Ann Patchett: Winter Words 2012

thanks for coming and I'm so honored to be here I want to tell you a little bit about the Aspen writers foundation I'm going to keep all of this very brief because I know you're all excited and thrilled to hear an tonight but it was something that I wasn't aware of and I had lunch with Lisa the other day and she was saying you know talking about this exciting collaboration with the Aspen Institute you know its expanded the focus of the Aspen writers foundation but it's really important that we all know this the foundation depends on all of us giving contributions whether they're large or small it doesn't make any difference their focus is you know in the valley and on programs for children and these special nights like this one at the wheeler Opera House so it's important as you're looking at how you want to give and I know that we're a very giving community that you look at putting the Aspen writers foundation in that list because it's because of them that we as readers get to enjoy somebody as special and wonderful as Ann Patchett so that said I would like to thank the the gracious donors and that that have given to the foundation to present tonight's event it's sponsored by ISA and Cattle Shaw and Daniel Shaw the city of Aspen the Aspen Times Aspen peak magazine the Baldwin gallery the doms Colorado creative industries Aspen Public Radio the Aspen Skiing Company Blanca and Cavanaugh O'Leary and as Berrien rug company and the whole season this year is dedicated to the memory of ISA katha Shaw and Daniel such as parents so I just want you guys to know that and let's acknowledge them and then I get the great honor of introducing my friend and Patrick and many of you are here because you've heard her speak before but for those of you that aren't aware of her history I'd like to just tell you brief it briefly a little bit about Ann she's the author of five novels including the New York Times bestseller run the painter insane of liars which was a New York Times notable book of the year Taft which won the Janet Heidegger Kafka prize the magista the magician's assistant and the pen/faulkner award winning and orange Prize winning novel bel canto she is also the author of two works of nonfiction what now and the New York Times bestseller truth and beauty and has written for many publications including the Atlantic Harper's Magazine gourmet New York Times vogue Washington Post it's amazing her newest book state of wonder was released in June 2011 and has received critical acclaim and Patchett lives with her husband Carl in Nashville and this is the really exciting thing that she's done and she's the co-owner of a honest-to-goodness bookstore Parnassus books a neighborhood so all I want to say is that that I met and several years ago here and that she is the definition of a true friend she's direct she's honest she's funny her love is unconditional and I'm so honored and pleased to introduce this wonderful person woman author friend Ann Patchett there are a lot of you hi I'm really glad you're here and I'm really glad I'm here and I'm really glad that my friends Lisa and Annie are here this is what I'm gonna do I'm gonna tell you a little story I'm gonna read you a little story and I'm gonna tell you another story and then we're gonna do some questions and then I'm gonna sign books that's my agenda I always I always think it's good to know up front and I and I only read for a max of 20 minutes because I cannot bear to hear anyone in the world read for more than 20 minutes but that's just me okay so this is the story I want to tell you I have been doing this a long time Aspen man where is the humidity I love it here I would live here but but no humidity at all I'm from Nashville my husband is from Mississippi and we're kind of it we've been here for four or five days now and we're both walking here and going anyway when I published my first book the patron saint of liars in 1992 I was 27 years old and I'm 48 now spare you the math and and the way it worked it was it was a little book I was I was the classic definition of a midlist author but back in those days and they really don't do this anymore they would send the little baby authors out on book tour to go and meet the people in the bookstores and they didn't want to put any money into it but because they weren't gonna get any money out of it obviously but they thought it was really important that we go out into America and meet the booksellers and so what they did is they gave me I think it was $3,000 and I went to 28 cities in my car I slept in truck stops I ate in truck stops and this was before cell phones and so I had a big bag of quarters and every day I would call my publicist on the payphone at the truck stop it was it was really something that doesn't exist anymore it was it was kind of cruel and the the one thing that is true I think about all New York publicists and many New Yorkers in general is that none of them took geography in seventh grade the way we did in Tennessee and Catholic school so they would really book me in Boston one night and Cleveland the next night and Connecticut the next night and Indianapolis it was crazy so what I would do is I would drive drive drive drive drive and then I would get into town and I had a pink cotton dress from Poona my oh I don't know if anybody remembers Putumayo in the 90s what I wouldn't give to still have that dress and I kept it out in the trunk all nice and neat and then I would go to the McDonald's that was closest to the bookstore because even though I am a vegetarian McDonald's always has the cleanest bathrooms and I would go and I would my little pink dress on and then I would drive through the bookstore and I would walk in I would say hi I'm my man patch it I wrote the patron saint of liars I'm here for my seven o'clock reading and of course nobody was there right I mean and why would they be because they had never heard of me it was a Thursday night seven o'clock no one was there but my publisher had told me that the point of going on book tour was to get to know the girl behind the counter not the person who owned the store not the person who managed the store because they also were not there at seven o'clock on a Thursday night but the girl who owned who worked the cash register would be there she had not read my book nobody had read my book except my parents at that point and they were you know so so but if I couldn't be nice to the girl who worked the cash register the idea was and this was clearly stated that the idea was after I left she would like me so much that she would read my book and then when other people came into the bookstore and would say I don't know what to read this girl would say oh I just read this new book by Ann Patchett the patron saint of flowers and she would hand it to that person and the reason this worked was there was one universal truth about the girl who worked