Wild Card with Rachel Martin - Ann Patchett wants to be wrong

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

Ann Patchett's 2001 novel Bel Canto was a huge hit. She's continued to have success with her later work, including The Dutch House, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. But she's returned to Bel Canto with a new edition annotated by Patchett herself. She and Rachel talk about why she wanted to critique her own work. They also discuss their shifting ideas of God and feeling comfortable being alone. To listen sponsor-free, access bonus episodes and support the show, sign up for Wild Card+ at plus.npr.org/wildcard See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

How have your feelings about God changed over time? I still believe in God. Do you? And here's the thing. If I tried to tell you what that meant, I would be wrong. The only thing that I know for sure is that whatever I know is wrong. I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wild Card, the game where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest chooses questions at random from a deck of cards.

Pick a card one through three. Questions about the memories, insights, and beliefs that have shaped them. What matters is that we do our best with the life that we have. My guest this week is author Anne Patchett. That we show up, that we love each other, and that we try to be as aware as is humanly possible of the life and the gift that we're given. So this show was designed to live completely outside of politics, where we think together about the big questions that connect all of us. And I don't use this space to talk about politics at all, but I have to acknowledge that we are all now on the other side of what has been this incredibly divisive presidential election. And being on the other side of it brings relief for some of us and it brings more anxiety for others.

So today we've got a really lovely distraction from all of it, a conversation with the writer Anne Patchett about unconditional love, the spiritual qualities of moss, and chickens named after members of Nixon's cabinet, which I am not counting as politics. So some things you need to know before we start. Anne is a hugely popular writer. She was a Pulitzer finalist for her book The Dutch House. Her most recent novel is called Tom Lake, but she's probably most well known for her 2001 book Belconto. It tells the story of a group of strangers taken hostage somewhere in Latin America. It is lyrical and heartbreaking and it's been adapted into an opera and a movie. Overall, it's been a massively successful book. And Anne recently decided to do a fascinating thing.

She published an annotated version of Belconto with her own handwritten notes in the margins. She calls out clunky turns of phrase, confusing plot points, repetitive language. She also gives herself some credit for good rights. and thoughtful observations about the human condition. But mainly she is owning her shortcomings, which feels like a bold quality we could use some more of. So with that, here's today's episode with writer Ann Patchett. Hi, hi, I'm so glad you're here. I'm really glad to be here.

So this is how it's going to go. I've got a deck of cards in front of me. Each one has a question on it, and you're going to choose randomly, which one I ask. I will hold up three cards at a time, and you will pick one. You've got two tools at your disposal. You get one skip. So if you're just not jive on a particular question, you can skip it and I'll put another one in there randomly. You get one flip. You can ask me to answer one of the questions before you do, which basically despise your time. We're breaking it up into three rounds, a few questions in each round. You ready? I'm ready. Let's go. First three cards holding them up. Now, one, two, or three. Three. Okay. What's a place that shaped you as much as any person did? When I was a child, we lived on a farm for several years. It was in Ashland City, about 30 minutes outside of Nashville.

It was not a working farm. It was just a collection of absolute weirdness. My sister had a That kind of farm. No, that kind of farm. Anyway, we had a couple of horses. We had a rabbit. We had chickens, which were all named after members of Nixon's cabinet. We had dogs, which meant that dogs would just go through, and they would stay for a couple of years. Same with the cats.

It was real country life. And most importantly, I had a pig, which I got for my ninth birthday because I was obsessed with Charlotte's Webb. It was just a very animal-laden, isolated life. And because I'm an introvert, that worked out fine for me. And childhood was you would go outside and climb up a hill. I collected moss, lots of flowers. I actually had a moss business. I sold moss in town when I was about 10 to florists. Wait, wait. Other kids are like selling lemonade and little Anne Patchett is like, some moss.

