Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler [141]
A: My view of this book and its characters both is surprisingly unchanged. I still find its themes important to me. I still identify with the same characters—which is to say, with all of them.
Q: Who is your favorite member of the Tull family? Why?
A: Ezra, of course. I’d like to give a less predictable answer, but there you are: I love him. I have slipped him into more than one of my later novels. (A courting couple in The Amateur Marriage, for instance, go out to dinner at an unnamed restaurant and order the gizzard soup.) In the later novels, I pause to think what Ezra would be doing now and I always decide, Oh, well, I guess he’s still plugging away at the restaurant, still unmarried, still alone but basically contented. Although recently I’ve started to wonder if he isn’t the type of man who will suddenly, unexpectedly, fall in love in late middle age and have one of those blissfully happy end-of-life marriages.
Q: Each of the Tull children, whether consciously or subconsciously, seems to spend much of his or her life trying not to make the same mistakes made by either of their parents (understandably!). In some ways, they all succeed in not turning into their parents; in others, they fail. Do you think this is usually the case? Do family traits and character flaws simply repeat themselves generation after generation—for better or for worse—or is there some room for personal development?
A: I’m fascinated by how people’s lives either echo or repudiate their parents’ lives. In a sense, I think we’re all doomed. We can repeat our parents’ mistakes or we can bend over backwards not to repeat them and end up making mistakes of contrariness; but either way, we’re still under their influence. Of course there’s room for personal development, but I’m not a big believer in the human capacity for cataclysmic change.
Q: A pervasive theme of the novel is one of food and nourishment. The world of Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is divided into “feeders” and “nonfeeders” (as Cody calls them), as well as eaters and non-eaters. Is this true of the real world as well? What do you think a person’s attitude toward food says about his or her character?
A: I do think a character’s feeling about food is a wonderful shorthand device for the writer. In place of “feeders” and “nonfeeders,” we could say “givers” and “non-givers,” and in place of “eaters” and “non-eaters,” “enjoyers” and “non-enjoyers”—two very important sets of personality traits.
Q: How did you come up with the title of the book? Ezra—the archetypal “feeder”—gives birth to the idea of the Homesick Restaurant, where people can come for complete nourishment of stomach and soul. Is this an idea that particularly appeals to you? Do you think the Homesick Restaurant would be a success in the real world or not?
A: Long ago I used to wish for a Homesick Restaurant. Or I longed for one in my neighborhood, at least, and then I invented a brand name for it. Yes, it appeals to me enormously, but I am sorry to say that it would probably go bankrupt within two years if it existed in the real world rather than in the alternate universe of “my” Baltimore.
Q: As is the case in many of your novels, there is a strong insider/outsider dichotomy present in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. Do you think any “outsiders” ever really manage to penetrate the Tull family circle, to really understand them? In many ways, it seems that they are all outsiders to each other, always feeling shut out of each other’s lives, and seldom really understanding one another’s motives and perspectives. Do you see the world as largely made up of individual outsiders, all trying to get “into” each other’s lives?
A: That’s a wonderful question to ponder, at least on paper (only on paper!). I myself am always trying to get into others’