Fort Myers Florida Weekly

Savoring This PRECARIOUS & PRECIOUS Life

Award-winning novelist/ essayist Ann Patchett in conversation at Artis–Naples



DORIOKO EMILY

DORIOKO EMILY

When asked to describe her book of essays, “These Precious Days,” Ann Patchett likes to say it’s “a feel-good book about death. “If they’ve read it, they usually say, ‘I see that.’” The book, which came out in hardcover in November 2021, was released in paperback this past November.

“It’s a book that acknowledges something we get keyed into at a certain age, which is: yes, even we are going to die, and our friends, and our family,” she says. “And knowing that, if you can hold that information, you can actually enjoy life more because of it. Those very quiet, normal moments become beautiful, once you see them for what they are.”

In her introduction, titled “Essays Don’t Die,” she writes: “Through these essays, I could see myself grappling with the same themes in my writing and in my life: what I needed, whom I loved, what I could let go, and how much energy the letting go would take. Again and again, I was asking what mattered most in this precarious and precious life … Death always thinks of us eventually. The trick is to find the joy in the interim, and make good use of the days we have.”

Award-winning novelist/ essayist Ann Patchett in conversation at Artis–Naples

Award-winning novelist/ essayist Ann Patchett in conversation at Artis–Naples

Ms. Patchett is perhaps best known for her award-winning novel “Bel Canto,” which was translated into more than 30 languages; it was made into an opera in 2015 and a movie in 2018, starring Julianne Moore and Ken Watanabe. Ms. Patchett will talk about her essays at Artis—Naples at 8 p.m. Friday, March 3, in conversation with Elaine Newton. Dr. Newton, whose Critic’s Choice book lectures at the venue are highly popular, is Professor Emeritus of Humanities of York University in Toronto.

“Here’s the thing,” says Ms. Patchett. “Because I own a bookstore (Parnassus Books in Nashville), all I do is read books that haven’t been published yet. I feel like the pandemic drove people into the past; I’ve been reading so many books (set) in the 1700s and the 1400s. People didn’t know what was going on, they didn’t know how things are going to turn out, so people started writing a lot of historical fiction.

COURTESY PHOTOS

COURTESY PHOTOS

“I wanted to stay as present as I possibly could, which is why I wrote the book of essays looking at life now.”

She also wanted to write a novel that was set in the time in which she was writing it. She recently finished “Tom Lake,” due for release Aug. 8.

The novel’s set in Michigan; half of it takes place in a cherry orchard at the beginning of a pandemic. Three daughters have come home to the cherry farm and are picking cherries, she explains. They’re asking their mother about her experiences in summer stock theater at Tom Lake.

“The story goes back and forth from the cherry orchard in present time and 1988 when (the mother) was at Tom Lake. The whole thing revolves around ‘Our Town.’ She keeps getting cast as Emily over and over again.”

The iconic play, of course, deals with the cycle of life, our mortality, and the dilemma of how do we stay present in the moment.

 

 

“That’s it,” says Ms. Patchett. “Can you stay awake and can you not flick over into automatic pilot, cruise control? That’s the greatest challenge of being alive, every minute. Sometimes I think maybe 10 minutes a day I’m completely awake, fully engaged, realizing the moment that I’m in. The other 23 hours and 50 minutes

I’m running around, doing the laundry … that is what I am always wrestling with.”

The idea for “Tom Lake” came to her when she was writing her previous novel, “The Dutch House,” which was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.

“I had the idea … what if a woman was looking back on her life and realized that when she played Emily in ‘Our Town’ in high school, that that was the happiest she’d ever been? What if the best thing that ever happened to you was you played Emily in high school?”

Ideas morph and transform in her mind before she writes them down on paper.

 

 

“I picture the idea like a little egg, then a tadpole, growing some feet, the gills growing over, growing some legs, coming out of the pond … By the time you get the book, it’s a frog, it’s a totally different thing. You couldn’t look at the frog and see an egg.

“I find that when I start writing things down, the idea solidifies. And if I don’t write things down and stay in a subliminal state with an idea, it can change and change and change.”

