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On Anne Tyler

 Anne Tyler has made certain concessions. Perhaps her audience is dying; perhaps people don't read books anymore. We now see Tyler consenting to interviews; her discomfort is palpable. Also, her new book ("Three Days in June") is decorated with effusive quotations. Did we need all of these back in the era of "Ladder of Years"?


People complained about Anita Brookner that her plots had become repetitive; her drippy heroes were oppressive as companions. But Brookner didn't care. She was writing for herself and not for "market trends." The same is true of Anne Tyler.

There are things I will always remember about my wedding. The person who showed up late, a little awkwardness around someone's alcohol consumption, a couple of odd remarks. These are the tiny details that interest Anne Tyler. She isn't writing about Trump, Elon Musk, Caitlyn Jenner, Benjamin Netanyahu. But I do think that her writing is topical--because there will always be flawed people trying to collaborate on a wedding. There will always be weird antisocial quirks--in the nicest of settings--because people are people. Forever and ever and ever--there is no limit to the questions we can ask about human behavior.

The new Tyler novel is about a wedding, and it pulls off a difficult trick. It stays in the first-person point of view throughout, so certain mysteries remain mysteries. If you're trapped in your own perspective, you will never know everything that is happening between two other people. In "weak" novels, the narrator learns everything--literally everything--that has seemed hidden. He or she learns all of this, in a tidy way, by the end of the story. But Tyler digs down to a bedrock truth. Her narrator is "in the dark" in several ways. And she remains in the dark--but the story does arrive at a satisfying conclusion.

This is another work of genius--whether or not it reaches a wide audience. Anne Tyler knows exactly what she is doing.

P.S. I like to notice how often a Tyler title alludes to time or the measurement of time. "Ladder of Years," "Three Days in June," "Back When We Were Grownups," "If Morning Ever Comes," "The Clock Winder," "Clock Dance." Even "A Spool of Blue Thread" makes me think of Penelope at her loom. The spool is like an hourglass. When you run out of thread, you know that a certain amount of time has passed.
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