SOURCE: Dasgupta, Sanjukta. “Towards Harmony: Social Concern in Anne Tyler's Fiction.” Indian Journal of American Studies 27, no. 1 (winter 1997): 71-5.

In the following essay, Dasgupta asserts that Tyler's fiction “may be regarded as a felicitous fusion of social and individual consciousness with emphasis on the latter, a common characteristic of postmodern literary art.”

I

Anne Tyler's first novel If Morning ever Comes was published in 1964 when she was twenty-three years old. Writing consistently since then Tyler has published thirteen novels in the course of over thirty years apart from four dozen short stories, numerous articles and excellent book reviews. Her literary career up to now spans three important decades of American socio-cultural history. But even after the publication of her seventh novel Anne Tyler was merely regarded as just another writer representing “the gradual decentralizing of American culture that characterizes the post-Vietnam period” (Braudy 1979:128). Such a lukewarm response can...