The art of the novel | Ann Patchett

0:03You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. If you're a big reader, the kind of person who always has a book going, a stack on the nightstand, a couple more waiting in your bag, author Ann Patchett would like you to know you're doing something more important than you might think. reading and the telling of stories is how we as mammals communicate. This is what the human animal does. We shape our experience into stories. Anne is the author of 10 novels, among them Bel Canto, Commonwealth, and her latest called Whistler.

0:45For the past 15 years, she's also been the owner of Parnassus Books, one of the most beloved independent bookstores in the U.S. Some of you may remember Anne from earlier this year when we shared her recent TED Talk, which was a love letter to reading, and our Beyond the Talk conversation came with it. Anne came back to sit down with me for a full TED Talks Daily Book Club conversation. It was a wide-ranging hour about her new novel, The Craft of Writing, and why she's come to believe that a life lived around books is really a life lived in connection with and in service to other people. Anne, who's by her own cheerful admission and optimist, also shares what she does when the weight of the world starts to feel too heavy.

1:29It is important to fight against what you hate. And yet it is more important to fight for something that you love. While books and the craft of writing might be the scaffolding for this conversation, ultimately it's about friendship, kindness, and the quiet case for paying closer attention to the people right in front of us. It's coming up right after a short break.

1:58Self-directed investing, trading, full-service wealth management, automated investing, financial planning, thematic investing, retirement planning. And to think that's just a small taste of what Schwab offers because Schwab knows that when it comes to your finances, choice matters, No matter your goals, investing style, life stage, or experience, Schwab has everything you need all in one place. So you can invest your way. Visit schwab.com to learn more.

2:28This episode is sponsored by Defender. Summer is on its way and now is the time to start planning your next great outdoor adventure. If you're setting your sights on higher peaks, deeper rivers, and bigger dreams, embrace the impossible with Defender. Built with legendary capability and tested on some of the most difficult terrain, Defender brings the toughness you need in a vehicle to take you to faraway places with the comfort and smart tech that makes the journey feel luxurious. Choose between the sleek two-door Defender 90, the purposeful Defender 110, or the Defender 130 with seating up to eight people for bigger expeditions.

3:07Defender's robust materials mean you can adventure without compromise And innovative driving aids like ClearSight technology help you view the world around you in powerful new ways. With the available three models, you have the potential for up to 89 cubic feet of cargo space. This summer, adventure with confidence. Explore the full Defender lineup at LandRoverUSA.com. For many employers and brokers, group health insurance means unpredictable costs and plans that try to fit everyone but end up fitting no one. A model called ICRA is changing that. Employers set a fixed contribution. Employees pick the health plan that works for them, their family, their doctors, their budget.

3:51Predictable for the business, personal for the people. That's a better kind of coverage. Get coverage you control. Find out if an ICRA is right for you at ambetterhealth.com.

4:09And now our conversation of the day. Welcome to the book club, Anne. So I'll just jump right in. You said in your recent TED Talk that books are the rock on which you built your church. So I'd love for you to talk with us about your faith in books that seems so foundational to everything you do. uh i've i'm a reader and and i've always been um a far ranging and voracious reader which i find the most interesting thing about that is if you are a huge reader all you really know is how much you haven't read constantly you're having conversations and i'm like no i've never never heard of that book i was at the bookstore this morning doing some videos with our team and they were recommending books.

4:56And I was like, where did you find that thing? I have never heard of that. So that's what's so great. No matter how much you read, no matter who you are, you're going to find more books to read and different ways to inform your life. And it's been such a joy for me to be a reader. I'm always trying to encourage other people to be a reader. Yeah. I love how in so many of your interviews, including the one with me, you pepper them with book recommendations. And so I wanted to be just taking footnotes the entire time. Now to Whistler, and there could be some spoilers ahead. So we just want to warn you of that.

5:35I want to give the heads up in case anything comes up. But for those who are listening and watching who haven't yet read the book, can you briefly introduce us to Whistler and its main characters. Sure. My elevator pitch. So Daphne Fuller is 53 years old. She's the narrator of the story and she is spending the day in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City with her husband, Jonathan. Jonathan notices that someone has been following them and is looking at Daphne and they try to give him the shake. But finally, Jonathan goes to talk to this older man in his 70s and it turns out it's Eddie Triplett who was Daphne's stepfather for a little over a year and she has not seen him since she was nine years old and the story is about their relationship in the past in the present and in the future the nice thing about when you've had a book out for a while yeah you get to a point where you know how to talk about it the first two or three times someone asks that question, and I always think I have no idea what this book is about.

