Ann Beattie
Ann Beattie
Ann Beattieis an American novelist and short story writer. She has received an award for excellence from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the short story form. Her work has been compared to that of Alice Adams, J.D. Salinger, John Cheever, and John Updike. She holds an undergraduate degree from American University and a master's degree from the University of Connecticut...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth8 September 1947
CountryUnited States of America
The admiration of another writer’s work is almost in inverse proportion to similarities in style.
I think almost always that what gets me going with a story is the atmosphere, the visual imagery, and then I people it with characters, not the other way around.
Also minimalism is a term that all of us who share so little in common and who are lumped together as minimalists are not terribly happy with.
I could name a few songs and say exactly what summer they came out and what boy I thought I was in love with when I was fourteen years old, but I think that music used to be really more a part of the culture when people went out dancing in a different way than they do now.
I think that I'm serious, but I don't think that I'm inordinately bleak.
I've spent my life supporting myself.
If you could have a book called My Favorite Six Stories, I don't think I'd have trouble doing that.
It's not about having things figured out, or about communicating with other people, trying to make them understand what you understand. It's about a chicken dinner at a drive-in. A soft pillow. Things that don't need explaining.
the real killer was when you married the wrong person but had the right children.
Italics provide a wonderful advantage: you see, right away, that the words are in a rush. When something exists at a slant, you can't help but consider irony.
Quite often my narrator or protagonist may be a man, but I'm not sure he's the more interesting character, or if the more complex character isn't the woman.
Much of what happens in Love Always is really from overheard conversations in the Russian Tea Room. It's an improvisation of the way certain Hollywood agents think and talk to each other.
It's interesting, though, that in daily life, I think of myself as being relatively unobservant.
Falling in Place was meant to be very much rooted in a place and time, and music was a part of that.