the cash register at the bookstore either she was getting married or she wanted to get married and I was a contributing editor at bridal Guide that was that was how I made my living back then because my best friend from college was the editor of bridal Guide and she didn't really feel like going to all the trouble of hiring writers so I wrote the entire issue every month I had 6-pin names I used the last name of every guy I had ever dated I wrote the whole magazine which is actually in itself a kind of a great thing because unless you have a fairly serious mental disorder the whole readership for bridal magazines turns over every two years and which keep that in itself is freaky to think that somebody is reading bridal guide for two years but then at the end of two years they would republish your article repay you for it and it went on for a long time anyway so what I would do in Indianapolis in the little professor bookstore at seven o'clock on a Thursday night was talk to this young woman about her hopes and dreams for a good engagement ring or a better engagement ring or you know the napkins should the napkins match the bridesmaids dresses and I would do this for two hours and then I would oh that was the other thing they would say my publisher would always say sign stock because if you sign stock they can't return it once you sign your name on a book it's theirs they have to buy it well this my friends is a lie because to this day I have opened sealed boxes of state of wonder from a publisher and they have been signed so I know those books are coming back so I did this I did this through my first three books I dogged Lee when I actually been my third book magician's assistant I got plane tickets some but it wasn't until Bel Canto which was my fourth book and frankly not until the paperback of Bel Canto because the hardback of Bel Canto didn't sell very well it was not until the paperback of Bel Canto that that I would go to a book store and there would be 200 people there and it for the first time I thought oh my god they lied to me this is about actually making money this is about people coming in and buying books while I'm here and I sign them and we sell the books it had never occurred to me I was so gullible without guile that I actually really did think that the whole point of book tour was only to meet the girl behind the cash register okay so when I would go off on book tour maybe which I still do which is my kind of my life on earth book to her I would give a reading so now I'm going to read and then I'm going to tell you the rest of that story of going out into the world this this is another thing the first time I ever gave a reading from patron saint of liars was in something like the writers Institute it was in Santa Fe but I remember that the room had a blackboard a giant blackboard and I got there an hour early and I wrote all of the characters on the blackboards and all of their connections because I thought that I had written a book that was so unbelievably complicated that unless you would have a chart like Hundred Years of Solitude to follow you would never be able to understand what I was reading now I'm kind of like you know this is from the middle of the book you're smart you'll figure it out in this scene group of people in the Amazon they are on a boat they are on a pontoon boat and they have gone to mail letters there are a couple of you in this room no doubt who have heard me do this before but I have polled the audience and members of the Aspen community extensively and they have said it was all right I could do it again so there are these five people on the boat and they've mailed letters now they are going back down the river at the end of the day three of the people on the boat are American doctors dr. Alan and Nancy Saturn who were married dr. marina Singh and then there are also two members of the Lacaze tribe on the boat Bennet who is about 18 who wants to be a naturalist a tour guide but he doesn't speak English and Easter who is probably 11 or 12 and is profoundly deaf interesting little aside about Easter when I was on book tour cuz really do get a lot out of book tour weird things you can't imagine I was on book tour for run and I was speaking at the National Cathedral in Washington one night and it was a very magic night many sort of life-changing things happened in the signing line that night and one of them was a woman came up to me and she said she was an interpreter for the deaf she said I would like to see a character in a book that is deaf and no one talks about it and no one cares and he's deaf and they're over it and it's not a book about being deaf and I said not a problem I can do that so that's why Easter is deaf and I also that night met a woman in the signing line who I talk to and I gave my email address to which won't happen tonight and and because of that connection her best friend ended up marrying my best friend so that was that was beautiful - okay so there are these five people and they're in a boat and it goes something like this they had not passed another living soul since they left the gentes and the world seemed something silent and wide belonging only to them on the left there was what appeared to be a crisp field of floating green lettuce Bennet tapped at Easter's arm and the boy turned the wheel and took them in beneath the sound of bird calls there was the most delicate sound of crunching as if the boat was making its way through a lightly frozen pond in December and the ice half the thickness of a windowpane was breaking apart to let them pass marina leaned over the front of the boat and watched the lettuce compact beneath the pontoons while behind them the plants knitted themselves back together we were here marina thought and we were never here he was a green so much brighter so much fresher than anything she'd seen in the jungle long toad Birds strolled across the delicate meadow with such confidence it was tempting to think that those tiny floating plants could hold the weight of a single pharmacologist the question was then was the water a foot deep or twenty feet deep Bennett smacked at Easter again and held up his hand and Easter stop the boat Ben lay on his belly his head and shoulders over the side he had seen something the Saturn's came leaned over him marina leaned over him is it a fish Nancy said Peck see Bennett shook his head I don't see anything her husband said Easter kept his eyes on Bennett who without looking his captain again pointed his hand to the left to the right a little back Easter held the throttle low and scooted the big boat around in the smallest possible increments until been out every ounce of his attention fixed to the sweet spring of lettuce abruptly held up his hand and Easter killed the engine altogether the silence was startling the budding naturalist still flat on his stomach then douve that same hand down through the leaves and began