NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — When she isn't 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.
“The new Liz Strout book is the best,” she says of Elizabeth Strout's “The Things We Never Say.” “You know, every single book she publishes,
you just think, ‘Oh, well, she can’t possibly do that again.’ And then she comes out with another book and it’s even better.”
At 62, Patchett is the rare and fortunate writer whose words resonate among friends and strangers alike. She owns one of the country's signature independent bookstores, Parnassus Books, with customers ranging from Nashville's book lovers to Tom Hanks. She's also a popular and prize-winning novelist whose new books are inevitably among the year's most anticipated, and whose older ones, including the acclaimed “Bel Canto,” continue to sell. In 2021, she received a National Humanities Medal for “putting into words the beauty, pain, and complexity of human nature.”
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. Patchett spoke at Parnassus with The Associated Press on a sunny weekday morning, shortly before opening time. She also met with staff members gathered at the center of the 4,800-square-foot store to discuss upcoming events, and indulged the occasional interruption by one of the employee-owned “shop dogs” who hurry about like bargain-seeking customers.
Patchett is here early to talk about “Whistler,” which comes out Tuesday. Like “Bel Canto,” “State of Wonder” and other Patchett novels, it's 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 realize 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 breakup of Eddie's marriage to her mother.
Patchett doesn't 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's safe to leave and seek help, Eddie assures her, “I swear to you, it's mostly good people out there, with a few bad people around the edges.”
“The people that I interact with every single day are good people,” Patchett says. “It is vanishingly rare when I meet someone who’s not nice. Now, if you watch the news and read the news, it seems like everyone’s terrible and murderous. But it’s the difference between primary and secondary sources. So if I’m 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.”
“I don’t set out to write books about nice people,” she adds, “but I like people.”
Patchett's sense of citizenship was recognized 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 “to get books into the hands of children in underserved communities,” supporting emerging writers or inspiring readers “who recognize themselves in her novels.”
Patchett has a well-lived appreciation of connections, and how they can be broken by discord or ended by death.
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." 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 and endured multiple surgeries before dying at 39. In the title essay from her 2004 collection “These Precious Days,” Patchett honors the late Sooki Raphael, a Hanks assistant with whom the author became close while Raphael battled terminal cancer.
“Whistler” is dedicated to her friend Jim Fox, a former head legal counsel at HarperCollins who died in 2024 and is the inspiration for Eddie (and the namesake for a character in “State of Wonder”).
“He was brilliant, and a great reader,” she says. “Jim isn’t Eddie and I’m not Daphne, and certainly the circumstances aren’t the same, but the huge love that Eddie and Daphne shared is the huge love Jim and I shared.”
Patchett, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the Iowa Writers' 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 “young adult” books, she started out reading such children's favorites as “Charlotte's 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.
By her early 20s, Patchett was accomplished enough to have a story published in The Paris Review. Patchett's 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.
“I was at my cousins' house a few months ago and they had boxes of old papers of mine,” Patchett says. “And they were from grade school, middle school, high school — notebook after notebook, poetry and stories. I was shocked by the extent I was practicing my craft at age 10.”
Patchett's 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's rise. Patchett and business partner Karen Hayes came up with a seemingly wild plan: open a new store — a decision met with some skepticism at the time, but now a sign of the changing fortunes of independent sellers.
Membership in the American Booksellers Association has more than doubled over the past decade — including such author-run stores as Straub's Books Are Magic in New York City and Jeff Kinney's An Unlikely Story in Plainville, Massachusetts. Straub says that when she was thinking of opening her store, she spoke with various friends who owned small businesses.
“They all told me not to do it, but when I talked to Ann, she said ‘Do it,’” Straub says. “She's my hero. I think the friends who were telling me not to do it were speaking practically. But I didn't want to hear practical advice. I wanted to hear inspiration.”