6:46But then you really do, you figure it out on the fly. Yeah, you've gotten really good at that. And so now we have an opportunity to dive a little bit deeper. A member of our TED community, actually, Heidi H., asked about the inspiration for Whistler, saying that some of the moments felt autobiographical. The LA Times has quoted you in the past saying, I would happily ride down the Amazon in a canoe and deal with snakes rather than face my family. Yet, as Heidi points out, Whistler can feel intertwined with elements of your own life. So could you unpack that for us a bit? Sure. A lot of conversation about this book being autobiographical or feeling very autobiographical, which is a really funny thing to hear from someone you don't know.

7:35It's like, I know you, right? Yeah, it's like, okay, my sister can tell me this book is autobiographical, which by the way, my sister told me this book was not autobiographical, but it is what I have come to think of as cooking from my own pantry. So when I write a book like State of Wonder, I'm putting an enormous energy into the construction of sets and costumes. I'm making the trees. I'm picking the birds. I'm making this world that is very far away from my world. I'm doing a lot of research. In this book, I am saying, okay, Daphne has a father and two stepfathers. So do I. Not the same father, not the same two stepfathers, but I at least understand that dynamic and I'm going to borrow that.

8:28So there are a lot of elements that are from my life, but this is not about my life. I think the thing that gives the book the autobiographical feel, it's dedicated to my friend Jim Fox, who died just over two years ago on his 85th birthday. And Jim is not Eddie. I am not Daphne. And Jim certainly was not my stepfather. He was my lawyer. but the love that we had and the friendship that we had is very much the love and the friendship that Daphne and Eddie had and it it really was this sense of like I've lost one of my very best friends yeah I still have all of this love like where can I put it where do you what do what do you do with all of those happy memories and just joy and put it into a book, into a narrative.

9:29And I think it does make the book feel very autobiographical. Yeah, this was such a sweeping love story in a lot of ways, but it was a platonic love story. So I'd love to know why you decided to write this kind of story between two characters. because I feel it all the time in my life I love the friendships in my life and I love the ways in which friendships can be so romantic they can be so warm and close and intertwined and funny and full of acceptance without any of the anxiety of romance if like Like, are they going to go to bed together? Are they going to betray one another? Is something terrible going to pull them apart?

10:20It's just like all of the good stuff and none of the anxious stuff. And the scenes of them walking around New York and talking about life and their dreams and what they wanted to do and what they did and what they remember. It's so romantic. And it was such a pleasure to write because nothing bad's going to happen. Yeah, yeah. You said recently on NPR that the former stepfather, Eddie, his words to the young Daphne when she was young shaped her whole life. And similar words shaped yours, too. There were apparently some nuns who told you something similar about decency that Eddie shared with Daphne.

11:07I went to Catholic girls school for 12 years and there were nuns and one in particular, Sister Nina, 94, still very, very much in my life. But the idea that you're part of a collective and that you are not ever one voice, it's like you all sing together and you shouldn't necessarily know where your voice is. Yeah. And the message about kindness. I think the words where people are kind and your job is to be kind in return. That people are generally good and decent and we should trust them. And there's like a small percentage of people that we might need to fear, but we don't need to design our lives around that.

11:50And I thought that was a really powerful message. Yes. And it makes me so sad, actually. I live down the street from a school and it's a boys school. And in the morning and I'm walking the dogs and the boys are walking to school and you say good morning to them and they look at the ground because they've all been trained to not talk to strangers. The most important thing is that you don't engage with anybody you don't know as a method of keeping yourself safe. And I understand. I mean, I understand terrible things happen, but for every one terrible thing that happens, a million good things happen.

12:32And if you cut yourself off from the potential of the terrible thing, you're also cutting yourself off from the potential of just the kindness of daily interaction and the warmth of connecting with other people and their dogs when you're out there. Yeah, yeah. And so many people listening have been curious about the title of this book and the story of the horse on the cover. Okay, so the book is called Whistler. And Whistler is a horse. And Whistler the horse is on the cover of the book. Whistler is what we call a bay. So sort of a chestnut brown. And she has a couple of white stockings and a white blaze.

13:20And she is standing in a field in Wyoming. There's a night sky behind her. She's got it on her saddle. Her bridle is hanging down. and it's because the horse has run away. And then three days later, the horse has come back. And it was very important to me that the horse be looking out at the viewer. And when Noah Satterstrom painted this painting, I said, can you make the horse look straight ahead? And he said, the eyes are on the side of their head. It's really hard to make a horse look straight ahead. And I said, hey, figure it out. And he did, it looks great. but this is not a book about a horse if you don't like books about horses you're going to really like this book and if you long for another book about a horse you're going to be really disappointed the horse is on maybe five pages of the book but the horse who is not hurt that's the other thing that i have to remember to say people really want to know the horse is okay through the whole book But the horse is in a story that Eddie tells to Daphne when they are in a perilous car accident and trapped overnight in a car.

