Ann Patchett wants to be wrong

Wild Card with Rachel Martin

NPR

Society & Culture

4.6 • 991 Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2024

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ann Patchett's 2001 novel Bel Canto was a huge hit. She's continued to have success with her later work, including The Dutch House, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. But she's returned to Bel Canto with a new edition annotated by Patchett herself. She and Rachel talk about why she wanted to critique her own work. They also discuss their shifting ideas of God and feeling comfortable being alone.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message come from the Walton Family Foundation, working to create access to opportunity for people and communities by tackling tough social and environmental problems.
0:11.9	More information is at waltonfamilyfoundation.org.
0:15.9	How have your feelings about God changed over time?
0:19.5	I still believe in God.
0:22.5	Do you?
0:23.6	And here's the thing.
0:26.1	If I tried to tell you what that meant, I would be wrong.
0:33.4	The only thing that I know for sure is that whatever I know is wrong.
0:39.4	I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wildcard, the game where cards control the conversation.
0:46.7	Each week, my guest chooses questions at random from a deck of cards.
0:51.5	Pick a card one through three. Questions about the memories, insights, and beliefs that have shaped them.
0:57.4	What matters is that we do our best with the life that we have.
1:03.2	My guest this week is author Anne Patchett.
1:05.7	That we show up, that we love each other, and that we try to be as aware as is humanly possible of the life
1:13.7	and the gift that we're given. So this show was designed to live completely outside of politics,
1:20.5	where we think together about the big questions that connect all of us. And I don't use this space
1:26.5	to talk about politics at all, but I have to acknowledge
1:29.7	that we are all now on the other side of what has been this incredibly divisive presidential
1:35.8	election. And being on the other side of it brings relief for some of us and it brings more
1:42.7	anxiety for others. So today we've got a really lovely
1:46.8	distraction from all of it, a conversation with the writer Anne Patchett about unconditional love,
1:53.1	the spiritual qualities of moss, and chickens named after members of Nixon's cabinet, which I am
	...

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