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Patchett’s new book ‘Whistler’ is a story about two adults looking back over the choices they made, and the choices that were made for them. Photo: Handout<\/p>\nWhen she isn\u2019t working on a novel, Ann Patchett is often thinking of what she can do for others: maybe coming up with a blurb for Douglas Stuart, or recording a video birthday message for fellow author-bookseller Emma Straub, or beginning an interview with a plug for another admired peer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe new Liz Strout book is the best,\u201d she says of Elizabeth Strout\u2019s The Things We Never Say.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, every single book she publishes, you just think, \u2018Oh, well, she can\u2019t possibly do that again.\u2019 And then she comes out with another book and it\u2019s even better.\u201d<\/p>\n
At 62, Patchett is the rare and fortunate writer whose words resonate among friends and strangers alike. She owns one of America\u2019s signature independent bookstores, Parnassus Books, with customers ranging from Nashville\u2019s book lovers to Tom Hanks.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s also a popular and prize-winning novelist whose new books are inevitably among the year\u2019s most anticipated, and whose older ones, including the acclaimed Bel Canto, continue to sell.<\/p>\n
In 2021, she received a National Humanities Medal for \u201cputting into words the beauty, pain, and complexity of human nature.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her books have been translated into more than 20 languages, but her home is in Nashville, where she spent part of her childhood and now lives with her husband, physician Karl VanDevender.<\/p>\n
Patchett spoke at Parnassus with The Associated Press on a sunny weekday morning, shortly before opening time.<\/p>\n
The new book is called \u2018Whistler\u2019<\/p>\n
Patchett is here early to talk about Whistler, out now. Like Bel Canto, State Of Wonder and other Patchett novels, it\u2019s a story of improbable meetings and deepening bonds. In this case, 53-year-old Daphne Fuller and her husband encounter an elderly man, Eddie Triplett, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and realise he was briefly her stepfather when she was a girl. Daphne and Eddie form a close friendship as they recall their times together, including a serious car accident followed by the break-up of Eddie\u2019s marriage to her mother.<\/p>\n
Patchett doesn\u2019t write with any message in mind, but Whistler can be read as an ode to decency and benevolence. The title refers to a story-fable about a horse that runs away, only to turn up at a time of crisis. In the aftermath of the crash, as Daphne wonders if it\u2019s safe to leave and seek help, Eddie assures her, \u201cI swear to you, it\u2019s mostly good people out there, with a few bad people around the edges.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people that I interact with every single day are good people,\u201d Patchett says. \u201cIt is vanishingly rare when I meet someone who\u2019s not nice. Now, if you watch the news and read the news, it seems like everyone\u2019s terrible and murderous. But it\u2019s the difference between primary and secondary sources. So if I\u2019m just operating off primary sources, what I see is goodness. I completely understand that there is incredible horror and cruelty in the world, but I also feel like incredible horror and cruelty is very well represented (in art). And what I actually experience in my daily life is not as well represented in art.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t set out to write books about nice people,\u201d she adds, \u201cbut I like people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Honoured by PEN America<\/p>\n
Patchett\u2019s sense of citizenship was recognised recently by PEN America, which at its annual May gala in Manhattan presented her with its Literary Service Award. In introducing her to a gathering of hundreds at the American Museum of Natural History, author Patrick Ryan cited her wide range of contributions, whether working \u201cto get books into the hands of children in underserved communities,\u201d supporting emerging writers or inspiring readers \u201cwho recognise themselves in her novels.\u201d<\/p>\n
Patchett has a well-lived appreciation of connections, and how they can be broken by discord or ended by death.<\/p>\n
A native of Los Angeles, she was in early childhood when her parents divorced and she moved east with her mother, events drawn upon for her novel Commonwealth.<\/p>\n
She has also written memorials for departed loved ones. In the memoir Truth & Beauty, she remembered her close friend Lucy Grealy, a poet and memoir writer who suffered from a rare form of cancer.<\/p>\n
Whistler is dedicated to her friend Jim Fox, a former head legal counsel at HarperCollins who died in 2024.<\/p>\n
A bookseller who inspires<\/p>\n
Patchett, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the Iowa Writers\u2019 Workshop at the University of Iowa, remembers telling stories even before she could read, a gap she says only intensified her appreciation of the printed word. Raised before the rise of \u201cyoung adult\u201d books, she started out reading such children\u2019s favourites as Charlotte\u2019s Web and The Little House On The Prairie series, and ascended directly to the literary giants who became her formative influences: Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and John Updike.<\/p>\n
By her early 20s, Patchett was accomplished enough to have a story published in The Paris Review.<\/p>\n
Patchett\u2019s debut novel, The Patron Saint Of Liars, came out before she had turned 30. She has since published nine other works of fiction, including Whistler, along with four nonfiction books and three picture books, illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser.<\/p>\n
Patchett’s new book ‘Whistler’ is a story about two adults looking back over the choices they made, and the choices that were made for them. Photo: Handout<\/p>\n
\u201cI was at my cousins\u2019 house a few months ago and they had boxes of old papers of mine,\u201d Patchett says. \u201cAnd they were from grade school, middle school, high school \u2013 notebook after notebook, poetry and stories. I was shocked by the extent I was practicing my craft at age 10.\u201d<\/p>\n
Patchett\u2019s life as a bookseller began around 2010, when the closing of two Nashville stores seemed to mirror a nationwide decline brought about in part by Amazon\u2019s rise.<\/p>\n
Patchett and business partner Karen Hayes came up with a seemingly wild plan: open a new store \u2013 a decision met with some scepticism at the time, but now a sign of the changing fortunes of independent sellers.<\/p>\n
Membership in the American Booksellers Association has more than doubled over the past decade \u2013 including such author-run stores as Straub\u2019s Books Are Magic in New York City and Jeff Kinney\u2019s An Unlikely Story in Plainville, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n
Straub says that when she was thinking of opening her store, she spoke with various friends who owned small businesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey all told me not to do it, but when I talked to Ann, she said \u2018Do it,\u2019\u201d Straub says.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s my hero. I think the friends who were telling me not to do it were speaking practically. But I didn\u2019t want to hear practical advice. I wanted to hear inspiration.\u201d \u2013 AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When she isn\u2019t working on a novel, Ann Patchett is often thinking of what she can do for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[240531,13851,2108,489,202165,156,12568,117,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-477717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-ann-patchett","tag-author","tag-book","tag-books","tag-bookseller","tag-entertainment","tag-nashville","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}