Novelist Anne Tyler opened up in a pair of rare interviews with newspapers, talking about the writing life, Covid-19, and race.
Tyler’s latest book, French Braid, is scheduled for publication on Tuesday by Knopf. It’s the 24th novel from the author of widely admired books like The Accidental Tourist and Breathing Lessons.
The novelist tends to avoid the press, but she talked to reporters from the U.K. newspaper theTimes and her hometown paper, the Baltimore Sun.
Tyler told the Times that her writing career wasn’t exactly planned. “I never planned to be a writer at all,” she said. “For years, maybe even today, sometimes I think, ‘What exactly am I going to do with my life? What is my career going to be? I’m only 80, for God’s sake!’”
The author said she’s been afflicted with a kind of writer’s block in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, not able to start work on another novel.
“Certainly, I have been distracted all through the pandemic,” she told the Sun. “What I don’t understand is why. I’m honestly not afraid of COVID. So what is it that I’m so worried about? I don’t know.”
In a statement that raised eyebrows on Twitter, Tyler told the Times that she’s “astonished” by discussions of racial appropriation in literature.
“It would be very foolish for me to write, let’s say, a novel from the viewpoint of a black man, but I think I should be allowed to do it,” she said.
She struck a similar chord in her interview with the Sun, saying, “There have been Black characters in my books, but none that I’ve viewed from within. For me personally, presuming to write from inside the mind of a Black person would be disrespectful.”
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
