These Precious Days: Essays

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Patchett's essays are both sharp and humane ... like a hugely enjoyable conversation with a particularly brilliant friend And then there are a group of essays that take on really profound issues: why she never wanted children (and why interviewers insist on tsk-tsking her about it), the illness and death of her father and, in the poignant title piece, the profound friendship she forged with Sooki, an artist and Tom Hanks’s assistant. The essay “My Year of No Shopping” was self-explanatory based on the title. Through this life experiment, Patchett gained a greater appreciation for the value of experiences over material possessions and provided a sharp contrast for the current social attitude towards consumerism – something that prioritizes the accumulation of material goods over other forms of personal fulfillment. she is able to capture the fleeting moments woven through time, those short lived elusive feelings that make us want to take a picture or write it down. while reading, i felt like if i put my hand over my heart, i would be able to feel the warmth from this book.

A literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer’s eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be. Towards the end of her new essay collection, Ann Patchett describes being inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, where a portrait of her now hangs alongside the likes of Henry James, John Dos Passos and Eudora Welty. “The picture I’d chosen to send was joyful,” she writes. “I’m showing all my teeth and am completely out of step with every serious and circumspect photograph surrounding me.”She writes when she can, and always without a contract. “I never owe people work.” The writers she knows who are the most protective of their time are the least productive, she says. “I get the job done. I don’t procrastinate. Creativity, inspiration, all of those words that meant so much when I was 20. Now, I go to work. I show up in the morning. I’m going to get it done.” She knows she can write. “I’m not worried about if I can do this. It’s more can I have an idea that seems worth my time and worth your time. I have to think this really matters.”

Ann Patchett is a brilliant writer. She is able to capture simple elements of being human and make them interesting, something I suspect all writers strive to do and something she excels at. Each of these essays is a sparkling little gem, a valuable lesson in life, lessons in living and in dying. It could just be an astute observation or it could be a pithy little sentence that makes you go, "Yes! That's it!" Do you think that by recounting these experiences, Patchett provided a moving reflection on the value of friendship and the importance of living in the moment? These Precious Days is a collection I’m glad to have read, one I’ll definitely revisit, and one I highly recommend. This is indeed a precious life and Ann reminds us how very fragile life is and how we need to find the joy in our days. Living a life of love and generosity of spirit, paying attention to the small moments, and putting people and relationships above all else sounds like meaningless platitudes but in this book we see them in action.What I have read is the title story, a novella, really, from Patchett’s book which is expected to be published in November 2021. My son called me earlier today and told me I must read "These Precious Days," a long essay in Harpers magazine by Ann Patchett. We both loved her essay collection "This is the Story of a Happy Marriage." So as soon as I had time today, I found the essay online and didn't come up for air until I finished. The story is this: Ann Patchett got to know Tom Hanks from his short story collection and then got to know his assistant Sooki who then ended up coming to live with Ann. It is a remarkable, wonderful essay - here is the link. Go read it now! Warning - it is quite long - so clear some time because you won't want to stop. That being said, who cares? The out-of-touch nature of someone living her entire life surrounded by the elites like her makes everything feel like that someone at a dinner party you wish would stop talking, especially when it comes to her loved-ones owning planes. This afternoon she is expecting American novelist Helen Ellis, whom she will take out for an early dinner at 4.30pm, ahead of interviewing her at the bookshop this evening. Ellis will stay the night, “because everybody sleeps at my house,” she says. “It means you always have a clean house.” Of course it helps if you have a personal connection to the topics she covers, and with 22 to choose from you likely will. For me, these were: no shopping/minimalism, having a husband who likes to fly teeny tiny (scary) planes, childlessness, book cover love, and (sigh) cancer.

With her focus on love and marriage, and some sort of redemption however serious the subject matter, she is at odds in today’s climate of angsty millennial fiction. “I am a glass-half-full, can-do kind of gal. It’s just the salt in my brain,” she admits cheerfully. “So, people give me grief about being too hopeful or too cheerful or too interested in family – it doesn’t matter. I’m not writing all the novels. I’m not the novelist for the age. You want horror, you can get horror. You want dystopia, you can get dystopia. You want disaffected ennui and depression, you got that covered.” This is a sublime, poignant collection of essays that range from her love of Snoopy (the iconic Peanuts character) to discussing her choice to not have children. Then there is the heart-achingly beautiful title essay about her friendship with Sooki, Tom Hanks' assistant, who comes to live with the author during the coronavirus pandemic to receive treatment for pancreatic cancer. You know when people compliment an author by saying, "Oh, I would read their grocery list if they published it!" Ann Patchett might be that author for me.

About the contributors

Patchett describes These Precious Days as a sequel to her 2013 essay collection This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. She is happily surprised to find they’re good and promptly sends off her endorsement to the publisher, flattered that she was asked to ‘help’ someone like him. She has always travelled a lot, doing interviews and book shows, so she later crosses paths with Hanks and his assistant, Sooki, a tiny, fascinating woman she would like to get to know. Patchett writes of all her different relationships .. with her three father’s, yes three… of her relationships with her mother, sister, husband, and friends. How does she approach the collaboration with cover artists and the visual representation of her written work? What role does cover art play in shaping your perception of a book, and how does Patchett’s experience challenge or reinforce these expectations?

I'm re-listening to these essays. (3rd time) -- I made a date with Erin -- last year -- to listen to this book during Thanksgiving -- and boy -- I had no idea just HOW MUCH re-visiting this book would be supportive --Any story that starts will also end." As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart.