Let’s all read Ann Patchett

Dec 20

This is a story about reading, addiction, illness, recovery, bookstores, community and Ann Patchett.

One gray Friday afternoon in December, I walked a few blocks to Walgreens, sat down in a plastic chair with Ann Patchett’s new book of essays, These Precious Days, and waited an hour and half in to have the Covid booster plunged into my arm (it was the pharmacist’s first day and she was running behind). Afterwards, I felt fine, and went to see “Being the Ricardos” with my older son. It was a treat to sit through coming attractions and watch Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem dance around each other as Lucy and Ricky. I loved the movie, my older son, not so much (probably because he had never watched the show, and I had watched it hundreds of times.) But it was fun to be out together on a cold dark night, and it was fun to watch a movie in a big, dark movie theater.

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The next morning, I was sick as a dog—in bed, feverish, sweating in my pajamas, strung out on the coffee I had foolishly drank that morning. Yet, I didn’t care, because I had Ann Patchett’s new book of essays and I was happy to have an excuse to lie in bed and read it. I even texted a couple of friends, “I’m sick in bed but I don’t care because I’m reading Ann Patchett!” They texted back smiley faces.

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Is it possible to express the joy it is to lie in bed on a wintry weekend day, knowing no one is expecting anything of you, while you have a fabulous book to read?

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Then, the worst possible thing that could happen to a reading addict happened: My Kindle shut down. It disappeared and was replaced by a note from Amazon informing me that that my Amazon account had been closed. (It turned out that my younger son, who shares our account, had had a dispute with Amazon about some charges and Amazon had decided to punish me by making my Kindle evaporate.) I panicked. And when I say panic, let me repeat that I was sick with a fever and not in my right mind. I was achy and hot and I was in the middle of Patchett’s essay about how knitting had saved her life twice and now I could not finish it. I had already taught two of the the essays that were available on line (My Three Fathers and Flight Plan) and had read two others that had also been published (How to Practice and These Precious Days: Tell Me How the Story Ends). But because I no longer had access to the table of contents, I wasn’t sure I would be able to find more of the book with the touch of a button. My mind went into a tailspin. How would I spend an afternoon, sick in bed, if I didn’t have a book to read, this book to read?

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The strange thing was I had actually briefly owned a copy of These Precious Days: One of my students who lives in the Catskills had told me about a virtual Q&A that Patchett was doing the Tuesday before Thanksgiving with Bookhampton, and as part of the cost of the Q&A, Bookhampton had mailed out copies of the book. But I hadn't held onto the book very long: In one of our Monday night workshops, students swap books. We meet via Zoom and most of them have never met in real life. They live all over the country and they send each other books. I love this and view this as the way we are building concrete connection and community during this crazy, virtual, Zoom-filled pandemic.

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Since I prefer reading on my Kindle to reading books, I offered to send the Patchett book to a student in Virginia and downloaded a copy for myself. (I realize this is a great privilege and rationalize these purchases by telling myself they support my career as a writer and reader and as a teacher of writers and readers.) I had just mailed off a copy of the book a few days earlier. So, I had no Ann Patchett, and no number of calls to Amazon to reinstate my Kindle yielded the positive result I was desperate for. Finally, delirious and obsessed, I texted my husband a picture of the front cover of book and said, “My Kindle died. Please go immediately to Shakespeare & Company and get this book. I will give it to your mother or aunt as a gift once my Kindle comes back up.” My mother-in-law, Dorothy, her sister Elaine and I share books. Since Elaine’s birthday was coming up a few days before Christmas and we had plans to go together to hear one of my students sing Handel’s Messiah at Carnegie Hall, I knew this book exchange would actually happen.

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My husband is a good sport and Shakespeare is a couple of blocks from our apartment so within minutes, he returned with the book. Which I finished that afternoon. And which I am now telling you to buy and read and share and relish.

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Ann Patchett is a goddess among writers. She is, in my humble opinion, the best living essay writer we have. She is brilliant, funny, sensible, candid, revealing, regretful and rational. She is also tough and kind. In January 2015, I did a reading of my book, Sweet Survival: Tales of Cooking & Coping, at her bookstore Parnassus in Nashville. Patchett came by with her mother and called me “a rock star” because I had sold maybe 30 books there on a gray Saturday afternoon.

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Patchett cranks out novels and essays collections, she has long friendships with women, she loves her mother, adored her father and stepfather, and is honest and grateful for her long second marriage. She has no children and doesn’t want them (and writes well about her decision in her essay, There Are No Children Here.) Her new book is a book for all women everywhere, and men too. Patchett does what the best writers do: She doesn’t just tell us how to live, she shows us.