Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist critically acclaimed as a master of the art of everyday lives of middle-class America.
On the island
Eight records
It's loud and it bursts out at you in the same way that urban life bursts out at me.
My husband was Iranian and… it was the most welcoming arrival I've ever been through.
Just as a sort of tribute to Montreal and Canada and the happenstance of being forced to write a novel while I was living there.
Children do connect you more to the world, whether you want to be or not.
Sheep May Safely GrazeFavourite
Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra (arr. Richard Hayman)
It seemed like Tiggy talking to us almost.
I've always thought that the shape of the average person's life is sort of the shape of a human eye.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:41You say you prefer character to plots, and quite often your characters surprise you. How do they do that?
Often, when I begin, it's almost as if I'm forcing them into situations. I'm moving them around like puppets. And then this moment will come, usually when I'm busy with their dialogue, when suddenly they take over. And I've been known to laugh aloud when one of them says something. And it's not that I'm laughing at my own joke, it's that they said something. So in that sense, they're leading me. It always takes a while. I start by feeling, oh, this is very artificial, what I'm doing. But then when they come alive, it's just sheer joy.
Presenter asks
3:40Endurance is a quality that's often overlooked in literature because it's not showy or exciting, but you do celebrate it. What is it about that quality that appeals to you as a writer?
I think it's the most moving quality. In human beings. Sometimes I'm just astonished at the day-to-day endurance that humans show. I'm not talking about huge heroic endurance, but just getting through lives that sometimes don't seem as if much will come of them, but people keep on trying. And for me, the plot is sort of well, the passage of time, that's always good for a plot, but also just watching how people cope.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
Eudora Welty
I think that if I were alone on a desert island ... Just this reminder of how funny and odd and stumbling and just unexpected human beings can be would be a perfect way to feel that I was among companions after all.
The luxury
Because I know that I'm not allowed to take an animal with me to the island, but I figure there's going to be some wildlife there. ... whatever it is, I will have something to try to hand feed them with and make a friend.
Tell me a little bit more about the child we would have seen back then. Were you happy?
My mother was difficult and my father was wonderful, as I'm sure many people feel about parents, one or the other. But I was raised very kindly. My mother was really determined that we should love books, and she read to us from the very, very earliest days, which I think is important. And she encouraged me to write my little stories. I you know, all these nights when I went to bed and couldn't sleep, and I would I shared a room with my brother closest to me in age, and I would whisper stories to myself. He would shout out and say, Mamma, Ann's whispering again. But it was my way of sort of being creative and I think my parents understood there was no fuss made. They told me to be quieter about it.
Presenter asks
11:31When you were eleven, your family moved to Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina, and you went to a mainstream school. Was that a bit of a culture shock for you?
Yes, it was. I was in seventh grade, but I was young for my age, and I remember my first day of school there in a public school. And at the first recess, all the other little girls gathered around me. And the first thing they did was they complimented my dress in this very kind and solicitous way that made me understand immediately that I was dressed wrong. I was wearing a handmade dress with hands smocking across the chest, and they were all wearing red jeans. Red jeans were very popular and rolled up to their knees. So, you know, that was a bit of a jolt. And then this one girl said, Do you have a boyfriend? And I said, I'm eleven years old. And she said, I know. Do you have a boyfriend? And right then I thought, I have come to another world.
Presenter asks
17:16How did you meet your husband Taggy?
Friends brought him along. I thought I was going to have supper with my old friend and his new wife, and I was looking forward to a nice sort of cozy evening, and they showed up at the door with this young man, and I wasn't happy to see him. I mean, I he was fine, but I felt like, well, wait, this wasn't the evening I planned. And you were engaged to someone else at that point, I think. I was engaged to somebody else who was up in New York at the drama school. And so I We went to supper and it was time to pay the bill and I got out my share of the money because I was not on a date and they said, oh no, Taggy will pay for you. And I was just outraged by the whole thing that, I mean, it's like they thought he was a blind date. And I said, huh. And so that is when he said his memorable first full sentence to me, which was, it wonders me why you are so hostile.
Presenter asks
25:15You've often said that your fiction isn't taken from real life, but you have written about grief. I wonder if the emotions you wrote about were taken from your own experience of loss, and if so, did writing help?
One book I wrote where a man feels that his wife has come back and is just there. The beginning of goodbyes. Yes. It obviously was not taken from my life, but I suppose I was thinking about such things, and I don't think I properly realized about death. I had some time just spent sort of sitting there saying, so this is wait, this is how it's ending. You know, I just it was it was hard. We all were he was a wonderful father as well as husband, and we all were kind of in shock for a while.
“And then this moment will come, usually when I'm busy with their dialogue, when suddenly they take over. And I've been known to laugh aloud when one of them says something. And it's not that I'm laughing at my own joke, it's that they said something.”
“Sometimes I'm just astonished at the day-to-day endurance that humans show. I'm not talking about huge heroic endurance, but just getting through lives that sometimes don't seem as if much will come of them, but people keep on trying.”
“My mother was difficult and my father was wonderful, as I'm sure many people feel about parents, one or the other.”
“And right then I thought, I have come to another world.”
“And we just listened to that piece of music with all our hearts because it seemed like Tiggy talking to us almost. He was saying at least he knew what was happening, and he was with us.”