I'm in the moss. I'm in the moss trade. I make a lot more money off a moss than you do lemonade, Rachel. And I remember my mother saying things like, remember the rattlesnakes are blind when they're molter. So if you get into the blackberry bushes where the rattlesnakes go to shed their skins because they have those little tiny thorns on the blackberry bushes, just be aware because they can't see you so they're more likely to strike. That was the bedrock advice of my childhood. Wow. I didn't see that one coming, did you? In so many ways. In so many ways, I didn't.

That was a very generative question. Okay. Okay. Three more cards. Three. I like three. One, two, three. Okay, three. Oh, this is sort of related. What's something your parents taught you to love? Books. Did they? They did. My mother and my stepfather and my father and my stepmother lived in California. They were all very big readers. And they didn't read to the kids, but they read themselves. And I have very very, very big readers. And they didn't read to the kids. And I have very, later found out that that is actually more important than reading to children, that children see adults reading and engaged in relationships with books. If my mother was reading a book, if my father was reading a book, and in the same way you wouldn't walk in a room and interrupt a conversation between adults, you wouldn't interrupt an adult who was reading. And so I just had that modeled for me that reading was a woman.

a very important activity. Do you remember the first book you fell in love with? Charlotte's Webb. Oh, Charlotte's Webb. And I got a pig. And it's so funny because I'll say that and other people are like, I begged my parents for a pig. All I wanted was a pig. And I think, well, God, I was lucky. I'm the one who got a pig. But now I'm like, did you also replicate the Nixon's cabinet? Like, what was it like, what's that guy's name? G. Gordon Liddy. Yeah, G. Gordon Liddy. So here's the thing. The dogs who were passing through in giant packs would eat the chickens.

They would just pick them off. And so one day we would go out and we would say, oh, G. Gordon, Littie's gone. Three more. One, two, or three. Do you want to guess? Are you going three? This is so interesting. I'm three all the way. Here's the secret, Rachel.

I don't know what's on any of those cards. It doesn't make any difference in the world, which one I pick. You're so smart, Ann. You're so smart. At what point in your life were you the most comfortable being alone? Okay, you answer that one first. Are you flipping that? That's interesting.

I'm going to flip that one. Well, it's not a neat and tidy answer. I learned how to be alone when I lived in Japan. I lived in Japan after college, and I taught English. And I lived in a very small town, a bunch of agriculture and a nuclear power plant. And that was the extent of the economy. Not unlike my hometown, where we also grew potatoes and had a nuclear power plant. So I was just lonely.

You know, I was lonely. It's different than learning. Well, I guess I did learn how to be alone. I was lonely and that was a negative and got more comfortable with being in my own head. So I guess I learned how to be alone. And then when I became a parent, I craved being alone. I love my kids, you know, goes without saying. But I'm very, very comfortable being alone now.

I know how to do it. I crave it. And it is not a sad experience in the least. I needed to restore myself. So maybe it's now. I don't have children. And one of the reasons that I have known since childhood that I wasn't going to have children is because it seemed quite clear to me that they didn't go away. It's so true.

And you didn't get to be alone. And the things that I really have emotional problems with, not being alone, noise and chaotic mess. And I just thought, oh, that's not for me. So I'm really glad I flipped that because while you were talking, my head was just flooding full of happy, happy memories of being alone. And I could keep you on forever. Tell me one. When I was in graduate school at the University of Iowa, I went there right out of college. I was 21. My birthday is in December, so I would have been 22. This was my first year of the MFA program, and I didn't go home for Christmas. When I was young, Christmas was really kind of awful. It was just always made me really sad. And so...

