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This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage: A Reese's Book Club Pick (Paperback)
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After my experience with Patchett's Bel Canto and State of Wonder, I snatched this up at the library without knowing anything about it. Turns out to be a collection of short stories (some shorter than others). Now, short stories are not my thing - I like big books, I cannot lie - but the writing is so beautiful and honest, that I'm reconsidering that position. It's like eating a box of chocolates, and each little bonbon is not only your favorite, but impossibly even more delicious than the one before.
I mingle among the well read. They are my people. An interesting thing about them is that they form friendships with writers they have never actually meet, but not usually the same ones. My starry eyed crush on Ivan (Turgenev) leaves my friends bemused. Reynolds Price has always played as my kindly uncle. Well, I have meet him, but he isn't my uncle. Others have shared a similar feelings towards Reynolds. The only other writer that I know of who generates such friendly feelings en masse is Ann Patchett. This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage has done nothing but solidify this best-friend-among-writers status. Lord, it must wear the poor woman out. With Anne one goes shopping with her former elementary teacher who is a retired nun, helps take care of Anne's aging grandmother, endures the grueling LAPD entrance exam and PT, and walks the dog. Admit it, you and your best friends argue over who Anne would like best. Okay, maybe that is just us.
Such a wonderful writer she is. The chapter on writing should be read by all writers; the chapter on her marriage should be read by all married people! How she manages to craft such beautiful sentences is beyond me.
These days, Ann Patchett is best known for her novels, but she began her writing career as a journalist, mastering the art of short non-fiction. This collection of essays, originally published in the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, and other major media outlets, represents some of her finest work in the genre. These essays are highly personal, and collectively describe a life with all of its ups and downs. Patchett discusses her writing career, her romantic and family relationships, her dog, the decision to open a bookstore, and her friendship with Lucy Grealy (covered in depth in Patchett's memoir, Truth and Beauty). Many times, an essay took hold of me, prompting anything from nodding in agreement to outrage to tears. I couldn't possibly mention every one of these moments. One that stood out was her 2007 piece about her 2006 appearance at Clemson University. Truth and Beauty was assigned reading for the incoming freshman class, to the outrage of many parents and alumni who wrongly deemed it pornographic. Patchett endured their public shaming, and to its credit the university did not cancel their invitation for her to address the class. Her powerful address, "The Right to Read," follows her essay about these events. The final essay in this collection, "The Mercies," is about an aging nun and at first seemed out of place. But as I turned the final page, I realized it was a perfect way to end this book while leaving room for more books like this in the future.
I love Ann Patchett's fiction, so I approached this collection of essays with anticipation. I didn't hurt that several of you have written glowing reviews of this book either. And I wasn't disappointed. Ann Patchett has a unique, straightforward voice. In these stories of her life, her relationships, her decisions, she not only makes the personal universal, but she captures the nuances of each experience with so much precision and insight that I'd find myself nodding along. I liked the essays about her grandmother best because I felt like she was writing for me too. That's exactly how it was when my grandmother got dementia. But even when she entered territory that in no way resembled by own, such as when she tried out for the LAPD, I found myself drawn in, identifying with the way these events shaped her life. These essays were originally written for various publications as a way for Patchett to support herself while she wrote novels, and that may have given them their clear voice. Patchett reflects, "The job of these essays had been to support art, not to be art, but maybe that was what spared them from self-consciousness." Patchett convinced me that writing about it is a good way to see a life clearly, as she does with her relationship with her husband: "There are always those perfect times with the people we love, those moments of job and equality that sustain us later on. I am living that time with my husband now. I try to study our happiness so that I will be able to remember it in the future, just in case something happens and we find ourselves in need." This is a beautiful collection of essays. Highly recommended!
