Anne Tyler and I sat on a sofa overlooking an artificial pond in her retirement community outside of Baltimore. She moved there in 2022 and loves the place enough, with its timber walking trails, a saltwater pool and an art studio.
But when I asked Tyler, 83, the clubs and activities she participated in in the vast establishment, her answer was an apologetic “What?”
Tyler is too busy writing a book. Her 25th novel, “Three Days of June,” appears on February 11th, and she has already penetrated another.
“I definitely have to pick up a pen on a weekday morning,” she said. “They're non-obsessed. I used to wear band-aids on my fingers, but now I don't need them.”
This is something that rarely involves interviews and passes a revelation from Tyler, who gracefully dodges questions about work. It's not that she is secret or superstitious about her “craft” (a word that we never use in this context). She doesn't understand what a hoopra is. She established a writing routine and stuck to it.
Tyler has now been a literary fixture for over 60 years.
When her first book, “If Morning Ever Come,” was published in 1964, Times critics described it as “a very good novel, very mature, very smart, very bright and entertaining. Jacket, Few readers suspect Mrs. Tyler was only 22 years old.”
Since then, Tyler has been making books every few years. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for “Breathing Lessons” and is a three-time National Book Award finalist. Her novels have sold 13 million copies worldwide, and have sold several films, including Earthly Possessions (1977) and The Disctipal Tourist (1985).
Her story tends to be characterized by a grumpy but decent eccentric who hit obstacles with varying degrees of discomfort. Most will be held in Baltimore and revolve around families on a spectrum ranging from quirky to dysfunction.
A classic for book clubs, carry-on bags and bestseller lists, but a copy of Tyler's novel is not found in her single story, the two-bedroom home. When she reduced, she held nothing.
“Why are you bothered?” Tyler said. “I ordered a Kindle copy so I could check anything if I wanted.”
Her schedule is the same every morning. First, she goes for a walk. She then sits at a white desk beneath two Hoppelesque paintings by her eldest daughter, Teza Modaressy. She drinks coffee with cream and writes on longlined paper until lunch. When she has a decent chunk (several pages or scenes), she enters it into her laptop.
There is no magic word count or a specific daily goal.
“I will write Page 1, Chapter 1, and the first event and continue,” Tyler said. She doesn't feel pain or try to revive the ideas she flops. “You have to keep the scraps and resist the urge to take them into something else. A death kiss.”
She raves about the sturdy shredders of the retirement community: “You put in a chunk of paper and it just disappears!”
Occasionally, Tyler consults a collection of observations and conversation snippets recorded and stored in spotted containers labeled “blue box.” (Its predecessor is blue and its name is packed with.) Some cards have declined for over 30 years, but she continues to add to the supply.
“I should be able to empty it and quit my job, right?” Tyler said. “The problem is that new things are always coming.”
In 60 years, Tyler has visited the publisher Alfred A. Knopp's office several times. She works with three editors. Judith Jones and Sonny Meta are both legends in their own right, and now Deanna Tegerina Miller said in an interview that she was initially threatened by Tyler.
“I remember removing her paperback from my mother's bookshelves,” Miller said. “She offers a finished job. Some writers want to talk to editors at different stages, in a rough draft of brainstorming. Anne makes novels whenever possible. I'll take it.”
When the book is released worldwide, Tyler lets go. She likes to share the characters in “Dinner at a Homesick Restaurant” (1982) and “French Blade” (2022) as if she remembers her distant cousin who no longer trades holiday cards. We spoke in the squad.
“It's like a mother cat who doesn't recognize her grown kitten when she meets him on the street,” Tyler said. “The book is finished, then I have to put it away and remember. What exactly is it about?”
Tyler is not teaching, attending meetings, participating in social media, or belonging to writing groups or book clubs.
“I don't really get along with the discussion of books,” she said. “I read it, throw it, read the new one.”
She stopped writing reviews years ago. “That was my foray into non-fiction,” Tyler said. “If I'm writing fiction and I'm in depth enough about it, all of a sudden I feel like I'm telling the truth. If I'm writing non-fiction, I absolutely believe Write down what you're doing. It's going to look like a lie.”
In 1991, Tyler appeared in “Object Lesson,” Anna Quindren's debut novel, “The Times.” “It was a mixed review, but I then learned something about how to fuse backstory into the plot,” Quindlen wrote in an email. “More importantly, I learned that despite being a literary last name, it is possible to be open and generous with people who are used to the game.”
