Alice McDermott
Alice McDermott
Alice McDermottis an American writer and university professor. For her 1998 novel Charming Billy she won an American Book Award and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth27 June 1953
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
above believe choose faith novel ultimately
I think 'Charming Billy' ultimately is a novel about faith and what we believe in and, above all, what we choose to believe in.
against awful characters confined faith rebelling
Most of the characters I write with don't think an awful lot about their faith. They're not always questioning the church or feeling confined by the church or rebelling against the church.
among anyone faith people ways
I think a misconception among many non-religious people is that anyone with a strong faith is, in all ways and at all times, blindly consistent, unwavering, unquestioning.
characters either fails faith works
For me, having characters who are part of a faith then allows me to talk about how that faith either works or fails them without having to attack the institution.
believe catholics examined faith interior life people
I believe that the interior life is the same for all of us. And because they're steeped in faith, Irish-American Catholics are a people who have a language for the examined life.
call catholic defender faith remains search theologian valuable
I am not a theologian or a historian, and I feel no call to become a defender of the faith, so in my case, the search for what remains valuable focuses on language itself: Catholic prayer, ritual, the naming of things.
fiction report task tool tradition writers
Our task as fiction writers isn't just to report something that didn't really happen. We have to give what we write a sense of reality. The tool of our tradition is language.
asked brothers complete imperious nobody saying sentences
I was the youngest; I had two imperious older brothers - I didn't get to often complete sentences at the dinner table. So writing was a way of saying what nobody asked me to say.
define larger matter rather somehow time trying work
I think place and time for me is often a matter of convenience, something I can use to another end rather than something I'm trying to define because it's somehow fascinating to me in itself. It's more what the place can do for the larger goals I have for the work.
suppose written
My own 'sentimental favorite' is always the novel I haven't yet written - I suppose that's the one I consider my 'masterpiece' as well.
both catholics raised
My parents were both first-generation Irish Catholics raised in Brooklyn.
kids
I was one of those kids who always wrote.
I was born in Brooklyn, but I never lived there.
catholic children education gone inner life looking talking though value
My children have gone to Catholic school... Part of their whole education is talking about the inner life and looking at your life, even though you're only 15 or 16 - thinking about your mortality, thinking about the value of your life, thinking about your obligations.