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| Anne Tyler |
Anne Tyler
‘I have always wanted to time-travel’
This week, Anne Tyler published her 20th novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, which tells the story of a Baltimore family, the Whitshanks, over the course of three generations. Tyler has won a host of awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize, since publishing her first novel, If Morning Ever Comes, in 1964. Her other books include The Accidental Tourist, Breathing Lessons, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and Back When We Were Grownups.
Whose sentences are your favourite, and why?
The last sentence of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." It always makes me feel so pleasantly melancholy. The first sentence of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." I love all the different layers of time in that one sentence. And finally, from Eudora Welty's short story The Wide Net: "Edna Earle could sit and ponder all day on how the little tail of the 'C' got through the 'L' in a Coca-Cola sign." Reading that at age 14 came as a huge revelation; it showed me that the trivial details of my own humdrum Southern surroundings could be a fit subject for literature.
What question do you wish people would ask about your work (that they don't ask)?
I think it would be nice if people asked, after finishing one of my books, "And then what happened? Did so-and-so ever marry? How did what's-his-name turn out?" First, that would imply that they'd really become invested in my story. And second, it would give me an excuse to go on thinking about my characters a while longer. I miss them intensely for the first little bit after I've said goodbye to them, so it would be fun for me to consider their continuing lives.
Would you rather have the ability to be invisible or time-travel, and why?
I have always wanted to time-travel. There are several eras I would love to investigate: the period when our ancestors were first developing language; the period when Jesus was teaching; the period when Shakespeare was producing his plays; the days of the westward expansion in America; and finally, the year 1910, which I picture as striking the perfect balance – not so far back in the dark ages that life was abject misery, but not so modern that our world wars had begun. It occurs to me that in these fantasies, I am picturing myself as a fly on the wall. I'd have to be careful not to interact with anyone, not to affect events in any way that would skew the future. So I'm invisible, I guess you could say. But that is secondary to the fact that I am time-travelling.
Which books have you reread most in your life?
In my early childhood, I read literally to shreds a picture book by Virginia Lee Burton called The Little House. I reread it still, on occasion, carefully lifting each page because the binding has long ago disintegrated. Then between the ages of, let's say, seven and 10, I read Little Women exactly 22 times. And as a grown-up, I used to read Anna Karenina every single summer up until just a few years ago.
What's the best romance in literature, and why?
Oh, no doubt about it: Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy's, in Pride and Prejudice. It was such a satisfaction to see them finally, finally unbend with each other, and I've always been amused by the fact that Mr. Darcy's grand estate so obviously heightens Elizabeth's appreciation for him.
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