Desert Island Discs, Radio 4
WITH some writers – Ann Patchett is one of those – it’s as if you know them as a friend through their books.
She has won many awards and was named by Time magazine as one of the world’s most influential people.
Her Desert Island discs featured laughter and moments of reflection.
She said Snoopy from the Peanuts cartoons was her inspiration – he kept going, sending out his manuscripts with an SAE, he went out of print, he went back into print, but even though he was knocked off that doghouse again and again, he got right back up and back on his typewriter.
Her novels are about families.
Her parents split up when she was very young and she ended up in blended families – two stepfathers, a stepmother and siblings.
Once, she said, she walked into her house and found a boy there.
“What are you doing in my house?” she asked the stranger. He asked the same question. They found out they were step-siblings.
“We weren’t the products of our parents’ happy marriages, we were the flotsam of their divorces,” she said.
We weren’t the products of our parents’ happy marriages, we were the flotsam of their divorces
She talked about when US President Joe Biden presented an award, then whispered: “Good work kiddo.”
There’s no sense of an ego. Turns out, no surprise, that writing is hard work. But it was all she wanted to do.
“My greatest dream in life was to be able to pay my bills with writing… that’s the only dream. Not to be rich… or own a house…That’s all I wanted.”
There were difficult times – she was just 25 when she left her first husband and first teaching job and moved home, finding work as a waitress.
She vowed never to get married again.
When she met Karl, he asked her to marry him the first night they went out and he kept on asking for 11 years.
Reader, she married him.
When she sold her first novel and was paid $30,000, she thought immediately of getting the air con in her car repaired. She had waited five years thinking it would be so expensive to fix – but the car was just out of coolant and it only cost $17.
This was a great listen with rousing and beautiful music along the way, from Talking Heads to Bach.