We don't need to spend a ton of time on it, but because your family was separated? It was my family. Everybody was sad. My stepfather's birthday was Christmas. day. He used to lie under the Christmas tree and cry every year on Christmas day. My father would call and cry because we weren't there. My stepfather's children would fly out from California. They were crying because they'd had to leave their mother. It was a cluster. It was a dumpster fire. Anyway, so this particular Christmas, I decided that I was old enough to just say, you know, I'm going to take a pass on this one. And the director of the program was a guy named Jack Lerner. And Jack Leggett asked me if I would house-set for him, and he had a beautiful, huge, old house, and it was freezing cold, and I went and stayed in his house by myself. I knit a sweater. I banked the

fires. I read his books. And I was completely and totally happy. and restored, that was a very, very joyful aloneness. We're going to pull out of the game for a minute because Belconto, hugely popular book that you wrote, how many years? It came out in 2001, so I finished it in 2000. Right. So I read that you decided to do an annotated version of Belcanto after you did something similar with your recent book,

on Lake, right? You did that for a charity auction. Yes. But going back and revisiting Belcanto and then making notes about what you liked and didn't like and then putting it out into the world takes guts, I think. Did it feel courageous to you to do? Not in the least. Why did you want to do it?

So it just seemed like an interesting project. It also seemed that there was no downside. But it really became, I think, an interesting exercise in novel writing. Bell Canto is so far away that I could say, look at this hard thing that I did. I did this really well. Look at this easy thing that I did. I did this really poorly. Look, I'm stalling here.

I can see myself stalling. Look, now it's getting faster and it's getting better. Why is everybody lying on the floor for the first hundred pages? What an incredibly bad idea. And yet it works. How in the world did I have the nerve to do that? Yeah, those are some of my favorite moments when you just like nail something and you're like, yeah, that was awesome. I'm so glad I wrote that.

And I would never say that about something. something that I had just written. I would never praise myself in present time, nor would I ever be critical like this to anyone else's work. I would never say to a student, to a friend in a review, you are a fool look at this horrible thing you've done. And yet, of myself 24 years ago, I'm happy to do that. Well, yeah, you stand on a lot of success. I mean, it does make you vulnerable to go back and criticize your own stuff and unpack that. But you stand on so much other success and you're at a certain point in your career where it affords you that luxury of distance and to be able to go back and examine these things.

Can I ask you a question? Yeah. Do you perceive the vulnerability as I am making myself. vulnerable to myself? Yeah. Or I am making myself vulnerable publicly. I guess both. I guess I was thinking more publicly because you open yourself up to more criticism.

There were those people who read Belconto and then they told you, you know, like, why did it end this way? And the ending's not great and this and this. The ending is great. See, I love that you use this as an opportunity to be like, nope, haters are going to hate. but no, it's great. But you are just so honest about things that didn't work. And I saw that as not every writer would do that, Ann. I don't think any writer would go back and do an autopsy of a book, especially that was so successful. Like, why create a wound where there was no injury? I feel like it's a great opportunity and what harm can come of it. One of the things that I really thought about while I was working on this, I got about halfway through and I thought, what about Belcanto, Taylor's version? It took me a second. Right?

Like, instead of marking up the mistakes. Cultural whiplash for me. Okay. But if I just open up a new file and rewrite it? What if I just do it right? Oh, my God. Are you going to do that? No, no.

It was one or the other. I mean, I can't do them. both. But I thought that would make people really mad. Right, right, right. It would be really fun to fix it. But then people would always say, oh no, it was better

before. Okay, next round. You want to just guess, Rachel? What I'm going to pick? Are we going three the whole time? We're going three. You don't even need to hold up... Just three. Just boom. One, two, three. I'm just going to go. Wow. Well, I feel like these are all of a piece. How comfortable

Are you with being wrong? Oh. I feel like you're very, I shouldn't answer the question for you. Yeah, I mean, I guess this whole conversation is about I'm very comfortable being wrong. You know, there's so many things you want to be wrong about. I want to be wrong about. I want to be wrong about climate change. I want to be wrong about the state of our nation.

I want to be wrong about so many things. I hope to be wrong. So, yeah, I think I'm really comfortable with it. Also, I have a terrible sense of direction. So at least five times a day, I am wrong. You know what? It takes practice. And you're telling me you get a lot of practice.