to pull the Colossus of all snakes into the boat human instinct dictated that the snake must be kept away from the face and so Bennett straightened his arm too rigid as if wishing to cast it away from his body while holding on too tight for the snakes comfort the reptiles long recurved teeth snapped ferociously into the air diving towards Bennett's wrists while Bennett whipped the head from side to side buying time until he could close the distance between head and hand he rolled on to his side and then his back managing somehow to pull the first half of the reptile up on board while it flailed like a downed electrical wire and its neck the snake was as big around as Bennett's wrist and from there the body smooth scales of darkest green with black blotches on the back and then creamy light underneath swelled into a size more in keeping with his thigh the snake kept pulling up and pulling up more and more of itself slithering up and onto the deck in thick muscular rolls where it sought its way on to Bennett's body extending out against him kneading him while Bennett struggled mightily to keep the two faces apart do not let the faces touch put it back Nancy screamed in English the language that stood between Bennett and his dream of becoming a tour guide drop it snake Allen Saturn said and then repeated the word endlessly for good measure he had caught it sure enough but he hadn't caught it close enough to the head there was too much available snake above Bennett's hand and the snakes enormous gaping mouth sought purchase its jaws opening wider than such a little head should reasonably dictate in a flash there was evidence of many rows of smaller teeth lined up and waiting to clamp into skin only by swinging it wildly did he keep the snake from sinking into his wrist Bennet seemed fixated only on as six inches of snake between the top of his fist and the tip of its tongue while completely ignoring the enormous body that was working its way heavily onto his own body now and Bennett who was wet with sweat and the water that the snake had brought on board was laughing there on his back pinned like a wrestler in an unsporting match he roared with the powerful joy while he tried to work one hand upwards with the assistance of the other hand Easter ever helpful grabbed on to the lower half of the guest and tried to pry it off of his friend there was too much coiling and uncoiling for an accurate measurement but the snake appeared to be about 15 feet long 18 when it stretched Bennett appeared to be 5 feet 5 inches and was outweighed by as much as 50 pounds the three doctors pressed away screaming various invectives in an unhelpful language marina wanted to jump into the water and run across the lettuce with the long-toed Birds but who could say that the snake didn't have a family down there there was an odor but none of them recognized the smell a furious reptile an oily stench of putrid rage that sunk into the membranes of their nostrils as if it planned to stay forever the back half of the snake whipped up and made itself a knot around Easter's slender waist and wrapped and wrapped and at the moment its head swung past Easter reached into the air his hand a quarter second faster than the snake and grabbed its throat just below the head well above Bennett's fist Easter had caught the snake that Bennett had caught the whooping the triumph and the revelry the day shook the jungles with their screams Bennett and Easter for sure enough Easter was screaming and the sound was so piercing so much like the agony of death that all three doctors were sure that the boy had been bitten and they lunged forward with the instinct of human decency to save his life but Easter was grinning madly as he gripped the snake while Bennett who was considerably stronger held fast below they looked into the creatures mouth now like a carnival attraction while the tongue that silvered spark of light licked towards them he caught an anaconda Allen Saturn said he caught an anaconda with his hands Allen Saturn seemed to be at the perfect intersection of the thrilling achievement of the Lacaze people the terror of morena and his wife and the rage of the snake whose eyes had focused into two pinpoints of murderous desire Easter coughed maybe marina understood it before he did but of course that would be impossible to say in a moment everything was clear to her and she stepped through the wall of her own revulsion and year and took the tail end of the snake that was pressed into Easter's hip its flesh was at once clammy and dry cool to the touch despite the terrible heat of the day she had once dissected a snake in a college biology class a small black garter snake long dead and stinking of formaldehyde she had cut it down the center and pinned it open on a wax bottomed pan to the best of her memory that was the only snake she had ever touched she touched the second one as she worked to pull it from the boy when she had pried a little of it loose she moved her hands up the body hand over hand like she was working her way up a rope except the end of the rope began to wrap around her wrists it was a muscle like nothing she had ever encountered did not fight against her didn't notice her she pulled Easter coughed again Bennett could see the problem now as well his friend was wrapped inside the snake and the snake had figured out a way to loosen the hand that held its neck Bennett slid his hand up to cover Easter's hand just as Easter's hand fell away Easter tried to work his own small hands in between himself and the snake and when he exhaled to get his fingertips in between them the snake felt the movement of his breath and squeezed Easter's eyes shot first to Marina and there she saw the very soul of him in his fear and she pulled and Allen's hands were by her hands and they were pulling together all of them been taught from the throat while Nancy Saturn cried for a knife a knife and then Xhaka but Benna could not hear them now he was frozen to the snake who was in the business of killing his friend who may have been 11 or 12 but was very small for his age tell me there is a knife on this boat Nancy Saturn said Easter's lips we're turning blue either from the lack of oxygen or the weight of the snake he went down on his knees it occurred to marina that his spine could snap and they all went down to their knees marina knew there was a machete strapped to the steering column of the boat it was the very knife that Easter had used to trim away the branches when he tied the boat to the tree and in an instant she was up the knife was nearly as long as her arm as heavy as a tennis racket and she put the blade just above Bennett's fist and with a single pass sliced off the head and it would have been the greatest moment of her life had cutting the head off killed the snake but beheading it changed nothing on the deck the busy head continued to snap its murderous teeth moving in a slow