Anne Tyler's 'Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant': A Critical Feast

John V. Knapp makes case that psychological approaches to literary interpretation can be enhanced by broadening hermeneutic base to include a variety of psycho-social perspectives.(1) Those of us involved in teaching literature know merits of Knapp's argument. My own students understand systems - at least on an informal basis - because they have lived it on a conscious level; they understand dysfunctional families. For that reason, some might relate with more immediate affect to works such as Dinner at Homesick Restaurant (1982) than they do to Hamlet, whose protagonist they see as product of a dysfunctional long before they see him as a tragic hero. What is more important, they expect literature to teach them about their own lives as well as about universal truths regarding human behavior. What is remarkable about contemporary family systems theory as a means of interpreting literature is that it can meet both of those expectations. One of many advantages this contemporary theory provides is an understanding of how evolves as part of a social environment; family systems theory goes beyond self as a psychologically separate unit.(2) Carlfred Broderick and Sandra Schrader give an overview of distinction between psychoanalytic and family systems therapy. They write: Psychoanalysis by its very nature is concerned with internal dynamics of human psyche, and with an analysis of patient-therapist relationship. Freud left a legacy of conviction that it was counter-productive and dangerous for a therapist to become involved with more than one member of same family. It is not clear from his writing exactly what prompted him to feel so strongly on matter. (16) I include works by Tyler in my literature classes because her writing offers us insight into human psyche and family systems which influence psyche as stuff of interpersonal as well as intrapersonal relational structures. It comes as no surprise to learn that Tyler is herself wife of a child psychiatrist (Petry, Critical Essays 7). What is more interesting is that characters in her novels are so meticulously constructed that they stand up to clinical study. In reviewing critical literature on Dinner at Homesick Restaurant, one finds not only literary critical approaches, but also clinical psychoanalytic ones. In Anne Tyler: The American Family Fights for its Half-Life, Leo Schneiderman's argument is grounded in object-relations theory(3); he asserts that Tyler's families have only a half-life, perhaps because their members do not love or hate each other with enough intensity (78). Schneiderman goes on to explain that the breakup of American family in fiction is accompanied by egregious failures of parenting involving non-nurturant mothers and physically or psychologically absent fathers (70) and that the great weakness of kind of American family portrayed by Tyler is that its members require proximity rather than intimacy (79). Schneiderman does a competent job of looking at several of novels from an object-relations perspective.(4) Object relations as a term refers to specific intrapsychic structures, to an aspect of ego organization, and not to external interpersonal relationships. But these intrapsychic structures, mental representations of self and other (the object), also become manifest in interpersonal situation (Horner 3). In contrast to study of intrapsychic structure, family systems therapy regards entire family rather than individual as matrix of identity. We cannot understand individual without understanding family system, and we cannot understand characters without understanding their family systems. Thus, one theorist whose approach is useful in a critical analysis of Dinner at Homesick Restaurant is family systems therapist James Framo, who classifies himself as an integrationist, one who integrates his study of intrapsychic and interpsychic influences on and within families. …