And so you develop a thick skin about it and you just move on. Right. I'm totally with you on that. Okay. All right. Well, oh, I like that one. No, I'm looking at it. I'm like, should I just put one at number three? No. I'm going to... Yeah, absolutely. Go ahead. Oh, Rachel, this is so important. You can cheat and I won't know the difference. I know, but that... I need people to understand this. I don't cheat. The cards are in control. Okay, three, please. Okay. Three. what's an expression of love you're trying to get better at? Boy, complete acceptance. Complete blanket acceptance, which is the love my husband gives to me,

just accepts me for who I am, always no matter what. And I think I've always been somebody who wants to fix, and I work very hard to not fix and to just see the people in my life and accept them for who they are and love them for who they are. I'm a big fan of Greg Boyle. And Greg Boyle is a Jesuit priest who founded Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the world's largest gang prevention and rehabilitation program in the world. And his whole thing is everyone is perfect the way they are. everyone is beloved, everyone is accepted no matter what. And I think, there you are, Greg Boyle, working in gang prevention and rehabilitation

and able to look at anyone who has done anything with complete love and acceptance. and all I need to do is not say to my husband, maybe you want to wear a coat. It's a little cold. Okay, all right. So I've got a much lower bar to get over. I love, this is this right? I think I read this, that you dedicated the original version of Delconto

to the man who is now your husband and you weren't married. You were just dating. Yes. What kind of madness was that? That's way crazier than going back and re-annotating your original book. That's so nuts. And I want to tell you my second novel, which was a book no one ever read called Taft, and I dedicated it to my boyfriend at the time.

And I found out that he was, shall we say, stepping out on me as the book was going to press. And I frantically called my publisher and said, can you pull this? And they were like, hang on, let me check. Yes. We got it back. Is that right? Yes. Oh, my God. Yes. And I got it back. It's like you stopped the tattoo artist right as they were about to go into your arm. It's so true. And I dedicated it to my beloved cousins. And boy, done. And I thought, never going to make that mistake again. But then I met the right guy and I dedicated the book to him and we weren't married because I didn't want to get married. But I knew that I would always be with him. Yeah.

Well, I love that he that he sets that standard for you of like such acceptance. It's a good bellwether to have. We're moving to the final round. Okay. One, two, three, three, I'm just going to assume. Three, please, yes. How have your feelings about God changed over time? Oh, did you write that one for me?

No. Oh, okay. So there's a lot about God in Belcanto. There's a lot about faith. And one of the things that I found very moving when I went back to it was I was much closer to me. Catholic faith when I was 35 or 34, when I was writing that book, 36 when it came out. And, you know, it's a two-part thing. There's God, and then there's Catholicism, which I always say Catholicism is to God,

what sorority is to college. It's, you know, for some people, it's everything. For some people, it's nothing for other people. It's part of the experience. I still believe in God. And here's the thing. If I tried to tell you what that meant, I would be wrong. The only thing that I know for sure is that whatever I know is wrong.

And it does not behoove me to spend a moment's time thinking about it. We are alive, and that's an astonishing gift. And it seems very possible to me that being alive is God. And that the trick is whether or not we know it. The trick is whether or not we can keep our focus and remember that, We are, for all of the suffering, the recipient of the most beautiful gift for a limited period of time, which is our life. I guess I'm interested in your preservation of the word God to define that. I've gone through my own journey, God, I hate the word journey, but I've gone through my own evolution when it comes to.

to the faith that I was brought up with, my spiritual inheritance from my parents, who are very religious people, Christian people. And so I've struggled with what God means that the word carries so much for me, but because of how I was raised. And so it feels very dramatic for me to say, I don't believe in God. But I guess I appreciate that you, even though you are no longer a Catholic and don't identify that way that you? Yes, I do. You are. I don't go to church, but I do still call myself a Catholic, yes.

Why? Sorry to interrupt. No, no, no, but that's even more interesting. I mean, if you somehow found your way to separate yourself from the bits of the church that you didn't, that weren't resonating with you, and you still preserved, because Catholicism is pretty regimented. Right. Right. So you still believe, like, the Pope is the intermediary between God and the person? No, no.