circle as the jaw opened and closed while the body went about the business of strangling the boy Jesus she said she could see the tendons standing out on Bennett's neck she could see his crooked bottom teeth his open jaw jutting forward in exertion the blood of the headless snake running down his arm while Bennett continued to pull the top of the snake the saturn's continued to pull at the bottom and in the middle Easter continued his death marina began to saw into the roles of the headless snake her hand at Easter's head the point of the machete at Easter's toes her objective was to cut through both coils simultaneously as she doubted there would be time to do this twice at no point did Easter make another sound he would not use another teaspoon of his breath he stayed stock still inside this jacket and kept his eyes on marina first there was a large vertebral column that required marina to lean in as she saw it as much as she would have leaned in to saw a part a human arm with a long knife at a bad angle she worried about pressing too hard and cutting into Easter but Easter was still very far away she cracked the vertebra the first coil and then working the knife from side to side to break the second Bend she cut down through the ribs the thick muscles in the belly scoot when she was very close to Easter she put the knife down and ripped the bit of snake that was left with her hands the heavy weight worked in her favor then tearing itself apart as it fell to the deck Nancy Saturn picked the boy up then light as air this child and stretched him out beside his murderer and blew into his mouth and blew her lips reined in to cover so small a mouth with one hand behind his neck she tilted back his head and with the others she blocked his nose and blew until she saw his chest rise and none of them could tell whose breath it was and she stopped for a minute and it was his shallow and uneven at first but his own she lifted up his shirt and lightly touched the red welts across his torso and Allen Saturn kneeled beside her and put his ear to Easter's chest Bennet crouched away from them his head against his knees his back heaving with his breath while on the other side of the boat Easter's eyes blinked and marina sat down beside him then in the pool of widening blood and took his hand it was still daylight when they got back alan saturn was driving the boat and even though a couple dozen of the lucasi we're waiting on the shore with their branches they held in their hands the branches had not been lit when they saw the boat they stood up to watch but they didn't jump or cry out it could have been because the travellers had only been gone for half a day and it could have been because dr. Swenson was not aboard but either way everyone in the boat was relieved though there was more to celebrate now than there had been in their entire lives combined but when Alan Saturn pulled up next to the little dock and the Lacaze came on board the boat the calling and the crying broke forth in earnest not the theatrical display of the week before but deep and abiding joy that marina had not seen three men picked up the three large chunks of snake from the blood slick deck and the fourth man picked up the head the very head marina had meant to kick into the water although she had been unwilling to touch it again even with her foot they carried off the pieces of the snake each as heavy as a small tree and hoisted them about their heads to show the ebullient crowd it would be a feast to tell the grandchildren about for years to come there would be anaconda for dinner tonight so okay so here's the other half of the story I live in Nashville and I have to tell you um honestly I don't love bookstores and I have not had a lot of well think about it I spent the first half of my professional life you know sitting there by myself at a table with a little sign that says meet the author today and no one coming which was fine it was a little humiliating but you do it for years you get really used to it and then the second half of the professional life where there are a whole lot of people bearing down on you which is can be sort of frightening sometimes so I I tend to be a little nervous in bookstores because I spend so much time in them but what happened in Nashville is that we had two bookstores we had borders and we had a bookstore called Davis kid Davis kid was our locally owned and operated independent bookstore about ten years ago and then it was sold to a company out of Ohio called Joseph Beth booksellers that had about ten stores throughout the south and the Midwest and both of the stores when Joseph Beth bought Davis kid they moved it into the mall so we had a borders that was 30,000 square feet and we had a Davis kid that was 32,000 square feet that's the size of Macy's okay and the amazing thing because everybody thought our stores both close they both closed within six months of each other people thought that they closed because people weren't buying books and people were using their e-readers and people weren't supporting their bookstores both of those two stores both of them bigger than 30,000 square feet were profitable every single month they were open in Nashville because we bought books they both closed at a corporate level so there was problem with the business and everybody in Nashville oh we felt so sad we just felt terrible about it where's our bookstore somebody's going to open a bookstore there were all of these committee meetings in town who's going to open a bookstore meanwhile my book come Souths state of wonder right I don't have a bookstore in the town where I live and the place that I have been going to do my framing since I was in high school the beveled edge they called me up and they say do you want us to sell your new book and I said yeah that would really help that would be great that would be super and then the place that I get my clothes altered stitch it alterations they called me and they said do you want us to sell the book so you can go in to stitch it and get your pants shortened and buy a copy of state of wonder so every time I did an interview with anybody locally I would always say and you can go to the beveled edge or stitch it and you can buy a signed copy and I'll go over and sign these books for you but still it's not the same you know I love my locally owned and operated alterations store but I really wanted there to be a bookstore and there wasn't and I waited and I waited and I started thinking oh my god am I gonna have to do this myself what a nightmare I don't want to have a book store and I talked to a lot of people I talked to a friend of mine whose family had found a Dollar General and he said don't do this he said you're like somebody who's a really good cook who thinks they should open a restaurant and there's no correlation between being a good cook and opening a restaurant you have a job write your books I say