Here is the thing that Ann Patchett does extraordinarily well. It's a contrarian thing.
Writing about owning a dog, Patchett recalls all the people who approached her and said, "That's just a surrogate! You really are rehearsing for having a baby!" Coolly, Patchett observes, "This is incorrect." She leaves unstated: "Take your sexist laziness and shove it up your ass." There's a tension required for that kind of understatement--and the tension is the thing that keeps you glued to the page.
How to get married: Make a mess of your first marriage. Find yourself shaking and permanently scarred. Next: Date a man for eleven years. Be sure he is fifteen years older than you. Insist that you will never, never marry. When your boyfriend has a life-threatening heart incident, find yourself getting married.
In her new novel, "The Dutch House," Patchett has two main characters disinherited. They have access only to a trust-for-education. So, out of understandable wounded-ness, they decide to pursue as much education as they can. Frivolous education. Just to feel some slight furnace-puff of love from their obtuse and now-dead father.
One character becomes a doctor, not because he enjoys this, but because he wants to use the trust money. "I learned that you did not need to like your job to be good at it." (So true!)
Unable to pursue his actual passion--real estate--this main character sits and waits. When an opportunity to buy "slum property" arises, the main character pounces. He understands that Columbia University will soon want to build on this land. A counterintuitive purchase--rewarded. Listening and bold, unusual thinking--rewarded. (This main character is operating like a gifted novelist.)
Patchett understands that life is actually quite different from the trite stories we tend to tell ourselves. And this is the source of her strength. She has mined her eccentric wisdom year after year after year. Attention must be paid.
Writing about owning a dog, Patchett recalls all the people who approached her and said, "That's just a surrogate! You really are rehearsing for having a baby!" Coolly, Patchett observes, "This is incorrect." She leaves unstated: "Take your sexist laziness and shove it up your ass." There's a tension required for that kind of understatement--and the tension is the thing that keeps you glued to the page.
How to get married: Make a mess of your first marriage. Find yourself shaking and permanently scarred. Next: Date a man for eleven years. Be sure he is fifteen years older than you. Insist that you will never, never marry. When your boyfriend has a life-threatening heart incident, find yourself getting married.
In her new novel, "The Dutch House," Patchett has two main characters disinherited. They have access only to a trust-for-education. So, out of understandable wounded-ness, they decide to pursue as much education as they can. Frivolous education. Just to feel some slight furnace-puff of love from their obtuse and now-dead father.
One character becomes a doctor, not because he enjoys this, but because he wants to use the trust money. "I learned that you did not need to like your job to be good at it." (So true!)
Unable to pursue his actual passion--real estate--this main character sits and waits. When an opportunity to buy "slum property" arises, the main character pounces. He understands that Columbia University will soon want to build on this land. A counterintuitive purchase--rewarded. Listening and bold, unusual thinking--rewarded. (This main character is operating like a gifted novelist.)
Patchett understands that life is actually quite different from the trite stories we tend to tell ourselves. And this is the source of her strength. She has mined her eccentric wisdom year after year after year. Attention must be paid.
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