A

TYLER, Anne

Born 25 October 1941, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Daughter of Lloyd P. and Phyllis Mahon Tyler; married Taghi Mohammad Modaressi, 1963; children: two daughters

Anne Tyler was raised in North Carolina. She graduated from Duke University with a major in Russian (1961) and pursued graduate work at Columbia University (1962). She served as Russian bibliographer at the Duke University Library and as assistant to the librarian at McGill University Law Library in Montreal. In 1963 Tyler married a child psychiatrist, and they had two daughters.

Tyler has been prolific: she has written several phenomenally bestselling novels and numerous short stories, which appear in many diverse magazines, from McCall's to the New Yorker. Tyler introduces most of the major characteristics of her novels in her first, If Morning Ever Comes (1964). Plots involve the complexities of family life and are geographically bound to small towns in North Carolina or to withering row houses or more fashionable Roland Park in Baltimore. The title of each novel appears in the text and focuses on a major theme. Humor, often bittersweet, is important. Characterization is Tyler's greatest strength, especially of old people who are presented with compassion and of invincible and usually eccentric women. Tyler uses diction and grammar to establish her characters' backgrounds and imagery reflecting their problems and traits: "Pieces of Emerson were lodged with Elizabeth like shrapnel." She has established herself as a writer of unquestioned talent.

Jeremy Pauling, of Celestial Navigation (1974), is a sensitive and shy artist who lives in his own mind and who finds forays into the real world puzzling and, finally, destructive. The chapters centering on him employ a narrative voice, but the six chapters devoted to four women in Jeremy's life all use first person voices. Ironically, Jeremy experiences his greatest happiness and creativity after his mother's death (an event his sisters thought would devastate his life) and after Mary and their children depart, leaving only a note on the refrigerator door. Both Jeremy—"Wasn't that what life was all about: steadfast endurance?"—and Mary—"I don't know which takes more courage: surviving a lifelong endurance test because you once made a promise or breaking free, disrupting your whole world"—embody the trait Tyler insists on for most of her characters: endurance.

Searching for Caleb (1975) juxtaposes the comic and the serious, chronicling three generations of a Baltimore family of Roland Park. Family strife climaxes when the first cousins, Justine and Duncan, marry each other. These two set out on adventures best symbolized by the Mayflower truck that moves their rosewood chests and crystal from Roland Park and by the orange U-Haul van that, much later, moves only their books and clothes to a circus' winter trailer park. Like Celestial Navigation, this novel brings characters into Chekhovian scenes where people talk to unlistening ears. Daniel and Caleb Peck, Tyler's most endearing old people; Justine, Daniel's fortune-telling, nomad-like granddaughter; other Pecks; and eccentric strangers make up this comic novel, which details man's foibles, charms, mores, weaknesses, and flaws.

In Earthly Possessions (1977), Charlotte Emory gives a minute account of being kidnapped in a Maryland bank and abducted to Florida. In alternate chapters she tells the history of her own life (a struggle to dispossess herself of encumbering possessions) and the histories of the peculiar and unhappy families of her mother and husband. Richly humorous, this novel epitomizes in Charlotte a woman Tyler frequently portrays—a woman denied the autonomous existence she craves. No shrill feminist cries rise from Tyler's fiction, but an existential longing for freedom does.

Eccentric characters are prominent in Tyler's work; they settle into a private world, unconcerned with the day-to-day activities that dominate the lives of others. Morgan's Passing (1980) presents a highly eccentric character, Morgan Gower, in fascinating detail. The reader, however, is left somewhat at a loss, never completely sure of the character or of his personae.

A skillful writer, Tyler treats serious and often tragic themes without sacrificing the comic. Her prose, as some critics charge, is not stylistically daring, and her concerns are not with depressed minorities or with mythic ghosts. Instead, she writes truly about the lives of middle class Americans, and her characters dwell, as John Updike has said, "where poetry and adventure form as easily as dew."

