But it was her father's love of books that most influenced Kerr. "I grew up always wanting to be a writer," Kerr told
Something about the Author Autobiography Series (SAAS). "My father was a mayonnaise manufacturer, with a strange habit, for a mayonnaise manufacturer, of reading everything from the Harvard Classics, to all of Dickens, Emerson, Poe, Thoreau, Kipling, and John O'Hara, Sinclair Lewis, John Steinbeck, all the Book-of-the-Month Club selections, plus magazines like
Time, Life, Look, and
Fortune, and all the New York City newspapers, along with the local Auburn, New York
Citizen Advertiser."
Kerr's other strong writing influence was her mother, but the influence was an unusual one. Her mother's primary love in life was local gossip, and she was unusually good at finding out and distributing information. "One of the most vivid memories of my childhood is of my mother making a phone call," Kerr told SAAS. "First, she'd tell me to go out and play. I'd pretend to do that, letting the back door slam, hiding right around the corner of the living room, in the hall. She'd have her pack of Kools and the ashtray on the desk, as she gave the number of one of her girlfriends to the operator....
This is a free page. This page contains 182 words. This
biography contains 4,257 words (approx. 14 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our M. E. Kerr Access Pass.