The essays in “These Precious Days” cover topics such as her three fathers (her dad and two stepfathers), her husband’s love of planes and flying, her year of no shopping, downsizing her home, the writing of Eudora Welty and how knitting saved her life. (Twice.)

The Welty essay was an introduction to “The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty” and the knitting essay originally ran in Ann Hood’s anthology, “Knitting Yarns.”

Her essay, “To the Doghouse,” came about when Andrew Blauner asked her to contribute a piece to his anthology, “The Peanuts Papers.”

 

 

“I said, ‘I don’t want to do it,’” she recalls. “’I want to write about Snoopy, and I know you wouldn’t give me Snoopy.’ And he said, ‘Yes, I’ll give you Snoopy.’ It was as if he said, ‘I’ll give you the sun, the moon, the stars!’”

She had a vague idea about what she wanted to write.

“I bought a bunch of Peanut anthologies, but when I started reading them, (I realized that Snoopy was) my original source guide to everything I learned about writing,” she says.

Snoopy would sit on top of his doghouse and type, he’d mail out his stories to publishers, he’d wait by the mailbox for a reply, and he’d receive rejection letters.

“I learned how to shape myself into who I was going to be with the guidance of a dog in the funny papers,” she writes. “People ask me about my influences, but really it was just the one: Snoopy was my aspiration, my role model. I heard the dog whistle, silent to everyone around me, and followed.”

 

 

And in honor, she named her current dog Sparky, the nickname of Peanuts cartoonist

Charles Schultz. (That’s Sparky’s portrait that graces the cover of “These Precious Days.”)

Her love of books and writing weaves throughout the collection as much as her musings on mortality. Her gem-like sentences please and inform.

The longest essay in the book, the title piece, is about Tom Hanks’s assistant, Sooki Raphael. Ms. Patchett and Sooki develop an email friendship, and when Sooki, fighting a recurrence of pancreatic cancer, gets into a clinical trial in Nashville, she stays with Ms. Patchett and her husband. Then the pandemic happens, and shelter-at-home, and she stays with them longer than originally expected.

The essay’s a tribute to a friend, a reminder to make the most of the days we have with each other.

Ms. Patchett wrote essays throughout the pandemic and rewrote some of her former essays.

 

 

“I just finish them in a couple of days, for the most part, though not always,” she says. “When you write a novel, you have to make everything up, the people, you have to figure out when it starts, when it stops, you have to make all the trees. When you’re writing an essay, you know who the people are, when it begins, and when it ends, you know what the arc of the story is. For me, the hard work is already done.

“That’s not true for other people,” she says, noting that some fiction writers find essays impossible to write.

“But for me, it works better.”

She hadn’t planned on creating another book of essays, she says. But, as she explains in her book’s introduction, it wasn’t until she wrote “These Precious Days” about her time with Sooki, that “I realized I would have to put a book together. That essay was so important to me that I wanted to build a solid shelter for it.”

That’s Sooki’s artwork on the front and back of the book; Ms. Patchett couldn’t decide which painting to use as a cover, so the publisher wound up using both. It’s a fitting tribute to her friend.

So what does matter most in this precarious and precious life?

“It’s a big question,” Ms. Patchett says, pausing slightly. “What matters most? People.

“And I think the kindness we show to others. That’s kind of it.” ¦

In the KNOW

“A Conversation with Ann Patchett”

When: 8 p.m. Friday, March 3

Where: Artis—Naples, 5833 Pelican Bay Blvd., Naples

Cost: $49 – $65

Information: 239-597-1900 or www.artisnaples.org

Some book recommendations

As co-owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Ann Patchett loves to recommend books to her customers.

So we asked her to suggest some titles. (As she writes in one of her essays, “As every reader knows, the social contract between you and a book you love is not complete until you can hand that book to someone else and say, Here, you’re going to love this.)

Here’s a short list of some new books she loves:

¦ “The Sun Walks Down” by Fiona McFarlane

¦ “I Have Some Questions for You” by Rebecca Makkai

¦ “The Hero of This Book” by Elizabeth McCracken (“I love Elizabeth Mc- Cracken!”)

¦ “Foster” by Claire Keegan (“She wrote ‘Small Things Like These.’”)

¦ “Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver (“It’s alive, it slides, it goes so fast!”)

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