thank you good but time goes by no book store no book store and finally I'm introduced to a woman named Karen Hayes and she wants to open a book store - and and as total strangers on a dime we decided this to go into a partnership and we open a bookstore called Parnassus books in Nashville it's 2,500 square feet which I don't know how big this theater is although I'm getting pretty good at this I am gonna say that the bottom level including this stage is probably about the size of my bookstore the most incredible thing that has ever happened to me in my life this store opened November 15th well for one thing I've had a nice career I do fine as a literary novelist okay I am NOT setting the world on fire but I'm doing fine all my adult life I make this product right at home in my spare time it's called a book I make these myself in my house and I've done all right I opened the store that sells that product I gotta tell you I am them as famous person you would ever want to meet right now but the bookstore opened on November 15th on November 15th there was a photograph of me on the front page of the New York Times what is up with that imagine a group of highly paid consultants meeting with HarperCollins Publishers in New York and they say what are we gonna do to get this literary author on the front page of the New York Times okay she could hijack a bus of schoolchildren she could transport drugs inside of live rabbits or something across what would I have to do to get on the front page of the New York Times not that it was ever my dream opening a 2,500 square foot independent bookseller would not have shown up on anybody's list but NPR did so many programs about this that they started calling it national Patchett radio I was going and doing the morning shows on all of the networks I was on my martha stewart show talking about what books you should buy for christmas why because I am America's most famous bookseller I've been doing this for I don't know like ten weeks I don't go into the store that often either on the 20th of this month I'm gonna be on The Colbert Report okay all right you want to hear something really funny I've never seen The Colbert Report why I read books I don't watch television um I'm moving into this whole other world and what's been so incredible and the list of incredible things it goes on and on I find that not only I have the store but I have been put in the role of being the national spokesperson for independent booksellers and everybody seems to want to hear this message and the message is so fantastically clear to me and I am so loving this new life and this new job where I can stand up and say this happens in a cycle like the cicadas you start with a little independent bookseller and it does well and it makes money and it feels good and it got bigger and it expanded and maybe it got a couple of different branches and people could see independent booksellers making money and so then all of the sudden we got these big mega super store chains like borders and Barnes and Noble and may God please maybourne's and Noble survive and those super store chains which we used to hate squashed the little independent bookseller and then Amazon came along and they can sell you anything in the world and they squashed the superstore which probably never needed to be 30,000 square feet and then like a phoenix coming up out of the ashes would be me the little independent bookseller and it's this amazing story of redemption we are so packed night and day with people who come in and say I learned my lesson and I am going to support my local independent book so the thing I think in my whole life that I feel proudest about is that I am creating jobs and a tax base and supporting my community and and that I have this message which is in a nutshell the best price doesn't necessarily represent the best value and that we have to it's really really easy to have something come to your house but it is actually important to think it through and say I would really like there to be some cops in my community I would really like there to be some teachers I would really like there to be some jobs because this idea that the most important thing is the lowest price for us hasn't actually been so good for our communities the other thing that is astonishing that I didn't ever understand was that my first publisher and my first publicist was right and the person who rules the world is the girl behind the cash register and that's the thing that Amazon is never going to give you because the people who work in my store and the people who work in bookstores all across this country and especially the people who work at your local independent bookstore Explorer are smart readers who you talk to these people and you think why are you not running local government why are you working in this bookstore you're so smart and they can put the book in your hand that you need because most people who come in as we all know we walk into a bookstore we want to be inspired we want somebody to tell us what we're going to love we want somebody to say I read these books and I can say here now read this one all of this has been revelatory people are so afraid that Amazon is going to take over publishing but if you publish your book on Amazon trust me no one is ever going to find it because it is the biggest haystack in the world that doesn't mean actually that I am fundamentally against Amazon because I have octogenarian cousins in rural Kansas and I know that is the only way that they can get a book but I'm going to explain something to you quickly about ebooks state of wonder 50% of the books that it's sold have sold in ebooks 50% in hardback the book at this point has sold a little over 200,000 hardbacks so that tells me a little over 200,000 people are still in student buying literary fiction hardback book that's a really good number if the thing is most important to me is that you're reading and how you read is your own business but if you want to read e-books and you want to go into your bookstore and look around buy a children's book as a gift by an art book buy some cards buy something to keep them in business you can't just use it as a showroom and look around and see what you want and then go home the other thing about ebooks that a lot of people don't understand is you can buy them from your local bookseller and download them onto your reading devices unless it's a Kindle but if it's an iPad if it's a nook if it's a Sony e-reader you can support your local bookseller and you read all at the same time another thing that you might find interesting I don't know I find it interesting if you buy a hardback copy of state of wonder I get four dollars and five cents if you download it on your e-reader I get two dollars and 37 cents if you wait and buy it in paperback I get a dollar in fifteen cents so I lose money when it's out in hardback and I gain money when it's out in