Tyler's critical and popular success has increased steadily. Since Morgan's Passing she has published more critically acclaimed and prize-winning novels and many short stories. In 1988, The Accidental Tourist (1985, a National Book Critics award-winner) became a major motion picture starring William Hurt; in the same year, Tyler received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for Breathing Lessons (1988).

All of Tyler's novels take place in Baltimore, where she has lived for many years. They are portraits of families who, behind the appearance of normality, shelter idiosyncrasies, pain, and secrets. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982) begins with 85-year-old Pearl Tull looking back on her life and the three children she raised alone after being abandoned by her husband. Gradually, the reader sees the profound effect this desertion has had on each character, and the inability of these children to escape their past, even as adults. In the end, however, the bonds of family overcome the pain of years of misunderstandings and lack of communication.

The Accidental Tourist is about the Learys, another abandoned family. Most of the story centers around Macon Leary, a man controlled by structure and routine. His apparent refusal to grieve after the brutal murder of his son drives away his wife, causing Macon to draw even more inward. Not until he meets Muriel Pritchett, whom he hires to train his unruly and sometimes vicious dog, does Macon finally begin to live. The Learys are an excellent example of Tyler's ability to portray a seemingly ordinary family with all their quirks and hangups in a subtle, ironic, and humorous way.

Breathing Lessons (1988) takes place in one day, with periodic flashbacks. During the journey to and from a friend's funeral, Ira and Maggie Moran come to certain realizations about their children and themselves, particularly how different from their expectations their life has become. Recognizing their regrets, they also come to know the importance of the bond they share.

The Bedloe family in Saint Maybe (1991) has also failed to live up to its own expectations. It is the "ideal" family, but through a series of tragic events, the course of all their lives changes drastically and permanently. The novel focuses on Ian, the youngest son, who sacrifices his own goals and dreams in an effort to make amends for what has happened. With more sadness and less humor than Tyler's previous work, the novel delves beautifully into the lives of ordinary people and the necessity for endurance.

Winner of the 1996 O. Henry award, Ladder of Years (1996) tells the adventures of Mrs. Delia Grinstead, who, following a chance encounter at a grocery store while on vacation with her family, runs away to begin a new life as Miss Grinstead. Life's little complications happen to Miss Grinstead just as they did to Mrs. Grinstead. Ladder of Years is a novel about marriages of all sorts, family relationships, and the interaction of people in general. The theme of Ladder of Years alludes to King Lear : when all three of his boss's daughters are lined up in front of him, Sam Grinstead chooses the youngest, Cordelia ("Delia") to become his bride. A fairy tale of sorts ensues, but for Delia all is not the "happily ever after" of fairytales. Publisher's Weekly said Tyler "engages our sympathy and growing respect for a character who finally realizes that the ladder of years is a time trip to the future."

A Patchwork Planet (1998) again is a study of family life and interpersonal relationships. Tyler once again makes the ordinary magical as she weaves the story of Barnaby, a wealthy ne'er-do-well, as he tries to make something of his life. The reader comes to care about Barnaby, struggling along with him as he tries to turn his life around. Tyler's first foray as a writer of children's literature came in 1993 with the publication of Tumble Tower. Written for children ages four to eight, Kirkus called it "a gently subversive fable celebrating the rewards of disorder." It is the story of Molly, whose discomfortingly messy room ultimately offers comfort to the rest of her family.

Tyler continues to write novels of family life peopled with characters who are true-to-life in middle-class oddball families, dealing with loneliness, isolation, human interaction. A psychologist analyzing her characters might call them dysfunctional, but they continue to be endearing to the reader. All of Tyler's main characters face crossroads, and while deciding what to do, waver, just like "real" people. The rest of her novels deal with the results of the decision ultimately made. Her work retains its clarity of style, and her ability to combine the tragic with the comic gives her characters a genuine humanity. She consistently addresses the individual struggle for identity, happiness, and fulfillment, and demonstrates that the simple, even the apparently trivial, is sometimes the source of what is most rich and complex in life, and well worth examination.