14:38And he's trying to tell her a story to take her mind off their circumstances. And the story that he tells her was from a book proposal that he had read just that afternoon. He is in publishing. and it turns out to be a story that is way too scary and stressful for a nine-year-old but he doesn't understand that and he gets into the middle of the story and he desperately wants to get out of it and he's like I'll tell you the end later when we're out of the car and she's like no you will tell me the story of what happens with Whistler now but the thing is Whistler comes back And Whistler is emblematic of all that is loyal and true.

15:27And as the novel progresses, Daphne comes to think of Eddie as Whistler and Eddie comes to think of Daphne as Whistler. So the horse just stands in the place of love and loyalty. But somebody said to me a couple of weeks ago, this looks like the kind of book a fifth grade girl who is crazy about horses would want to buy. and I thought that's exactly what I was going for that old-fashioned horse book like Black Beauty or Black Stallion but in this one the horse isn't hurt and there isn't a terrible ending but it is the kind of book that or the kind of cover that Daphne would have liked when she was a little girl and Eddie was in her life yeah as a parent and of course as a daughter I also found myself really resonating with the exploration of parenting in the book.

16:29This is a theme in some of your other books as well, so I want to acknowledge that. But why did you want to take on this theme of looking back in time and sort of reassessing our relationships with our parents and reassessing our parents themselves as human beings as we age and we become, you know, fully grown up? Right. Well, let's go back to the aforementioned Sister Nina, my nun who taught me to read in first through third grade, and I hated her. I missed a ton of school in those years. We moved around a lot. I wandered in and out of the classroom. I did not become a comfortable reader until I was in the third grade.

17:09And Sister Nina stayed on me, kept me in from recess for years because she thought it was important that I learn how to read, and I hated her for it. All right. So there is my assessment that I made of this woman when I was six years old. At six, I decided she was a bad person who was really mean. But the interesting thing is I kept that assessment throughout my adult life so that when people would tell their bad nun stories, I would always be like, oh, you should have met this nun that I had when I was a kid. She kept me in from research, research, recess every day and probably research. And then when I was 39, she called me out of the blue and she was working at a St.

18:02Vincent DePaul school downtown. And she said, we've got nothing. We don't have paper. We don't have scissors. We don't have glue sticks. It was just a super poor school. She said, we need money. I have been following your career. I know you have money. I want you to give me some money so that we can buy school supplies. And I said, sure. And this happened a couple of times. And then I said, listen, let's get together. And she was living in a condo at the time with some other nuns who were still teaching because the rest of them had all been shipped off to the old nun's home. And when I got there, she was standing out in the parking lot and she's like 4 '11 and weighs 80 pounds and is Italian.

18:46And I got out of the car and she's standing there holding out her arms to me. And I thought, this woman doesn't hate me. This woman was never unkind to me. This woman only wanted to teach me to read. And I have held a grudge against her all this time. And I took that energy, that scenario, and I gave it to Daphne and her mother. So Daphne is incredibly angry at her mother when she is nine years old because Abigail, Daphne's mother, is divorcing Eddie. Daphne can't stand this. It's unfair. And she really breaks with her mother. and as she becomes an adult she still is distant and cold to her mother because she's still angry and over the course of the novel she has the chance to really see as an adult what her mother was struggling with with both her first husband and her second husband and her third husband in a different way.

19:59And Daphne can finally see her mother as a human being. And it's not that Daphne forgives her mother. It's that Daphne comes to understand there was nothing to forgive. Oh, so powerful. And when you, my mind just wandered when you mentioned the third husband too, because I want to acknowledge how hilarious he was, the positively positive guy. Was anyone the inspiration for that? I was just curious. I mean, if you want to do a little peek behind the curtain. Yes, absolutely. And I was doing a podcast with Adam Grant and he was like, are you making fun of people who write self-help books? And I said, oh no, I am making fun of myself.

20:46I mean, I am Lucas Ecker. I am the guy, I'm the person who's always positive and people are making fun of me because I am a Pollyanna and I am the one who's like, things are going to turn out. Like, I know this is a really hard time in the world. I know this is a hard time in human history, in the history of our country, but I have complete confidence in the basic goodness of human beings. And I think that we're all going to get through this. And my friends are like, oh God, would you give it a rest? Well, we love that about you. And that's why we need you. That's why you're a treasure. Yeah, but I can be quite tiresome too.

21:36Anne, I'd love to move to craft for a moment because so many questions from our listeners came in about craft. I thought we could start with a scene from Whistler that really stood out to me or an exchange, a dialogue exchange. Daphne is speaking with her sister, who's a psychologist, and she says something like, who remembers what happens to you when you're nine? And her sister says, that's all we ever remember. And it speaks to kind of how frozen our childhoods can feel. This harkens back to your example, too, of how you thought about Sister Nina. Can you walk us through your writing practice and how you go through planning out an exchange like this or keeping track of the dialogue such that it feels so real?