paperback so that kind of is the way it all works that might be more information than anybody wants about book selling in sales I am so interested in it and I feel honestly like I am at this sweet spot that nobody else is standing in where you know I've got the best-selling book and I've got the book store and I have all of this experience in publishing and and now you know for the next 15 minutes Thank You mr. Warhol I am going to be a famous bookseller I would love to answer questions and the way we're going to do it is you're going to raise your hand you're gonna ask me a question I'm going to repeat it and that's the party yes you know we can't talk about that here and the question is about the end of the book but I'm working on the assumption that a lot of people haven't read this so we could maybe whisper in each other's ear in the signing line yes yes the question is how did I choose Aiden Prairie Minnesota for the book to start out in I wanted a place that was as different from the Amazon as I could imagine and the thing that I couldn't stand about the Amazon is it's very claustrophobic unless you're right in the middle of the river there's no field of vision it's just pressing in on you Minnesota is flat 360 degrees you can see everywhere and the reason that I chose Eden Prairie my sister used to live in Mankato so I've spent a lot of time in Minnesota the woman who cuts my hair is from Minnesota and I said give me the name a fantastic name for a town in Minnesota and she said Oh Eden Prairie and I was like that would be the one thank you very much yes oh no there's one advice my advice for an aspiring young author is volume period end of story read every thing you can get your hands on tons big volume all the time eat books up read read read same is true with writing don't be precious don't polish Polish polish don't spend your life working on one paragraph think of yourself as a pipe full of sediment and gunk and the only way you get clean water is to flush an enormous amount of water through that pipe there is junk in you terrible sentimental bad poetry horrible you need to write it out you can't just think it out you have to flush it out and get it out and the find it comes Clearwater so just tons of reading tons of writing over and over and over and over again people don't think of writing as a discipline people don't think of it as a job people think of it as inspiration and that is ridiculous inspiration is fine in high school if you're writing one poem but if you are 48 and you want to pay the mortgage you really need to have a job and that means you go to work and you work and you think of art as work because because it is and it's so much more beautiful and fulfilling if you go at it as a job as work because then you're strong it's it's like dancing you know if you were gonna do a great leap across the stage a beautiful grand jete you have to have the framework you've got to have the muscles you've got to be able to do it over and over and over and over again that's not something you can do once or when you hit you break your ankle so volume that's your key word yes please oh no that's easy the inspiration for bel canto was based on a true story the 1995-96 takeover of the Japanese embassy in Lima Peru by a group called Tupac amaura have I said that sentence before yes I have and when I was reading about it in the paper it was the most under fiying terrorist event and remember this is a pre September 11th world and you know it was this big deal they've these these terrorists have taken over an embassy but then in the paper it started to say terrorists order out for pizza terrorists requests more soccer balls and it turns out they were a group of kids and they held these people for four months they let all the women go they let all the workers go they loved most of the hostages go they kept a core group and I followed that story and I really very early on thought I want to write a novel about this and yes my pleasure so easy yes the question is am i an outliner and do as opposed to an outlier and do I have a word account or a page count a day no I don't have a page counter or a word count and am I an outliner not exactly sort of I do everything in my head so I do know what's gonna happen and how the book will end before I start to write it but I don't write that down I just think and think and think and think and I'm always trying to kind of get it down in my brain anybody in the balcony need to talk to me about anything you guys okay up there all right yes the inspiration for state of wonder was sort of twofold one I do a lot of college and university programs they have these things called the freshman read where the kids are all sent a book over the summer before they start their freshman year of college so they have this common experience reading program and then they bring the author in it is often me because I went to Catholic school for 12 years I tend to write books in which people don't have sex and no one swears I don't mean to write those books but at the end of the book I'm always like wow there it is again so every time I go to one of these programs the people who organize them always say the same thing to me next year we would like to have a book by a contemporary female author in which the main characters are women who are not being oppressed or victimized by men or falling in love can you recommend that book and I never could and I I write the book I feel is missing I write the book I want to read and so I started thinking I really want to write a book about women who are doing serious important work trying to do good in the world and this is not about them being victimized in any way and then I decided I really wanted to write book about a grown-up student finding her important mentor teacher later in life because I have had teachers in my life especially as an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence who completely changed my world I loved them so passionately I wanted to please them so much but the trick is the teachers have had thousands of students and they don't remember you because if you are a teacher the only students you remember students are the well I probably shouldn't tell you this are the ones that are really bad the ones that make your life hell on earth are the ones that stick and the ones that get their homework in on time and we're really good you forget I have also had the experience of sitting in a signing line and having somebody come up you know with my book and say this Padgett I was your student fifteen years ago and you totally changed my life and I was going to medical school I had already been accepted at Cornell and I took your advanced fiction writing class and and I dropped out and now I'm teaching English to third graders and I just think oh my god but I don't know this person I don't know their face I don't know their name how could I have changed the life of