Among other bestsellers, Lian Moriarty, author of “A Moment Here” and “The Big Little Lies,” wrote in an email that “Cutting Tourist” was her first Tyler novel. Write such an interesting and wonderful book about ordinary people leading normal family life. It was the perfect details of all those that fascinated me. ”
Moriarty continued. “Sometimes, when I sit down and write, I get an Anne Tyler book, read the pages, then say, “OK, Liane, just do that.”
Tyler has not included an acknowledgement page in the book, nor does he use epigraphs. Only one of her books, “Patchwork Planet” (1998) contains the dedication, “In the loving memory of my husband, Taghi Modarrressi.”
Modarrressi, a psychiatrist and novelist, passed away in 1997, but what appears in the small print under the bell at Tyler's door is his last name. This may explain why some of her neighbors don't know she is a bestselling author.
“Why do they know?” Tyler asked, truly confused. “A writer is not like a movie star. You don't see their faces around them.”
She also said, “How many people are reading the book?”
Tyler praises writers like Claire Keegan, who wrote several novels. She is afraid she is written too much and will not mind defeating the first few on her list. She recommended “The Sea Behind You” by Susan Muadi Duraj, whom she met through her novelist friend Madison Smart Bell.
Tyler and Bell have been friends for 40 years. Meanwhile, they discussed Tyler's work “virtually never,” Bell wrote in an email. “She might mention whether she's having a good writing day or not. We can have extensive conversations about other people's work (Anne always says). We've kept up to modern fiction) but we're not ourselves.”
Here is a partial list of topics Tyler has been happy to chat with: motherhood, marriage, hair, hair, hotel, sisters, grandchildren, grocery shopping, cat, covid, cooking (she perfects the perfect air fried brussels buds (I'm determined to do so) and she volunteered at a local elementary school.
She had said a lot about this last subject.
“I kept hearing how late our kids fell during the COVID era,” Tyler said. “God needs to teach everyone math, but he's very good at sitting with a child learning to read. I love the process.”
After passing the basic aptitude test, Tyler was assigned to work with third graders. The reality of classroom instruction was not what she wanted. Her first job included rolling a trio of dice printed with letters and helping an 8-year-old record what she saw.
“You had to write it down: tot. Is it a word, isn't it a word? It's a word. Jaji. It's not a word,” Tyler said. “These kids were very boring. One was heading towards the bathroom. Of course he had to go to the bathroom. I have to go to the bathroom too!”
The next activity was equally unrelenting. The students wrote letters to their future selves and explained in detail how they planned to achieve their goals. For example, if they want to work in construction, they listed the tools they need to learn how to use it.
“I felt that was the most discouraging and disruptive thing,” Tyler said.
Now, Tyler occasionally sorts school clothes donations in the afternoon. She enjoys chatting with fellow volunteers and imagining, for example, a student lucky enough to land a sequin dress “with wing-like ruffles.”
But most of the time, Tyler writes while her neighbors paint gardening, beekeeping and ceramic paintings.
She is also preparing for the publication of “Three Days in June.”
Recorded in a 176-page trim, the book follows a socially troublesome divorced couple through the only child's wedding. Of course, it will take place in Baltimore. Tyler lives there for most of her adult life, but she admits she doesn't know the city as much as she once did.
Certainly, Tyler's recent books seem to be set at times other than hours. They're not old fashioned, but young people are more formal than they should be, like wearing collared shirts when they might be more comfortable to sweat.
Yet parents and children were heading towards timeless patterns: worship, infuriating, connected, repetition. Tyler illuminates the space between people, indicating that it feels like it's looking out. This is her superpower (the word she reserves for Marvel characters) and is getting even stronger with age.
At the end of our visit, Tyler paused on his way to the front door. She wanted to showcase a framed drawing by her young girl, Mitra Modaressy, who wrote and painted several books for children. This photo was from “Tumble Tower” they worked on together, and Tyler lingered in the details. It's a confusing collection of threads, cats, and children's rooms.
She then disappeared into one of her own tidy bedrooms and grabbed my coat from the closet.
“I thoroughly enjoyed talking to you,” Tyler said. “I'm sorry I had to talk about my writing.”