22:18Because that's something that really resonates with so many of your readers and fans? I don't plan it out. I mean, I plan out the larger structure of the book and I do know what the arc is and where I'm going, but I don't sketch out a scene. I pretty much just write it. And it's all about knowing who these people are. if you if you understand who the characters are it's like improv you know then you can speak in their voice you know what Lita's going to say you know what Daphne's going to say I understand who they are and then I drop them into a particular moment and then I can type and then as far as getting the language right or the sentences I always say this is what I do for a living So I had a whole lifetime of working on this, how to listen and knowing the difference between speech and dialogue.

23:26When I was young, I once dated a guy who worked in the district attorney's office and he would have wiretaps and we would read wiretaps for hours and hours. And boy, nothing taught me more about how to write dialogue than to read 600 pages of wiretaps of a phone. It's unbelievably boring what people say to one another. And the ability to pick out a single sentence or half sentence and weave them together so that you are encompassing big, ranging ideas in a few sentences. That's dialogue. Yeah. Well, you're so good at it. TED member Anka A asks, how do you decide which moments in a character's life deserve the spotlight and which moments are best left for the readers to imagine?

24:30You know, it's again going back to just knowing them. And I could have picked different moments that would have been emblematic. It's just not picking too many of them. or having too many of them that are boring. You want to kind of just drop in, drill down briefly, make sure that you have a good picture of the scene. Even if you're thinking about Henry James, you know, even if you're thinking about a novel like Wings of the Dove, which is 800 pages. And there are some long, slow scenes in there, but there may be 20 or 30 pages. And then he is going on to another moment, another moment. Even Henry James isn't giving us every single turn of the character.

25:29There's just editing. Do you feel like your sense of taste or your filter as an author comes from getting bored easily with yourself? Like, do you have a lower threshold for what's exciting? Just the opposite. I think I have one of the highest thresholds for boring around. I mean, to wit, I read a lot of Henry James. I can really stick with things that are very slow and very quiet. And also, my husband always says I have the opposite of attention deficit disorder, I have attention surplus disorder. Leave me in a room and I can just stay on point focused for an entire day. My idea of a great adventure is reading Proust in a hardback chair, you know, just staying really focused on one thing.

26:33So it's, no, it's not that I have a short attention span. It's not even that I am writing to cater to a short attention span. It goes back to reading wiretaps. It's just that I understand that if you want to get something across, you can't do it by giving every single detail. For example, my real stepfather, who was a neuro-otologist. He dealt with a very specific kind of brain tumor between the ear and the brain, but he wanted to be a novelist. And he wrote huge novels practically every other month that he would then find and give to me. It was both abusive and really so instructive. But if he had a character who was going in to take a shower, which for no reason didn't figure into the story whatsoever.

27:34But the character would go in, would turn on the faucet, would adjust the heat, the cold, pull back the shower curtain, check the soap, undress, make sure there was a towel. And I was like, oh, it would take 10 pages. And the shower didn't tell you anything. It makes sense in a horror film or something like that, right? Like a lot of attention to detail. Anything about the character, it didn't move the plot forward in any way. And I really do think we can learn so much more by seeing people fail than by seeing them succeed. So I would read Chekhov and think, well, I mean, I'm never going to be able to do that.

28:24I can't even imagine how Chekhov did that. But I could read my stepfather's novels, thousands and thousands of pages I read throughout my youth. And I thought, oh, I am never doing that. Again, it's a wiretap situation. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's why I think actually going to MFA programs can be really helpful because you can see the people in your class doing things wrong and you're like, well, that's a sinkhole that I don't want to walk into. Right. Right. And you can learn more quickly sometimes than you can if you're just watching everybody do everything perfectly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You have said that writing about kindness and gentleness takes more craft than writing about darkness.

29:17Why? Well, think about it. You've got a picnic and in that picnic, a terrible tornado blows up and sweeps half the family away and the rest of them are up in a tree. And there's action. There's action generated by disaster. faster. But if you're having a picnic of kind people who are talking in a civil way and enjoying their lunch, then you have to really think about what is the tension in the scene and what are these people actually saying to one another and how can I move the story along? One of the things that I've thought about so much in the last just couple of years is complaining, anger, bitterness, frustration.

