In 1976 Doubleday published both her first novel,
Chilly Scenes of Winter, and her first collection of short stories,
Distortions. Since 1976 she has published six novels, six collections of short stories, and a commissioned volume on the painter Alex Katz.
From 1973 to 1982 Beattie was married to musician David Gates, whose encouragement and insights she credits as important in the development of her fiction. In 1988 she married painter Lincoln Perry. By February 1990 Beattie's writing had made her enough of a celebrity that People magazine covered her marriage to Perry together with the publication of her novel Picturing Will (1989), which had already sold more than fifty thousand copies. The People article, accompanied by photographs of the newlyweds, described the couple's "common passion for art," their "domestic harmony," their decision to remain childless, and their influence on each other's work.
Although she has occasionally granted interviews, Beattie has been a reluctant subject of academic criticism, resisting critics' "pretentious guesses" in favor of the essential "mysteriousness" of the stories. At every stage her work has polarized reviewers and literary critics.
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