Ann Patchett’s novel dedications are interesting stories in their own right.
Speaking with Rachel Martin on the Nov. 7 episode of NPR’s Wild Card with Rachel Martin podcast, the author, 60, shared that her second novel, Taft, was originally dedicated to her then-boyfriend — and that she quickly had to reverse the decision.
“I dedicated it to my boyfriend at the time,” Patchett said. “And I found out that he was, shall we say, stepping out on me as the book was going to press. And I frantically called my publisher and said, ‘Can you pull this?’”
“They were like, ‘Hang on. Let me check. Yes! We got it back,” the author said, adding that she then dedicated the novel to her cousins instead.
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But later on, Patchett got to make another special dedication — this time to someone truly special. The original version of her acclaimed 2001 novel, Bel Canto, was dedicated to her now-husband, Karl VanDevender, who she was dating at the time.
“I met the right guy and I dedicated the book to him and we weren’t married, because I didn’t want to get married,” Patchett said. “But I knew that I would always be with him.”
On Nov. 5, Patchett, who’s the author of novels like The Patron Saint of Liars, Tom Lake and the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Dutch House, published an annotated version of Bel Canto, which follows a birthday party overtaken by terrorists. The new edition of the novel includes reflections from Patchett on her narrative style and choices, per the book’s synopsis.
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“It just seemed like an interesting project,” Patchett explained, about her decision to annotate her own work. “It also seemed that there was no downside. But it really became, I think, an interesting exercise in novel writing.”
The practice also became a way for her to reflect on her journey as a writer. “Bel Canto is so far away that I could say, ‘Look at this hard thing that I did. I did this really well. Look at this easy thing that I did. I did this really poorly,” she explained. “Why is everybody lying on the floor for the first 100 pages? What an incredibly bad idea. And yet it works. How in the world did I have the nerve to do that?”
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But the author explains that she wouldn’t share the same kind of arguably tough critique with others — or herself today.
“I would never say that about something that I had just written,” the author added. “I would never praise myself in present time, nor would I ever be critical like this to anyone else’s work. I would never say to a student, to a friend, in a review, ‘You are a fool. Look at this horrible thing you’ve done.’”
Patchett also opened up about another element of her life that she’s reflecting on: how she receives and reflects love.
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“The love my husband gives to me, [he] just accepts me for who I am, always, no matter what,” she says. “And I think I’ve always been somebody who wants to fix, and I work very hard to … just see the people in my life and accept them for who they are and love them for who they are.”
“And all I need to do is not say to my husband, ‘Maybe you wanna wear a coat.'”
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