30:11It's low-hanging fruit. And just to walk in and say, oh, it's terrible. It's just never, never been worse. To which I always say, did you read about the children's crusades? Did you read about the plague? This is not the worst moment in human history. And climb up the tree a little bit farther and see what you can say about what's positive. It's not that you're ignoring what's negative, but put something good out there in the world. I used to do a lot of travel writing and every now and then I would get sent off on a cruise. And somebody who was an editor at Travel and Leisure said to me, we only send the very best writers on cruises because nothing happens.

31:02And are you able to write an essay about a cruise ship in which nothing happens? Well, this reminds me of David Foster Wallace, right? A supposedly fun thing that I'll never do again is about a cruise. I was just going to say exactly that. Yeah, they sent the very best writer of all on a cruise. And that piece is riveting in which all he's trying to do is figure out how he can make it back to his cabin to catch the person who is cleaning because he never sees the person who is cleaning. Like, that's the tension and that's the answer. That's the answer. It takes a lot more skill to write about something where seemingly nothing is happening and he did it better than anybody.

31:58Yeah, I love that essay. So listeners, if you haven't read it yet, please do. Yeah, I love all of his essays, actually. Same thing. Yes. Consider the lobster. I was about to say, consider the lobster is always on my nightstand. Yeah. And I'll never eat lobsters in Maine. That's a human example where Gourmet Magazine said, hey, David, would you go on to this lobster festival? And then they got this massive thing about the slaughter of lobsters. And it was a terrible decision for them about whether or not they were going to run it because... Oh, I didn't know that backstory. Oh, yeah. I also used to write for Gourmet.

32:46Fascinating. But they did, much to the everlasting credit of Ruth Reichel. Yeah. And to this day, it's had an effect on some diners. That's exactly right.

33:00For many employers and brokers, group health insurance means unpredictable costs and plans that try to fit everyone but end up fitting no one. A model called ICRA is changing that. Employers set a fixed contribution. Employees pick the health plan that works for them, their family, their doctors, their budget. Predictable for the business, personal for the people. That's a better kind of coverage. Get coverage you control. Find out if an ICRA is right for you at ambetterhealth.com.

33:33If you've got a teenager, it's time to have the talk. You know, about investing. With the new Schwab Teen Investor account, teens can gain hands-on investing experience and build positive money habits. It's an account co-owned by you and your teen, so you can monitor and engage with the account while your teen learns how to invest and manage money. Learn more at schwab.com slash teen.

34:03And back to you. Your mom once told you, stop trying to make everything permanent. It doesn't work. I think this was in reference to a divorce, but I'm curious how it connects to your work. Because TED member Miriam M. asks, how has your process of writing evolved with the passing versions of your own self? Yeah, what my mom said was every relationship you will ever have in your life will end. Interesting. They will die or you will part. And so she said, ending cannot be a failure or every single relationship is a failure. And I was 25 when she told me that. And I was like, that's the most horrible thing I've ever heard.

34:55And I have thought about it so much since then. And that it actually is a really beautiful thing to say. Like you can be with somebody and really love them and they have a very successful relationship and it is not a relationship you will have forever. And that doesn't mean that it was a failure and you don't need to frame it as a failure. But how have I evolved? How has my writing evolved? I think it goes back to that idea of set design that I used to feel it was so important that no one knew anything about my life, that I was writing things that appeared to be strictly from my imagination, when in fact, everything is from your life.

35:41If you're writing science fiction about little green Martians with suction cup toes, you know, that's your cousin, that's your sister, that's your neighbor. And to kind of come to peace with that, I've come to realize that I cannot control how people read my work. And if people are going to read it and think, oh, well, that's very autobiographical, or clearly she's writing about herself. I can't go around saying, no, no, that's not what I'm writing about. No, no, that's not what this means. It's just like, I'm going to write the best book I can write with the tools that I have and leave it and go on.

36:25To the literary landscape and just books in general, which is how you've connected with so many people, including me. In your talk, you said, I've come to believe that if you're interested in living in a society where people read, it's also your responsibility to cultivate readers. This is foundational, but just to set the table here, Why do we need a society where people read? Okay, this is just me. This is just, you know, the way I see society. But I think that reading and the telling of stories is how we as mammals communicate. This is what the human animal does. We shape our experience into stories.

37:15at the end of the day today, my husband will come home and he'll say, what did you do today? And I will say, oh, I did a podcast with Elise from TED and we had a really long tech check and I had to get the cameras set up just right. And I was wearing a white shirt and I changed to a black shirt. I will make it into a story of this experience and I will try to make it entertaining and I'll try to make it funny. And then he will tell me about being a doctor and patients that he saw. And this is how we exchange bits of our day. And this is how we stay connected. And to my way of thinking, reading and books are so central to that activity because it allows us to connect to the people that we've never met.

