Rick Simonson

Ann Patchett: Being Packed Up for Book Tour
July 31, 2008

The current Fiction issue of The Atlantic carries in it a nice piece by Ann Patchett. Ostensibly an essay about the prospects and perils of being a literary author and going on book tour, "My Life in Sales" reads more elliptically like a good short story. Which is to say it's good reading, informative, and touches on salient matters, but does so in a wending-about manner, not quite getting to any defining conclusions.

This little bit won't, either. It's a big topic, and has larger aspects. But a few points from what she wrote are there to point out.

There's wonderful background - how did these book tours come about? - in her recounting stories told by Jane Friedman, of the latter's early days at Knopf, helping set things in motion in a big way for Julia Child (I'm old enough to remember when department stores had book sections, and were the site of big author signings; Patchett helpfully reminds perhaps unknowing readers that in 1970 this was so.)

Patchett also insightfully shows how different being out in public is for an author at different stages of a career. Her writing of going out at first - the one dress changed into and out of at a nearby McDonald's, the economies made, the level of bookstore conversing when there's less audience and more bookstore staff on hand, having books bought en masse at a large banquet by a newspaper editor feeling sympathy for her - is recognizably poignant and reads so true.

Also true - and almost surprising, given it feels these days that reminders need to come from the likes of us, talking to New York when projecting or recounting things sometimes,  is what Patchett recounts in getting solace/advice from a publicist on one of her first times out. This is the part where the author is told that the evening/event shouldn't be so gauged in terms of the books sold (or not) that night, that part of it is introducing the book (by way of being there yourself) to bookstore staff, who in turn, handsell that book as it lives on in its hardcover life, and then further, in paperback.

Somewhat modestly, Patchett allows that this may have happened in her case ("... who knows, maybe that's what did the trick"), for she as she tracks what happened, from 1992 and scant gatherings with The Patron Saint of Liars to 2007 when she was out with Run and drawing 200 (we had one of a few readings for her Seattle visit, and drew over that number at a Seattle Public Library lunchtime reading), clearly something had happened. Being out on tour would never be all of it. The build-up in readership, over time, the word-of-mouth: it takes real books for that to happen. She writes well of how in time things fold back the other way - people are there less because of one's newest book than for one written years before - and still wanting to talk about the earlier work. Yes, books do live in the present ...

Patchett writes smartly about how people get the authors (and their public presence) mixed up with the books - sometimes being disappointed in the person (whether their bearing, their reading manner, or everything) after being enthralled with what's in the pages. She reminds them to stick with the books, above and beyond all. Right she is. While many authors are totally wonderful, however polished or not, in their appearances, there are certainly some who haven't done much for their work by being out. I've always defended them with people voicing disappointment, reminding that the book itself is the thing. (This confusion of a writer's persona and the same writer's books carries over to other realms; in now-distant book award committee duties of the past, I've heard people weigh against giving awards to books because the author might be churlish, or might not attend an award ceremony.)

The most moving part of Ann Patchett's piece touches on the intangible - for author and audience, especially as author remembers once being young and 'audience.' This is when she recalls being 16 and getting a book signed by Eudora Welty, how prized the book (and that moment) are. Jump ahead to being the author of Run and having a woman and her daughter approach her in Washingron, D.C.: it's put forward very directly how much Ann Patchett's work means to the teenaged young woman ("You're her favorite writer"), and who, her mother also says for her, wants to grow up and write. When Patchett says something about it being late for a school night, she is told the woman and her daughter yet have a four-hour drive home. They live in West Virginia. They came all that way for her.

It is hard to put moments such as that into a grid, or a brusquely-compiled recap (how many people, how many books, anything else?) of how a night, a booktour went. Patchett conveys some frustration in that elusive, human moment - she can't dote or dwell on the young woman, as there is still a line ... and they all have to be on their way, in time, anyway. Clearly, by ending her Atlantic piece on this note, Patchett is imparting a value not so easily or readily measured - indeed, what can be 'measured' in the reading of any good writing?

Posted by Rick Simonson on July 31, 2008 | Comments (3)