enumerate the idiosyncrasies of children’s sensibilities and of house furnishings. Temperate though she is, she celebrates intemperance zest and an appetite for whatever, just as long as families stay together. She wants her characters plausibly married and caring for each other.
”
In 1991, Saint Maybe was published, a novel with the theme of guilt inside an unhappy middle- class family.
1996`s Ladder of the Year, the story of a woman who leaves her family, was awarded as one of the years ten best books by the Time Magazine.
A Patchwork Tale (1998) is about Barnaby Gaitlin who helps old people through an organisation called Rent-a-back. He was considered a most Tylerian character in a most Tylerian job. In an interview about this book, Tyler was asked for the reason of creating such a wide array of elderly characters. She replied: “Time, in general, has always been a central obsession of mine- what it does to people, how it can constitute a plot all on its own.
So naturally, I am interested in old age.”
Up to now, Anne Tyler’s last book published was, in 2001, Back when we were Grownups.
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