38:10And you can say, oh, you can do that on the internet too. You can do that on social media. But I think that there is a depth and a thoughtfulness that comes from writing these stories down and then sending them out into the world and everyone having their own experiences with the stories and then coming together. That's the crazy thing because reading is such a solitary activity. And yet I've owned a bookstore for 15 years and I am out on this giant book tour right now. And every night all these people show up and they show up because they want to talk about my book, but also because they want to talk to each other and connect to other people as readers.

38:56And it's an incredible point of connection that I feel like now more than ever we need. I'm glad that you brought up the bookstore because you really serve as a model for what it means to be a literary citizen. With all of the work that you do outside of writing, what are you proudest of right now? I definitely feel like I've done more for the state of the humanities in this country as a bookseller than I have as a writer. And part of that is having author events, It's having this social media through the bookstore, which is weird because I'm actually not on social media, but the bookstore is.

39:41And so I'm always holding up books twice a week and talking about books that I love, which has been a great means of not only making recommendations of books that are brand new and books that are old and you might have forgotten about, but to promote a conversation around books. So that's part of it. The Parnassus Foundation, which is not mine or me, it is something that the bookstore came up with and we've all really worked on together as a team. we buy books for children in Title I schools. And so we can bring in authors and illustrators who would normally go to private schools or fancy public schools because the financial model for writers and illustrators going into schools is that the parents of the children have to order the books in advance.

40:38Now they don't have to because we can buy all of the books and give every kid in the class a free book. And then something else that I have been involved with for 10 years is the Book Industry Charitable Foundation, which is called Bink. And we make emergency grants to people who work in book and mortar bookstores. And that is an amazing, amazing organization. So if you are working in a bookstore and your car breaks and your kid gets sick and you have to miss work for a couple of weeks. There was one bookseller I met once who said Bink came through when I needed the money to pay for my mother's funeral.

41:24So many people are a couple of thousands of dollars between being okay and not being okay. Natural disasters, fires and floods and hurricanes and displaced booksellers and booksellers who want to go back to school. Bink is there for them as well. So I spend a lot of my time now with Amor Tolls and we raise money for Bink so that there will be money for booksellers who need just the little bit of bridge. And you can't solve all the problems, but every now and then you can help with a couple of them. And you have said that one of the most surprising things about owning a bookstore is that reading ends up being this powerful mode of connection, as you have spoken about in this interview.

42:14So I'm curious, after 15 years now of being a bookseller, what's the most powerful example of connection that you've seen through reading? For many employers and brokers, group health insurance means unpredictable costs and plans that try to fit everyone but end up fitting no one. A model called ICRA is changing that. Employers set a fixed contribution. Employees pick the health plan that works for them, their family, their doctors, their budget. Predictable for the business, personal for the people. That's a better kind of coverage. Get coverage you control. Find out if an ICRA is right for you at ambetterhealth.com.

42:57When everything is moving all at once, your workforce, your tech stack, your business, you don't need more tools. you need one solution. That's why Paylocity built a single platform to connect HR, finance, and IT with AI-driven insights and automated workflows that simplify the complex and power what's next. Because when everything comes together in one place, growth comes easy. Experience one place for all your HCM needs. Start now at paylocity.com slash one. If you've got a teenager, it's time to have the talk. You know, about investing. With the new Schwab Teen Investor account, teens can gain hands-on investing experience and build positive money habits.

43:38It's an account co-owned by you and your teen, so you can monitor and engage with the account while your teen learns how to invest and manage money. Learn more at schwab.com slash teen.

43:52You know, the most powerful connection in that bookstore is in the staff. And I never thought about this before. I mean, I'm a novelist. I work by myself. I don't have colleagues in the office. I don't have a Christmas party. It's just me and the dog. And having this group of people that we come together so much through our love of books, through our desire to connect people to books and expand our range of what we read. But oh my gosh, we will get a galley for something and just sign up for it in advance. You know, I'm going to read the new Colson Whitehead. Okay, but be sure to finish it by Saturday because I'm off on Sunday and I want to read the new Colson Whitehead.

44:47And it's such a beautiful connection. We love each other. We get along. We go to each other's weddings. We throw baby showers. We bring food when we're sick. We're there for each other. But it's all connected in the web of books. And what I've come to see in owning a business is if you love your employees and they love each other and we're all there for each other and working together, that is what expands into the front room of the bookstore. That's what customers feel when they come in. And it is this open door of like, here we are. We are a community of people who love books. Come in, join us.

45:36We want you to be here with us. And that's been a spectacular thing. And you all are such voracious readers and you're constantly recommending books as we talked about. So I'm curious what makes a good book good to you. How do you decide? it has really changed. That's something that has completely changed since I've owned a bookstore. Because before I owned a bookstore, if I didn't like a book, I would just say, oh, that's no good. That book's no good. But now I really understand that there are all sorts of great books that are not for me. And making that differentiation in my mind has been critical because now like sci-fi, fantasy, romanticy, romance, graphic novels, all these things, YA, all these things that I never read, I can see shining examples.