someone that I don't remember and that of course is also part of being a novelist too because you get a lot of stories about I read your book it changed my life in this way and so that also was very much the inspiration those two things for state of wonder which was a lot of fun yes do I do all of my own research how much time did I spend in the Amazon do I do all of my own research well I don't know how to answer that question I mean yes and no I just go to people who are smarter than I am who are experts in their field and I ask them some questions so so if I'm writing about a pharmacologist I don't sit down with a bunch of books and teach myself pharmacology I find some pharmacologists ask a couple of questions and take notes I can find anybody and one of the great truths about human existence is that people want to talk about what they do and what they love and I mean that with a great heartfelt kindness and I love to talk to people and I love to listen to them and to listen to what they do so I can find anybody and sit down lean forward this is another great trick for writing and say I am really interested in what you do tell me tell me about what you do I went to the Pathet enables 'putin Maryland to talk to the head of malaria research spent an entire day with me had not read my books didn't know me from dirt but when I called him up and said I am so interested in malaria how many years has that guy been waiting for the phone to ring that somebody says I want to see your mosquitoes more than anything I want you to tell me everything you know about mosquitoes he was crying by the time I got there so that's half the other half how long was I in the Amazon too long we were there for about 10 days and my this is the all-encompassing story of my time in the Amazon I took my husband with me and after about the second day he put his hand on my arm and he said god I can't believe you brought me here this is so beautiful so amazing you brought so much into my life I would never seen all of these beautiful things without you incredible about day four he held my arm a little tighter a little higher up and said I cannot believe you brought me here and I just want you to know that other people's husbands would not do this I was really glad I stayed too long because the claustrophobia the horribleness of it really does kick in after four or five days I really didn't need to go and the reason why all you got to do is watch those old verner Hertzog movies I Gareth of God Fitzcarraldo there's some documentary that he did about making this Carlton which he's standing in front of a tree going John go is dead it is disgusting and you're like yeah that's it so while it was you know a good experience to go I remember the last day I was in a place that had internet access for 30 minutes once a day and I you know for $30 you know that internet access and I emailed the the travel agent and said this was like day seven you've got my credit card on file I don't care what it costs get me out of here I will go back online in 20 minutes for your response 20 minutes later I came back online and this woman - who I'd never met to her everlasting credit wrote me back and she said I can get you out of there 30 hours before you were going to get out of there anyway it's going to cost you four thousand dollars I will not do it go get a bottle of pisco brandy lock yourself in your room and just grow up and and I did and the other thing it was so hysterical so hysterical about that last day we have read all the books that we had brought and it was this room you know with a lot of life on the tile floor and there was 140 watt bulbs screwed into the wall over the bed and this was a very fancy place this was the only jungle lodge in in the Amazon that boasted twenty four-hour-a-day electricity future reference shoot higher than that okay so we had read my husband and I had read every book that we'd brought and all we had left was and I don't even know why I had this somebody had given it to me just as I was walking out the door somebody had given me a copy of Eckhart Tolle A's what was that called the new earth right and it was like I would read a page by the light bulb rip it out of the book hand it to my husband he would read it and we had this amazing conversation about Eckhart Tolle that I think never would have happened that would be the understatement of the world had we not gone to the Amazon okay other questions yes from the how long did it take me to write the book from the first idea to I finished this book this book was faster I know it took me about fourteen months to write it now which is which is fast for me I can't tell you how long I was thinking about it beforehand because the thought comes up Oh indistinctly and gradually it's almost impossible to say oh this is where it begins for exact cut have been a year could have been six months I don't know I mean there are books that I think about for years when I was a starting book tour for this book I was in the UK and my publicist in the UK I don't think I've told anybody this story was on a train with me and she was I'd never met her before it was a very nice woman and she was telling me about her children and her son's name was Alby it was short for Albert Albie and that was it and I don't know what this book is about really but from that moment I thought oh okay I know this book is about a kid named Albie I absolutely know that and not just like in a way of I think oh I like that name but I think there's like this brain thing you know the tumblers click into place and so I spend my days thinking where is all B where is he going how old is you now what is he doing and I've got some of it now but it always starts from a different place so you know do you count those first two months that I just walk around saying I'll be I'll be your people always say why don't you take notes and I think because for two months I'd have a notebook in which I wrote all be all be all and that would be it yes what Rhys what influenced my eye my research of everlasting fertility in state of wonder I wanted to write a book about malaria I wanted to write a book about a bait-and-switch in which somebody was developing such an incredibly profitable drug that the pharmacology company wouldn't care and would let that person go off the rails it would be so much money so I thought okay what drug would be so profitable first thought eternal youth second thought effortless weight loss third thought my personal favorite really thick fantastic hair and then fourth thought fertility so it just it was just profit you know I just thought what what do Americans want more than anything and and I have to say I mean it's funny to me when people say oh you wrote a book about fertility I do have some thoughts on the subject and this idea that all doors are left open for all eternity and we can just put our decisions off forever not making a decision