I am still a Catholic, and there is an enormous amount about Catholicism that I don't believe and am appalled by. I am still an American, and there is an enormous amount about being an American that I don't believe in and that I am appalled by. I am a Tennessean. there is an enormous amount about being a Tennessean that I don't believe in, and I am appalled by. But I am those things. And there are about all of those things parts that I love and I'm proud of. So when I was a sophomore at Sarah Lawrence, I had a humanism teacher. We had a class called humanism. And it was a point in my life where I thought, I loathe Catholicism. I want nothing to do with this. This is just an ennathment of who I am and who I believe in, what I believe in. And I went out to dinner at the Raceway Diner, I remember in Yonkers, with my humanism teacher. And I told him my problems. And he said, if you're going looking for something as big as God, just go where you're comfortable. Go with what you know. It doesn't make any. difference. You're not going to pick a better religion. You're not going to pick a better set of words. It's not about the words. It's not about the religion. Don't waste your time picking out your luggage. Just go on the trip. Who cares? Who knows? Who cares? What matters is that we do our best

with the life that we have, that we show up, that we love each other, and that we try. try to be as aware as is humanly possible of the life and the gift that we're given. And to help other people wherever we can. Last one. Okay. Three, please. Do you think about the legacy you leave behind? No. And Patchett, it's been so great having you on the show.

I've loved this. This has really been fun. Wait, give me one more beat. on that. Give me one more thing. Because it's not interesting, because we're all here for a time, and then we go, and then people forget us, and move on. Dead's dead. Gosh, my husband and I were updating our will recently as one does, and we're both saying, we don't care. We don't care. It doesn't matter. The other one will make the right choices, or if we die together, everybody else to make the right choice. And the lawyer said, okay, but Anne, what if

He marries somebody right away, and then she gets all the rights to your novels, and she gets all of your royalty stream, and he dies a week later, and this person who you have no connection to gets all of your royalties and has complete control over your literary legacy. And I was like, James, I'm dead. What do I care? Don't humor yourself into thinking that you have control over things. over which you have no control.

Why are you so smart, Ann Patchett? Years. He's working on it. Years alone, digging up moss in the woods, avoiding the rattlesnakes in the blackberries, you know. Just get it all together. Okay, so we end the show the same way every time with a trip in our memory time machine. Okay. Go back, go back, go back.

And you get to pick one moment from your past. that you would not change anything about. You would just like to linger there a little while longer. What moment do you choose? I'm, gosh, there are so many. I'm going to say the moss. Am I going to regret that? It doesn't have to be the be all end all,

just whatever's in the front of your mind. But I'm worried that the moss is in the front of my mind just because we've been talking about it. Okay. Take another minute. Let me just take... You would think that this is the question you always wind up with, so this would be the one that I actually could have prepared for...

Nah. It's more fun to see kind of like what comes up, you know? The moss. The moss sitting in the woods by myself, maybe with a dog or two, in childhood on that farm. And it's not that childhood was all that happy, but those moments of nature and complete silence, those moments before anything called me away to do something else. You know, that sense of time when no one's going to call you until it's. It's dark.

I remember when I was a kid, I used to think so much about that whole thing of if a tree falls alone in the forest. And I would always think, I'm here. I'm here. If the tree falls, I'll hear it. I'll see it. It's a real Charlotte's Webb kind of world. A girl and her pig out in the countryside. Anne Patchett.

Her new annotated version of her best-selling novel, Belconto, has just come out. I so appreciate having had the chance to do this with you. I so appreciate you inviting me on because this has really been very moving. Thank you so much. If you like this episode, you should listen to my episode with Taffy Brodesser Ackner. She's another person whose relationship with the religion she grew up with, in Taffy's case, Judaism, has stayed with her in adulthood, has grounded her. This episode was produced by Rommel Wood and edited by Dave Blanchard.

It was mastered by Robert Rodriguez. Wildcard's executive producer is Beth Donovan. Our theme music is by Rom Teen Arabley. You can reach out to us at Wildcard at npr.org. We'll shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. See you then.