46:43I can see booksellers who are so passionate about genres that I don't read are not my thing. And it makes me so happy because every book is a gateway drug. Every book brings somebody into the store. And I always like to give the biggest shout out to Jeff Kenney, who writes the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Oh, right, yeah. Dave Pilkey, who does Dog Man and Captain Underpants. Right. Because those books are so foundational for certain kids who are not comfortable readers and they are obsessed with those books. And to say, this is how you come into our community and we think it's fantastic. Like any road that you can find to be an excited reader and they do these incredible tours where they're like being an author is basically being a rock star.

47:43And it's wonderful. When we spoke earlier this year, you mentioned that 2026 is the best year in fiction that you've seen in a while. I was really excited to hear that. So I'm curious, like, what makes 2026 such a great year for fiction? And what do you feel like the literature of this moment is telling you about what we're kind of going through as a country or as a world? Well, that's an interesting thing because you've got to back up. If you're talking about a novel and what is the novel telling me, it's almost always a year between finishing a book and the publication of a novel. And then you go back another two years to when that person had the idea, when they started writing it.

48:32So there's a very interesting lag. But whatever was going on three years ago, it was still pretty good. because so many really, really beautiful books are showing up in this moment. And I don't know, and I don't know three years from now what's going to be showing up, but there is some fantastic writing. You know, there's just some really wonderful, wonderful people writing books right now. One book that's coming out in September, Emily St. John Mandel's Exit Party, which I think is her best book since Station 11. If you could design a book that I don't want to read, it would be Exit Party. It begins with at the end of the second American Civil War in 2031.

49:37And I'm like, I'm out. I'm out. I have no interest in this whatsoever. But I kept reading because I know her to be such a brilliant writer. And it was a fantastic, complicated, beautiful, so ambitious, this novel of parallel universes. I mean, again, count me out. Nothing that would be in my wheelhouse, but I loved it because of her talent. And she completely had me. And that's one of the great things about owning a bookstore or listening to a bookseller who can say to you, yeah, I understand. I understand. I didn't want to read it either, but I did. And it's incredible. It's very easy to get overwhelmed by this moment that we're living in, thoughts of the future, as Emily St.

50:38Mandel writes about. So what is your advice for someone who's trying to sort out what their own fight is at this moment in time? Do something. Do something that you love. And I think that yes, of course, it is important to fight against what you hate. And yet it is more important to fight for something that you love. to just say, I'm not going to solve the problems of the world, but I can look in my own corner at something that's meaningful to me and do it. So if what I am doing is working to make sure that booksellers who I will never meet have a little bit of extra money to cover the gap in the crisis, I can do that.

51:35I can make sure that children in my community who need a free book and who need a visit from an author so that they can know that they can be authors, they can do that. You don't have to take on something enormous or you don't have to invent it yourself. Yeah. Just find something that you care about and show up for it because it will make you feel so much better. And also, while you're taking in the news of the horrors of the day, don't ever fail to overlook the news that's so wonderful. I was giving a talk a couple of nights ago in Minneapolis. Yeah. And at the end of the talk, there are 800 people in a church.

52:31And I went to say, you know, just thank you for being such a shining example of everything those nuns taught me in school. We are responsible for one another. We must stand up for our neighbors and for our human family and to be brave. I mean, to be in that city is so unbelievably moving because the people in our own government who can't stand up against what's wrong. And yet people in the neighborhoods of Minneapolis, at the risk of their lives, were going out to stand up for their neighbors. Don't miss out on what's astonishing. And also, another book that you should absolutely read, just out in paperback, Michael Lewis's Who is Government.

53:33Did you read that? Yes, I listened to it on audiobook. So yes, I did read it. And the audio is fantastic. But it's all of these essays of people doing job for the Food and Drug Administration, for the IRS, for the Department of Labor, jobs that you never knew existed within these arms. Yes. It makes you so proud to be part of this country and to know how hard people are working, people who don't ask for any credit, and they're giving their lives to save someone else's life, to save our life. Yeah. Time magazine asked a bunch of people if you could pick one book for the 250th anniversary that you feel that everyone in this country should read.

54:27And I said, my book, absolutely. Who is government? Who is government? Great recommendation. Such a timely recommendation. Before we wrap, we'll close out this hour with some questions from our members. So I will start with a question from Andrew A. As a novelist, you've spent a lifetime observing human nature. Do people make decisions through reason with emotions influencing them? Or do emotions make the decision first and reason simply provides the explanation afterward? You have to just meet them one at a time. And every person is going to be operating in a completely different way. And that's the marvel of human life.

