It’s the 80th birthday of novelist Anne Tyler, born in 1941 in Minneapolis. She is the author of The Accidental Tourist (1985), Back When We Were Grownups (2001), Digging to America (2006), and The Beginner’s Goodbye (2012).
Early in her career, she decided she did not want to be a public person, so she stopped giving readings and only does occasional interviews in writing. She said, “Any time I talk in public about writing, I end up not able to do any writing. It’s as if some capricious Writing Elf goes into a little sulk whenever I expose him.”
Tyler also said, “I want to live other lives. I’ve never quite believed that one chance is all I get. Writing is my way of making other chances. It’s lucky I do it on paper. Probably I would be schizophrenic — and six times divorced — if I weren’t writing.”
Tyler has a new novel, French Braid, due out in March 2022.
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