Ann Patchett is a best selling author, a devoted reader, and a champion of literary culture. She has written seven books, and is a frequent contributor to many publications, including The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. In 2011, when the last of Nashville's bookstores closed, Ann said, "I have no interest in living in a city without a bookstore." And so, in November of that year, she opened Parnassus Books. In 2012, TIME named Ann one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World for her efforts on behalf of the literary community.
Patchett has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including England’s Orange Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Book Sense Book of the Year, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the American Bookseller’s Association’s Most Engaging Author Award, and the Women’s National Book Association’s Award. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages.
Ann was the keynote speaker at the UC San Diego Library's fundraiser, "Dinner In The Library". SDLS caught up with Ann before, and during, the dinner for this interview.
SDLS: In thinking about your novels, what strikes me is the fact that many of your main characters travel, either to escape from something, or to search for something. In the process, the character's lives change in unexpected ways. Travel becomes, in a sense, a vehicle for an inner journey of discovery. Travel is used as a catalyst for change or growth, which may not have occurred if the character(s) stayed home. Is this a deliberate plot device on your part, or just an unconscious coincidence between your books?
AP: I think you could view almost all of fiction through this lens: it’s either "the hero’s journey" or "a stranger comes to town". The nature of plot is that something needs to happen. The story occurs in the moment of change. It helps to take characters out of the comfort zone and challenge them in some way.
SDLS: You told Jeffrey Brown of PBS News Hour, when he asked you about your books, that, "I always know where it’s ending up. That’s the way I work. I get it all plotted in my mind, and then I write it down. I mean, sometimes, things change a little bit. But I always say, it’s like taking a trip. I know where I’m going. And, if I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t tend to get anywhere." Does this mean that the plot comes to you first, and the characters are created in service to moving the plot forward, or do you also know who the characters are from the start?
AP: The plot and the characters are built together. In the case of Bel Canto, I probably thought about the plot first. In the case of State of Wonder, I thought of the characters first, but I couldn’t devise a plot and then plug in the characters. Setting, plot, characters, moral crisis - each element is a piece of building a book.
SDLS: You told the San Diego Union Tribune that, "I write for myself, which is true, and, I write the book I feel is missing. I have a much better sense of this now {as a result of owning a bookstore}. So it {owning a bookstore} does influence me because I start to think, 'I don’t see this part of life represented right now in fiction'. This is the kind of book I want to write." Can you elaborate on this statement? What are you looking for in other books that you don't see?
AP: It’s not a matter of going looking for something, but you start to notice things over time. For example, the novels I was reading about families tended not to represent the kind of family I came from, which was very big and messy and friendly, and the novels didn’t usually show how the characters changed in their relationship to one another over a long period of time, so I thought that was something I could do. That’s a big part of the reason I wrote Commonwealth.
I think a lot about the fact that people are always coming into the bookstore asking for a smart, funny novel with a happy ending. They want a book that’s both happy and intelligent, and for some strange reason, that’s a really difficult book to find. I just read a terrific book called Less, by Andrew Sean Greer, that is very smart and made me laugh out loud and has a great ending. I’d love to write a book that made people laugh.
SDLS: You've said of owning a bookstore that you love telling people what to read. Also, "It’s my favorite thing in the world, to buy books and force books on people, take bad books away from people, give them better books". What books are you currently recommending? Which books do you think are bad, or what makes a book bad?
AP: Well, I just answered the last question with a recommendation, but I can certainly give you some more. I think everyone should read Evicted, by Matthew Desmond. It’s a book about poverty, and the housing crisis in America. I love a big social justice book. There’s a novel coming out in September by Jesmyn Ward called Sing, Unburied, Sing that I think is destined to win a lot of prizes. It a great novel. Also, Tom Hanks has a collection of short stories coming out in October called Uncommon Type that is shockingly good. He’s as good a writer as he is an actor, which is really saying something.
While I’m happy to talk a customer out of a book I don’t like, I don’t write about books that I think are bad. What I want is for people to have a great experience with reading. Recently someone asked me if I had read a particular book about plants and science. I had read it, and I didn’t like it, so I suggested they put it back and buy Hope Jahren’s Lab Girl instead. Lab Girl is terrific. I believe that when people read one terrific book, chances are they’ll want to read another.
SDLS: You posted on your blog that you're writing a new book right now. Can you tell me anything about it?
AP: It’s a novel. I’m on page 49. It’s set outside of Philadelphia. It’s written in the first person. I haven’t written in the first person in a long, long time, and I’m really enjoying it.
SDLS: When you are writing, what is your routine? Do you have a writing ritual? Do you listen to music, or work in silence?
AP: I don’t think I’ve ever known a novelist who writes while listening to music. The goal is to not be distracted. I don’t have any rituals (no particular time or place or sweater or coffee cup). I wish I had a routine, but my time gets pulled in too many directions. The only routine is to try. I just keep trying, whenever and however I can, until the book is finished.
SDLS: Many people, I think, myself included, have had fantasies of opening a bookstore, but have no clue as to the realities of doing so. What did you learn during those first couple of years after opening Parnassus that surprised you? Do you have any advice for a would-be bookstore owner?
AP: My best advice would be to find a wonderful business partner like Karen Hayes. We opened the store together, but she actually works there. I’m great at getting authors to come to the store. I read tons of books and make recommendations, and write the blog posts, and interview people on stage, but Karen is the one who does all the real work. She hires the staff, she makes all the magic happen. That said, the American Booksellers Association wants you to open a bookstore, and they have lots of seminars and advice. I highly recommend it. People who love books and want to spend their life around them are the kind of people you want to hang out with.
SDLS: In an age where the death of printed books and brick-and-mortar stores has been predicted, but has failed to come true, what have you learned about readers and the future of the written word?
AP: I'm an optimistic, cheerful, Pollyanna-ish person, which is why I opened a bookstore in the first place. But, I was told that, not only were bookstores dead, but thst books were dead, and that people weren't going to read anything longer than a tweet on their phone. I don't think that that's true, but on the other hand, I was writing something the other day, doing some interviewing in which I mentioned Peter Taylor's 1986 novel, A Summons to Memphis, and I pulled up the review of the book on The New York Times website, and it was approximately 10 times longer than any review on the Times website now. So, we're definitely shrinking, but we're also, again, changing, and I don't think it's a steady downhill progression. I just think that we're changing fashion and that we are growing, and I believe in the written word, believe in books, believe in libraries, believe in printed matter, and I think we will keep going on. I have more questions about the survival of the species and the planet than I do about the survival of books. I think that there's a perfectly good chance that we will die before the books die.
If you want to hear more from Ann, her keynote speech has been recorded, and will air on the UCSD TV channel on September 29th. In addition to her keynote speech, Ann answered questions from the audience. She gave great reading recommendations, and revealed personal things like, for example, that she has not watched a single TV show since college, has never sent a single tweet, and does not engage on social media of any kind. It was a wonderful talk, and you should definitely watch it when on the 29th!
Labels: Author Interviews
