Amy Bloom
Amy Bloom
Amy Bloomis an American writer and psychotherapist. She has been nominated for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
business fiction morning rest work
I do my business in the morning, and then at 2 P.M., I write fiction for the rest of the day. I like my husband, so I don't work at weekends.
everybody period whether
I find the 1940s very compelling. It is a very excitable period in the U.S. when, whether out of necessity or not, everybody was reinventing themselves.
babysitter bartender drew liked people rather spent suspect time true waitress
I spent a lot of time listening to people. But it's also true that I liked details and listening to people when I was a bartender and when I was a waitress and probably when I was a babysitter as well. I suspect that's part of what drew me to psychotherapy rather than the other way around.
elderly family hear history kept painful parents plus spoke stories terrible
My family kept its history to itself. On the plus side, I didn't have to hear nightmarish stories about the Holocaust, the pogroms, terrible illnesses, painful deaths. My elderly parents never even spoke about their ailments.
except people tend
People tend to forget that in our country, we'd pretty much all be immigrants, except for the Native Americans.
grown remain sources
I'm a grown woman. I can come up with plenty of things that I've done and said or didn't say or failed to do that remain with me as sources of embarrassment.
certainly shut teaches therapist useful
Training to be a therapist teaches you to shut up and listen, and that is certainly useful as a writer.
truth
The truth is I never think of any subject as taboo.
occurred written
I do have a sister. I have never written much about sisters before. I am very close to my sister, but, maybe, because we are very close, it never occurred to me to write about her.
alice austen dickens fine influenced jane paintings plays stories sure
I'm sure I've been influenced by every fine writer I've ever read, from Dickens and Austen to Auden and Jane Hirshfield. And also, the short stories of Updike, Cheever, Munro, Alice Adams, and Doris Lessing. And the plays of Oscar Wilde. And paintings by Alice Neel and Matisse.
anyone audience behavior finds funny human target
My target audience is anyone who finds the world interesting and human behavior fascinating, terrible, inspiring, funny, and occasionally, mysterious.
books centuries happiness people pursuing trash worse
Smart people often talk trash about happiness and worse than trash about books on happiness, and they have been doing so for centuries - just as long as other people have been pursuing happiness and writing books about it.
philip
There are two trilogies I admire: Robertson Davies's 'The Deptford Trilogy' and Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials.'
assume time writer
I assume as a writer that most of the time I'm going to fall down and fail.