SOURCE: "Watching Through Windows: A Perspective on Anne Tyler," in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 68, No. 3, Summer, 1992, pp. 497-516.

In the following essay, Willrich presents an overview of Tyler's life, career, and approach to writing.

Novelist Anne Tyler has spent most of her 50 years observing from a distance, using her imagination to satisfy her curiosity. In an essay published in 1976–"Because I Want More Than One Life," Tyler commented:

"It seems to me often that I'm sort of looking from a window at something at a great distance and wondering what it is. But I'm not willing to actually go into it. I would rather sit behind the window sill and write about it. So all my curiosity has to be answered within myself…."

Tyler avoids our contemporary literary marketplace. As Reynolds Price, her writing teacher at Duke University, says, she doesn't go out on the "good-looking-lady-star circuit...