YHIHF, Part II
If you'll indulge me, I'm about to go on a bit about a book none of you have read: Anne Tyler's Digging to America, which will be published in May. It's the other book I just finished in galley form.
Two things you should know about Anne Tyler, if you don't already: (1) She has written 17 novels, and I've read and loved every one; (2) she's not everyone's cup of tea. Though I have a hard time imagining why. I'm just told she's not by those for whom she is not.
Oh, there's a third thing: She's almost never mentioned in the "literary" circles that I sometimes travel in, even though she has won a Pulitzer Prize. In fact, I can think of only one writer friend of mine, S, whom I know to be as much of a fan as I am. Yay, S.
When I'm asked who my favorite authors are, Anne Tyler is always at the top of the list. From writers, I usually get either neutral looks or some comment like "I've read a few of her books, and they're all the same."
Yes, she has a distinct world she returns to again and again: Baltimore eccentrics. Fortunately, another thing that never changes is the high quality of her prose, the precision of her inner and outer detail, the gentle sharpness of her humor, and her ear for the way real (albeit eccentric) people speak.
I guess she's considered by some literary types to be a middleweight since she's a bestselling author? That's all I can figure out. It's certainly not that she doesn't go deep.
She does go someplace new in Digging to America: For the first time as far as I can recall, she ventures beyond her usual world of white Baltimoreans. In fact, the only serious criticism I can make about her body of work up till now is the ethnically homogeneous world her characters inhabit -- which is strange since Tyler is not from an ethnically homogeneous world herself. She was married for many years to an Iranian-American, who died several years ago.
The new book is all about cultural tensions, isolation, and assimilation: Two families -- one Iranian-American and one Caucasian -- greet their adopted Korean babies at BWI Airport on the same day and become friends. The novel covers the next seven or eight years of their intertwining and often conflicting lives.
If there's a main character, it's probably Maryam, the Iranian-born, widowed grandmother of one of the babies. Here's a passage toward the end that I liked, from Maryam's point of view:
"What a small, small life she lived! She had one grown son, one daughter-in-law, one grandchild, and three close friends. Her work was pleasantly predictable. Her house hadn't changed in decades. Next January she would be sixty-five years old -- not ancient, but even so, she couldn't hope for her world to grow anything but narrower from now on. She found this thought comforting rather than distressing.
"Last week she'd noticed an obituary for a seventy-eight-year-old woman in Lutherville. Mrs. Cotton enjoyed gardening and sewing, she had read. Family members say she hardly ever wore the same outfit twice.
"No doubt as a girl Mrs. Cotton had envisioned something more dramatic, but still, it didn't sound like such a bad existence to Maryam."
Just as Maryam is on the verge of settling for her own existence -- there is something to be said for acceptance of one's lot, after all -- she makes a definitive turn in the 22 pages that follow that quote.
I guess it says something about me that a passage about accepting life's quietness and smallness speaks to me -- and that making a turn in another direction does as well.
Two things you should know about Anne Tyler, if you don't already: (1) She has written 17 novels, and I've read and loved every one; (2) she's not everyone's cup of tea. Though I have a hard time imagining why. I'm just told she's not by those for whom she is not.
Oh, there's a third thing: She's almost never mentioned in the "literary" circles that I sometimes travel in, even though she has won a Pulitzer Prize. In fact, I can think of only one writer friend of mine, S, whom I know to be as much of a fan as I am. Yay, S.
When I'm asked who my favorite authors are, Anne Tyler is always at the top of the list. From writers, I usually get either neutral looks or some comment like "I've read a few of her books, and they're all the same."
Yes, she has a distinct world she returns to again and again: Baltimore eccentrics. Fortunately, another thing that never changes is the high quality of her prose, the precision of her inner and outer detail, the gentle sharpness of her humor, and her ear for the way real (albeit eccentric) people speak.
I guess she's considered by some literary types to be a middleweight since she's a bestselling author? That's all I can figure out. It's certainly not that she doesn't go deep.
She does go someplace new in Digging to America: For the first time as far as I can recall, she ventures beyond her usual world of white Baltimoreans. In fact, the only serious criticism I can make about her body of work up till now is the ethnically homogeneous world her characters inhabit -- which is strange since Tyler is not from an ethnically homogeneous world herself. She was married for many years to an Iranian-American, who died several years ago.
The new book is all about cultural tensions, isolation, and assimilation: Two families -- one Iranian-American and one Caucasian -- greet their adopted Korean babies at BWI Airport on the same day and become friends. The novel covers the next seven or eight years of their intertwining and often conflicting lives.
If there's a main character, it's probably Maryam, the Iranian-born, widowed grandmother of one of the babies. Here's a passage toward the end that I liked, from Maryam's point of view:
"What a small, small life she lived! She had one grown son, one daughter-in-law, one grandchild, and three close friends. Her work was pleasantly predictable. Her house hadn't changed in decades. Next January she would be sixty-five years old -- not ancient, but even so, she couldn't hope for her world to grow anything but narrower from now on. She found this thought comforting rather than distressing.
"Last week she'd noticed an obituary for a seventy-eight-year-old woman in Lutherville. Mrs. Cotton enjoyed gardening and sewing, she had read. Family members say she hardly ever wore the same outfit twice.
"No doubt as a girl Mrs. Cotton had envisioned something more dramatic, but still, it didn't sound like such a bad existence to Maryam."
Just as Maryam is on the verge of settling for her own existence -- there is something to be said for acceptance of one's lot, after all -- she makes a definitive turn in the 22 pages that follow that quote.
I guess it says something about me that a passage about accepting life's quietness and smallness speaks to me -- and that making a turn in another direction does as well.
posted by Billy at 12:45 AM
1 Comments:
I recall reading one Anne Tyler book many years ago.
Your post and particularly the quote near the end lead me to want to read this new one (and maybe some others). I'll be waiting for the paperback, so it will be a while :)
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