55:10And I think also the terror of human life. There's no one way. Yeah. Okay. So, Anne, you are known for being cell phone free, no cell phones in your day to day life. So Nicole N. asks, most of us can barely imagine navigating modern life without a cell phone. What aspects of daily life are surprisingly easy without one? What remains genuinely difficult? And was there ever a moment when you seriously questioned your decision to not own a cell phone? Okay, and I should say I have a burner. I've got a Cricut that I pay for once a year. It lives in my sock drawer. I don't know the number. No one else knows the number.

55:53But if I am out on book tour, I will bring that phone and call my husband to say goodnight. I've never texted. So anyway, what is it? I don't know. I've certainly never had a smartphone and I've never carried a phone with me. The hardest thing about it is it drives my husband out of his mind that I don't carry a phone. But you know what? I grew up in a world in which people didn't carry phones and we all turned out fine. I don't want to be more available and accessible. I would like to be less available. And I look around and everyone is staring at their hand and it doesn't look good. I just don't ever look out and think, wow, sign me up for some of that.

56:46Yeah. I mean, I'm just picturing kind of middle school after it lets out, you know, all the kids standing in the yard with their phones in their hands. All right, last question. Fred F. asks, how do you trust or be open to what's unfolding in your life in the midst of doubt and uncertainty? This is a big one. Here's the thing. It's primary and secondary sources. If you look at the world at a distance, the world of people that you don't know and can't see, the world is a burning, boiling morass. If you look at the world up close, the world that you're in every single day, I see people being so kind in the grocery store, in the bookstore, when I'm walking the dog in the airport.

57:33I am in an airplane almost every day right now. And every day I see people helping each other with their luggage and waiting for the person to come out of the seat in the order that they came, you know, do you drop something? Can I help you? I'm amazed. I'm amazed and moved by how kind people are. You see the woman in the airport with two babies in a stroller and a toddler in her hand and so many people saying, how can I help you? Can I carry that for you? Can I do that for you? Don't write them off, people. Don't write them off. People, humans, don't write them off. Thank you so much, Ann Patchett, for another deeply moving conversation.

58:19Elise, thank you so much because I interview people all the time and I know it's a ton of work and you've put the work in and you're terrific at your job. And I'm really grateful to get to talk to you. So thank you. That means a lot. Thank you.

58:38That was Ann Patchett in conversation with me, Elise Hu, for the TED Talks Daily Book Club, hosted in partnership with our TED membership team. To watch the conversation on video, which we hope you will do, visit TED.com. And finally, if you want to be part of our next live book club event, sign up for a TED membership. You'll get live access to virtual podcast recording sessions and the chance to ask authors like the great Ann Patchett. Your burning questions. And that's it for today. If you are curious about TED's curation, visit ted.com slash curation guidelines. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED.

59:16This episode was produced by Lucy Little and edited by Alejandra Salazar. It was engineered by Matthew Paulus. The TED Talks Daily team includes Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Taubner, and Tansika Sungmarnivam. Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo, Valentina Bohanini, Banban Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey Lott. Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

59:55This episode is sponsored by Kohler Smart Toilets. The objects we interact with most are often the ones we notice least. But what if the most overlooked space in your home could be the most considered? Kohler Smart Toilet challenges that assumption. Their Veil Smart Toilet is a sculptural silhouette that isn't just intentional, it's a philosophy. That design changes everything. The Kohler Veil Smart Toilet is sleek with a rounded shape that's more like architecture than just plumbing. And it goes beyond looks. the touchscreen controls and customizable cleansing features offer a level of comfort and cleanliness that exceeds expectations.

1:00:30It's all about elevating those ordinary daily rituals into something extraordinary through thoughtful design. Kohler has been pushing these boundaries for over 150 years, mastering that balance of stunning form and high-performance function. That's a long time to get it right, and it shows in every detail. Experience the difference of Kohler Smart Toilets. Find out more at Kohler.com. For many employers and brokers, group health insurance means unpredictable costs and plans that try to fit everyone but end up fitting no one. A model called ICRA is changing that. Employers set a fixed contribution.

1:01:07Employees pick the health plan that works for them, their family, their doctors, their budget. Predictable for the business, personal for the people. That's a better kind of coverage. Get coverage you control. Find out if an ICRA is right for you at ambetterhealth.com.

1:01:26Hey, this is Elise Hugh, host of TED Talks Daily. This episode is supported in part by Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Hosted by Katie Milkman, an award-winning behavioral scientist and author of the bestselling book, How to Change. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind our decisions. Hear true stories from Nobel laureates, authors, athletes, and everyday people about why we do the things we do. Listen to Choiceology at schwab.com slash podcast or wherever you listen.