Author Ann Patchett on writing amid chaos

In the latest episode of Influential, US writer Ann Patchett shares how seeing kindness around her influences the way she approaches her characters.

The world needs “life-changing books”, Ann Patchett once wrote in an essay in The New York Times. She wasn’t referring to her own works, yet admirers of the best-selling US author would argue that this is exactly what she has achieved, with acclaimed novels including Bel Canto, and the Pulitzer Prize-shortlisted The Dutch House, along with her award-winning 2005 memoir, Truth and Beauty: A Friendship. 

Patchett, who cites John Updike and Roxane Gay as influences on her deep body of work, brushes off praise. Reflecting on her books, she says that it took her years to finally feel like she was a successful writer, even when The New York Times included the prize-winning 2001 novel Bel Canto in its best books of the 21st Century list.

“I just didn’t think you could make art and be successful,” she tells the BBC’s Katty Kay. They sat down at Parnassus Books, the bookshop Patchett she opened in 2011 in Nashville, Tennessee, a city which is also the setting for her 1992 novel The Patron Saint of Liars and her 2013 memoir-fiction hybrid, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. “[It] never occurred to me.”

Some may see an author opening a bookshop as self-serving, but Patchett explains that she approached it like a civic duty. She didn’t want to live in a city without one, and after she saw her local bookshops shutting, she co-founded her own.

“It wasn’t that I wanted to open a bookstore – I really fell into it backwards,” she says. “It’s been a wonderful thing. It’s been a huge joy.”

Patchett rose to prominence in the world of fiction, crafting stories that brought together unexpected situations, and even more unexpected characters. Take, for instance, the home for unwed mothers in The Patron Saint of Liars or the depths of the Amazon rainforest in 2011’s State of Wonder. She describes the scenarios in her books as “people in confinement”, even though the stories span everything from events on a meditation retreat to hostage situations – and her own memoirs.

“The setting is the fun,” she says of that commonality, though she’s quick to point out that there’s always something deeper going on. Readers have been transported to Alpine peaks, the jungles of South America, the cities of Los Angeles and Chicago – but Patchett points out that within those far-flung places, it’s first and foremost the characters that she hopes fans connect with. “The setting is the frosting, but it is always the relationships.”

Patchett has said before she doesn’t watch television and that she has resisted the siren song of social media.

“I am very interested in protecting my brain and not just being constantly interrupted,” she tells Kay. She uses a flip phone, she doesn’t remember her number and she avoids both smartphones and social media. “I’ve never texted. That seems like a really bad idea. I don’t want people to be able to get me all the time.”

She may not participate, but she is aware of the digital world – and it does make its way into her work. When Kay asks her how she captures readers’ attention when they all have feeds to scroll, Patchett doesn’t see this as an issue.

“There are always going to be people who want to read,” she says. “There isn’t one truth about the way people are, how they get their entertainment, how they get their education.”

Reflecting on the characters in her books, Patchett explains that she is more drawn to kindness than anything else. When she looks at everything happening around her, she doesn’t just see chaos and doom.

“In my novels, there probably is more kindness than you might see in other books, but not more kindness than you might see in your daily life,” she says. 

When Commonwealth, her seventh novel, was published in 2016, she spoke to fellow writer Zadie Smith, who offered an insight that Patchett had never considered.

“‘Autobiographical fiction isn’t what has happened to us. It’s what we’re afraid of happening. It’s what we fixate on and think about and worry about,'” Patchett recalls Smith saying. “In that moment, I thought, what am I afraid of? Who am I afraid of being? What do I think about all the time?” 

Addressing those questions head-on has allowed Patchett to craft characters that have resonated with readers. She says that her fans bring her first-edition hardcover copies of Bel Canto at festivals (she’s quick to remind everyone that every hardcover of Bel Canto is a first edition), and tell her that she’s managed to create something very special with every book. 

As ever, she downplays such praise. “I do it because I love to do it, I don’t feel any pressure,” she says. “If I never wrote a book again, the world would keep going just fine.”

Influential with Katty Kay airs on Fridays at 21:30 ET on the BBC News channel.