Perhaps a few of the slighter pieces could have been left out, but even those have great lines and interesting paragraphs. Toward the end of the book, Patchett digs into Updike, Bellow, and Roth. "Influence," she writes, "is a combination of circumstance and luck: what we are shown and what we stumble upon in those brief years when our hearts and minds are fully open." Patchett also writes delightfully about Snoopy, the cartoon beagle and would-be novelist, first among her literary influences. The author explores the process of managing one’s papers and offers various angles on how one comes to the vocation of literature. In addition to family and friendship-"Three Fathers" and "Flight Plan" are standouts in this category-several essays deal with aspects of the writing life. Patchett includes the text of a wonderful lecture on her "feral" experience in graduate school in Iowa and an introduction written for the collected stories of Eudora Welty that seems as perfect as the stories themselves. (If you haven't read it yet, get ready for Tom Hanks, Kundalini yoga, cancer treatment, and a profound yearning to be a guest in Patchett's Nashville home.) Like This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage (2013), this book contains a mixture of occasional essays and profound ones, all previously published. “I’ve made a place in my community where everyone is welcome.In a series of essays, the beloved novelist opens the door and invites you into her world.Īs she herself is aware, Patchett has a gift for friendship-never clearer than in the magical and heartbreaking title essay, which made the rounds from friend to friend by way of texted links when originally published in Harper’s during the pandemic. “I believe I’ve done more good on behalf of culture by opening Parnassus than I have writing novels,” she writes in an essay based on a speech to graduate school deans - one of the book’s funniest. Patchett and business partner Karen Hayes opened Parnassus Books in Nashville a decade ago, and she has described the venture as one of her life’s greatest accomplishments. Patchett has a unique vantage point on book promotion as an author who also co-owns a bookstore. She writes of her decision not to have children, and the often-insensitive remarks of people who can’t understand such a choice. She recounts her year of no shopping and her later, pandemic-inspired quest to rid herself of some worldly possessions. She reflects on literary influences as diverse as Eudora Welty, children’s author Kate DiCamillo and cartoonist Charles M. Patchett paints other memorable pictures in the book, starting with the opening essay, “Three Fathers,” a group portrait of her father and two stepfathers. The cover headline: “An essay about Tom Hanks, tornadoes, running bookstores, taking mushrooms, making art in quarantine, stories without endings, and an unlikely friendship.” The resulting essay, the book’s longest, was published this year in Harper’s Magazine. Patchett says she knew early on that she wanted to write about her friend. She could have been shipwrecked on their island, and somehow she got shipwrecked on ours, and we all felt so lucky.” “And the key was that she was with us when she could have been with 100 other people who would have wanted her. “The luck and the fortune of my life was just overwhelming,” Patchett says. While she never lost sight of people suffering from the pandemic, Patchett and her husband, Karl, felt fortunate to be marooned at home with a fascinating stranger whom they came to love dearly. Raphael lived with Patchett for three months while she was being treated at a Nashville hospital. It’s the story of a deep, late-in-life friendship forged in the intense isolation of the pandemic and Raphael’s cancer treatment. The account of how the actor’s intensely private personal assistant slowly revealed herself to Patchett is powerfully moving. Patchett met Raphael when she and Hanks appeared together at an event in Washington, D.C., the novelist interviewing the actor, who had recently published “Uncommon Type,” his own book of short stories.
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