ultimately is a decision and so one of the books that really influenced me is Pinocchio did anybody read if you read Pinocchio lately it's it's pretty good I should talk about books you should be reading to Pinocchio wants to never go to school any candy all day and shoot pool and what happens to Pinocchio is a cautionary tale he becomes a jackass and he's sold to the circus and I think that I had a lot of fun playing around with that Pinocchio concept which is if you get your wish which is you never have to make up your mind there that isn't necessarily good news so I had a lot of fun writing about that I don't have children I actually never wanted to have children and I spent my entire life with people from you know my very closest friends to absolute strangers coming up to me and saying I know you think you don't want a baby now but you better go ahead and have one cuz you're gonna want one later and then you won't have one so go ahead and get one now just just a really weird thing to say to somebody anyway that that's fertility we have my friend in the curtain says we have time for one more question yes oh yes thank you yes tell us books we should read this is the very best part of owning a bookstore then I can just say to people read this read this read I take books not only do I give books to people and people are a little afraid of me because there's friends am i point out I'm scary so if somebody's in the store and they've got a couple of books I say well if you're buying this and that you should also buy this but I also take books away from people if I'm talking to them and they seem smart but they're holding a stupid book I'm like listen this is not for you and I do that in other people's bookstores all the time too okay so well you know you see somebody holding the Marriage Plot by Jeff huge entities train dreams by Dennis Johnson and the new Nicholas Sparks and you say to yourself one of these things is not like the others so maybe they got confused and you need to help them so two books that I really love brand new novels The Marriage Plot by Jeff huge entities which I thought was much better than Middlesex I do know I did I did okay you know what that book was sort of a biopic for me that I had a lot of deep connection with The Marriage Plot train dreams by Dennis Johnson a little novella about logging in Oregon in the turn of the century a gorgeous jewel to to tour-de-force a book that I love the family Fang by Kevin Wilson has anybody here read the family Fang what a treat you a Fang Oh really really weird book if weird isn't for you it's about two kids whose parents are performance artists and they make their art around using their own children in public disturbance and it's really a book about art and about how weird it is to be a member of a family there is a book this is for words okay ready the all of it this is a book that whenever I say the title people think I am saying the all of it like an Italian typewriter so it is by Jeannette Kane H AI en and it is a book that I found in a used bookstore in Woods Hole Massachusetts out of print moldy friend of mine said oh this is such an amazing book I paid 35 cents for it it was such an amazing book I had it reissued with a foreword that I wrote from my publisher the author is dead it is after state of wonder our number one best-selling book I keep a huge stack of them by the cash register and when anyone's checking out we say have you bought your copy of the all of it yet and if they haven't we force them to buy it and everyone who reads that book it's a hundred and thirty pages it's tiny comes back and buys ten more if you're in a book club and you're tired and you don't want to read on a Karenina because you should read the all of it because it's moral and complicated it has plenty to talk about if you're looking for something kind of smart but lighter and a little happy thought-provoking a really good book Penelope Lively's new book where it all began I just finished this week another book I've read so much this week I read the jungle book this week by Rudyard Kipling and if you've only seen the movie go and get the book I cried on the plane from the sheer beauty of it right now I am two-thirds of the way through Katherine Boo's book which actually came out today called behind the beautiful forevers about the slums of Mumbai and it is much easier and more lighthearted and accessible than you would think a book about the slums of Mumbai would be and I'm probably now you're growing enough stop stop we have classic of the month that Parnassus books this month it's high wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes which is a fabulous book published in 1929 you just can't imagine what a pleasure it is to have a big table right in the middle of your store covered with nothing but high wind in Jamaica and people are like what is this and I'm like it's the book you never read but you absolutely have to read it now I'm gonna tell you how we are going to do the book signing if you would like your book signed because you will not come as no surprise I have a method when I went out on book tour this summer my friend Elizabeth Gilbert called me up and she said revelation life-changing I no longer personalize books I just signed my name it goes 10 times faster it's a beautiful night I said I'm sure it is but I am NOT Elizabeth Gilbert and you have 6,000 people at your reading but this is what I do now I have two lines I have an Express line and I have a regular line if you would like me to just sign my name in the date you open the book to the title page you come up and I sign my name and you get to go home if you want me to write happy birthday to your aunt if you want to tell me a very sad story that's gonna make me cry if we go to high school into high school together if you want to take my picture for your facebook page then you go to the regular line when everybody from the Express line is done and you cannot believe how fast the Express line goes then I will personalize I'll do anything you want I'll have my picture taken with you twelve times so I come to Aspen more than any place else I love it I love the writers Institute I love all you people honestly this is the nicest friendliest smartest town support your beautiful bookstore and be proud of it thank you very much quick reminder do join us in the lobby for the Express line in the picture line and don't forget that we have an incredible series next up is Geraldine Brooks and Tony Horowitz thank you all so very very much for coming check out Aspen Reiner start org for all the latest literary information in this wonderful town thanks seeing the lobby

Channel: The Aspen Institute

Views: 1,918

Rating: 4.6666665 out of 5

Keywords: Ann Patchett, Aspen Words, Aspen Institute, novel, writer, writing, process

Id: V_NskDqdwic

Length: 68min 13sec (4093 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 22 2016