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
far happening inside intriguing particular plot
Character is primary. What happens as far as plot and events is not as intriguing to me as what's happening inside this particular person.
background class early ethic job learned middle might nobody quite work
I learned really early on that I had to treat it as if it were a real job. This might be my middle class background - the Irish work ethic, which isn't quite the same as the Protestant work ethic - but still, it's, 'Get a job and show up every day. Be there. And don't complain. Who do you think you are: you're nobody special; go to work.'
felt grew san
I'm a coastal person. I grew up in Long Island and lived in San Diego. I felt landlocked in Pittsburgh. Psychically, it just wasn't the place for me.
conscious trying
I'm very conscious of trying to make something epic out of something small and ordinary.
anyone magical moss playwright romantic school struck
In grammar school I read 'Act One' by Moss Hart, and being a playwright struck me as the most magical and romantic career anyone could have... But I never did write a play.
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.
plot
I don't want to write about violence, and I don't want to hang a plot on a murder. I think it's cheap.
I do have friends in Pittsburgh, and I had some wonderful experiences there.
attending believed characters city days enjoyed fictional life listening loved music parents poems poetry school york
I believed in fictional characters as if they were a part of real life. Poetry was important, too. My parents had memorized poems from their days attending school in New York City and loved reciting them. We all enjoyed listening to these poems and to music as well.
All my friends had grandparents who had accents. I thought all grandparents were supposed to have accents. My friends were all second-generation, as I was.
hear love music ordinary rhythm
I've got to hear the rhythm of the sentences; I want the music of the prose. I want to see ordinary things transformed not by the circumstances in which I see them but by the language with which they're described. That's what I love when I read.
adjective jewish limiting noun russian whether
Any adjective you put before the noun 'writer' is going to be limiting in some way. Whether it's feminist writer, Jewish writer, Russian writer, or whatever.
meant pin
A perfect poem you can't pin down and say, 'This is exactly what it meant to me.' It's not a self-help manual.
catholic church gospels poetry ways
The language of the Catholic Church - the liturgy, the prayer, the gospels - was in many ways my first poetry.