This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage is a collection of 23 essays (including the introduction) written by Ann Patchett between 1996 and 2012. The stories not only showcase some of the nonfiction she has written, but they serve as a genuine introduction to the person of Ann Patchett. It is a well-known fact that Patchett is an excellent writer. How she approached this pinnacle of success is well documented in the introduction and the subsequent essays bear the truth/fruit of her efforts.Some of these essays originally appeared in some form in various magazines: Atlantic Monthly, Audible, Gourmet, Granta, Harper's, New York Times, Vogue, and the Washington Post Magazine. Others were written for a venue with this collection also in mind.Actually, I'm hard pressed to pick favorites from her essays since I found strong points in each one. They all deal with commitments, whether it is to a spouse or a dog or a grandmother or a state or a vocation or an idea. But what all of these essays excel at is tutoring and illustrating how it should be done for would-be-writers. All of these essays are just as compelling as any short story and prove the point that a good writer can write about the ordinariness of everyday life, like caring for a loved one, and make it interesting, honest, and poetic.All of these essays have something to say. The writing is outstanding... simply superlative. Patchett is able to accurately describe scenes and people in such an extraordinary way that you will feel a connection to the writing. While this is a collection of essays, in many ways it also functions as a memoir, an incredibly literary and beautifully rendered memoir with insightful vignettes and heart-felt disclosures.Fans of Patchett's fiction should do themselves a favor and purchase this collection asap. To Patchett I just want to say: Thank you for giving me a small glimpse of some of the things composting in your humus. The brief scenes and insight you chose to share have widened my perspective of your work and given me an even greater appreciation of your talent.Very Highly RecommendedContents:Nonfiction, an Introduction explains the fact that a writer has to earn a living too. It covers how Patchett not only paid her dues as a freelance nonfiction writer, but also how this helped her become a better writer.How to Read a Christmas Story is a recollection of various Christmas memories and her first happy Christmas The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir about Writing and Life - is another great essay for those who want to be writers. Two thoughts to share:"I am a compost heap, and everything I interact with, every experience I've had, gets shoveled onto the heap where it eventually mulches down, is digested and excreted by worms, and rots. It's from that dark, rich humus, the combination of what you encountered, what you know and what you've forgotten, that ideas start to grow." (pg 41)"I believe in keeping several plots going at once. The plot of a novel should be like walking down a busy city street.... All manner of action and movement is rushing toward you and away. But that isn't enough.... Many writers feel that plot is passe' - they're so over plot, who needs plot? - to which I say: Learn how to construct one first, and then feel free to reject it." (pg. 48)The Sacrament of Divorce is about her very short, first marriage. "Honey, I know. Things happen that you never thought were possible." (pg. 65)The Paris Match - is about a trip to Paris and a word game.This Dog's Life - is the story of how she found her dog, Rose.In The Best Seat in the House she explains how she satisfies her love of opera.My Road to Hell Was Paved is about renting a Winnebago to explore RVing in the American West for an article.In Tennessee she reflects on some of her experiences living in the state.On Responsibility is about caring for her dog and her grandmother.The Wall is about the time Patchettt went through the written and physical tests to try out for the police academy in Los Angeles.Fact vs. Fiction is the Miami University of Ohio Convocation Address of 2005.In My Life in Sales Patchett reflects on going out on book tours to sell her novels."The Love Between the Two Women Is Not Normal" discusses a protest at Clemson University over Patchett's nonfiction book Truth and Beauty, a memoir about her friendship with writer Lucy Grealy.The Right to Read is the Clemson Freshman Convocation Address of 2006.Do Not Disturb discusses Pachett checking into the Hotel Bel-Air for some peace and quiet in order to get some work done.Introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2006 (self-explanatory)Love Sustained is a moving tribute to her grandmother.The Bookstore Strikes Back explains how Patchett came to be co-owner of an independent bookstore in Nashville, Parnassus Books.This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage is the story of her family history of failed marriages in comparison to her now successful relationship.In Our Deluge, Drop by Drop, Patchett reflects on flooding.In Dog without End she is faced with her faithful companion Rose's decline in health.In The Mercies Patchett helps Sister Nena, a Sister of Mercy and former teacher, move into an apartment by herself for the first time at age 78.Disclosure: I received an advanced reading copy of this book from HarperCollins for review purposes.
In this book of essays, Ann Patchett discusses her writing career, her relationships, and her life's lessons. It's probably very difficult to put together this many advice and memoir essays without coming off as self-righteous at least part of the time. That said, the lessons she imparts are worth learning. The book opens with essays about Patchett's writing career: how she got where she is today and what that place actually looks like. This was my favorite part of the book, because the essays focused on working hard, trying hard, and having a lot of luck. You only get better at writing by doing it, something I need to be reminded of when I get distracted by other "obligations" in my life. I was inspired by how she built stories in her head while waiting tables and how she came up with a million ideas for magazine articles, just hoping that something would stick. In her essay about book tours, she brought up a lot of points I hadn't considered, since I haven't had the privledge to do that (yet). The personal memoir essays were also interesting and could be very touching. That said, Patchett's life comes off as some sort of Writer Fantasy World that's hard not to envy. By coincidence, I was reading Allie Brosh's Hyberole and a Half (book) at the same time, and that served as a much-needed contrast. It was like switching between Lesley Knope and Liz Lemon.; you sort of need one to balance out the other. So maybe my dog, as much as I love him, will never be the perfect specimen of dog that Patchett's Rose was. He's a lot closer to Brosh's Simple Dog, actually, which made me laugh. And maybe I'm an aspiring writer who hasn't worked and tried hard enough to get a paid fellowship to write my first novel. At least I got off the couch and showered today, and that's pretty alright. I should also add that this is the only writing of Patchett's I've (knowingly) read. I'm not sure why that would matter, especially considering that the writing-advice essays were my favorites, but from skimming through other reviews, it seems to matter a lot. I picked up this book because of the "Fresh Air" interview, and then I thought it was going to be a full memoir, not essays. As it turns out, I probably liked this format better. I recommend This is the Story of a Happy Marriage for writers and for die-hard Patchett fans. But keep in mind that for every Lesley Knope, there's a Liz Lemon out there setting the bar at a reasonable standard for the rest of us.
44. This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett (2013, 306 page Hardcover, Read July 22 - Aug 3) I'm having a tough time reviewing this. I just can't seem to figure out whether I liked it disproportionately to it's quality, or how to express that with the right amount of imprecision. I loved the collection. The quality is at least good, if not great. I mean Patchett clearly has some skills in writing personal essays (the essays are all about her life). She excels at bringing the reader in and making us interested, not dragging the essays along, and leaving the reader moved, sometimes in only a few words. As these are all personal essays, cumulatively they work as something like a biography. She covers childhood experiences with divorced parents in two states, half siblings, grad school, bad marriages, affairs with the like of David Foster Wallace, dogs, aging, relationships, writing, her odd experience with freedom of expression, and how she has accidentally become the voice of the independent book store. For all she has accomplished, it was her book store, Parnassus in Nashville, TN, that got her on front page of the New York Times and on the Colbert Report. I found I liked pretty much every essay. They were originally supposed to stand on their own, and they do. The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir about Writing and Life is a short manual on how to write, or at least how she writes. It's quite brilliant, I think. How to Read a Christmas Story is simply about her dad telling her a Christmas story over the phone on Christmas day. But it's not a simple story. Thanks to her parent's divorce, her father calls Tennessee on Christmas Day from California where he spends the day alone...and just little details like that make this actually a fairly complex story that does a lot to the reader in a few pages. For me, clearly the best essay was the title one, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. Maybe I like this so much because this is where she talks about her relationship with David Foster Wallace (who she merely names David). But also it's just a great fairy tale version of her life. There is naivety, a tragic beginning, a terrible sin, variations of romance, and various snares and adventures that all lead up to a happy ending of sorts. And it was not till afterward that I started to think about how many different elements of the story captured me, or about all those distracting details that were stripped off, to keep simple, if you like. Anyway, for what it's worth, I got a lot out of this.
Collections of non-fiction essays by famous novelists and short story writers tend to consist in occasional pieces or commissioned works. Somewhat unusually, Ann Patchett set about learning the skill of the short non-fiction essay for the straightforward reason that she needed to earn her keep whilst she toiled away on novels. Her proving ground was in magazines such as Seventeen and she was by no means a natural. She wrote many items and rewrote them many times before she had her first one accepted. But she had remarkable sticktoitiveness. Of course by the time she achieved the style required, her editors had managed to denude her writing of almost anything personal or idiosyncratic. And so many of the earlier pieces in this collection come across as efficient, uncluttered, easy to read, but also somewhat uninteresting. Almost anyone picking up this volume will be more interested in Ann Patchett the novelist and bookstore owner than in anything else she might happen to be writing about. It takes a long time to unlearn the engrained habits of youth. Fortunately, Ann Patchett's personality does gradually begin to emerge. This makes the final quarter of the collection, which is arranged in order of publication, much more satisfying than the first quarter. Fans of Ann Patchett will be more than satisfied, since her life is certainly one worth telling, worth re-telling, and even perhaps worth inventing. I thoroughly enjoyed the long essay whose title is used for the collection as a whole. In another, I was struck by the poignant scene at the funeral of Eudora Welty when Welty's elderly relations use Ann's attendance (whom they do not know) as evidence for younger Welty relations that the recently deceased was indeed someone famous. For those of us curious about the practicalities of the writing life, there is much here, including insights into "Book Tour" which Patchett presents unarticled, not unlike "Fight Club" I suppose. And these days, the story of how Ann Patchett became perhaps the most famous independent bookstore owner in America has become, literally, front page news, which is here laid out in all its particulars. None of these essays is overly challenging. Each is competently written. And some, the best of them, begin to evoke what the anxious reader might hope is a bit of the personal aura of Ann Patchett. Gently recommended.
I've decided I just don't love ann patchett that much. I loved bel canto, but I'm scared to reread it since it could have just been thr subject matter and the timing of my reading. I thought state of wonder was appallingly dreadful. I thought Truth and beauty portrayed her in an arrogant light. Some of these essays came off that way- the getaway car often gave backhanded compliments to less successful mentors. Some essays were more interesting - like the one about her interest in the met hd, or the one about her book store in Nashville- but that's pretty much it. They didn't leave me shaken to the core, or with a new perspective on the topic, I just felt glad that she was writing about something I enjoyed. Her writing just doesn't move me. One exception was "Love Sustained" about her relationship with her grandmother. Worth an independent read.