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- [00:01]
Ann Patchett
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- [00:04]
Kate
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- [00:13]
Ann Patchett
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- [00:21]
Kate
Terms apply. Learn more@americanexpress.com Business Platinum AmEx Business Platinum built for business by American Express Foreign It's Thursday. It's almost the end of your week. If you're listening, on the day that we release and we are the bookcase and I am part of the Kate.
- [00:45]
Charlie Gibson
And Charlie Gibson and I'm the Charlie part and we welcome you back. I want to tell you right up front that we're going to break some new ground here on the bookcase. For the next two weeks, the next two shows, we're going to feature a new book that isn't a new book at all. And I should explain, and Kate will explain. This podcast has sort of become a series of lessons on how to write a novel. And we're going to feature a new edition of Ann Patchett's 24 year old novel Bel Canto, which was immensely popular at the time it was released, but there's a new edition of Bel Canto and she does something in this edition that's wonderfully instructive, I think, for readers like Kate and me, but also for writers and something that I don't know that any modern writer as gifted as Ann Patchett has done. So Katie, you explain.
- [01:35]
Kate
Well, I don't know when it was, but I got an email from a publicist saying that Ann Patchett was going to re release Bel Canto, but it was going to be an annotated edition where she made notes on every page. And I just thought to myself, as a reader, I can't. This is the biggest nerding out experience and I can't wait to have it. And so I wrote her a publicist and I was like, oh, please send me as many copies as possible. And oh my God, readers, if you can pick this book up or get it from the library, it is such a treat. Get yourself a cup of tea, get yourself a glass of wine if that's your poison. This book is an operatic experience and you'll understand why I feel that way. As you read this book. It is a writer looking back at her work many years later and critiquing herself on every page and having no mercy, but as a reader to me. And I was reading the novel as I was Reading her notes, I thought it stood up. Like I understood her criticism and I was fascinated. Her criticism became as much of a page turner to me as the novel. But literally, handwritten notes on every page. I mean, come on, you guys, nerd out.
- [02:45]
Charlie Gibson
Well, when you say criticism, she's criticizing herself, which is so interesting. She is actually Ann Patchett. 24 years later, looking at Ann Patchett, then 36 years old, relatively unknown, a struggling author writing a novel about opera and admitting she didn't know beans about opera when she wrote the novel. Why would she do that? She's really tough on herself with her annotations, but at the same time, she's sort of amazed at how well she did. The annotations give you a great sense of how to go about writing a novel and the problems involved. A number of times she tells us with her annotations that she had written herself into a corner. She had no idea how to get out of it and thought of abandoning the whole project. Thank goodness she didn't. Just to give you. Let me give you some. I'm going to go on too long. Okay, but let me give you just some examples of what the annotations are. In the first 25 pages, she tells us right away why the first paragraph is what it is and why it's so important. There's a sentence. I've got the book in front of me right now. There's a sentence on page two. This is if people remember Belcando. It's a novel about a hostage situation where a whole group of hostages are taken in a. In a very nice house. And when the hostage takers storm in, their sentence is. What no one stopped to think about was why the candles on every table went out as well. Well, she tells us many readers wrote to ask how did the candles go out? And she says, I don't have an idea. I don't know. They just did. Fascinating little details. Roxanne, who is the soprano in the book, is named for Roxanne and Cyril Cyrano de Bergerac. So many people will express their love for her. And so she wanted romantic name for her. The other main character. Well, it's named after her father's dry cleaner's dad. Why would you do. It's just really, really interesting.
- [04:36]
Kate
Listen, I love that you're going on too long. Like I said, nerd out with me. Like, I also love. In the first 25 pages, she talks about her inspirations. Like what was she was listening to. She was in love with a film that I love called Diva It's a Jean Jacob Bono God, really nerd out with Me film. That's, that's in some ways a love letter to, to brilliant opera and to sound editing. I can really nerd out with all this stuff.
- [05:04]
Charlie Gibson
The hostages are many different nationalities and they all speak different languages. And she tells us why the use of so many languages where characters can't communicate is a great plot device for her to use. It's really, really interesting what she was thinking, why she was thinking it, and why. Why she was sometimes really really sort of vague about why she was thinking it. She, she says, why do I keep using two metaphors when only one would do? Why do I keep talking about the character's hair and the gloss and the weight of the hair? Why, what was it?
- [05:38]
Kate
The smell of the hair? She, she's in love with telling you how hair smells. I don't know why she doesn't either. She puts, She, I know she gets, she puts brackets around all of the words she would get rid of. And I myself, again, nerding out, found myself reading those sentences twice. I read it once with the words and then I took the words out in my mind. And so it took me a long time to read this book, but, ugh, so much fun. Like, we kept calling each other and giggling each other, you know, with Lee and saying, isn't this fun? Because it is.
- [06:10]
Charlie Gibson
Yeah. Yeah, I really think. And she says, I don't necessarily expect this to sell much. It's a craft project. But I'm sort of fascinated by what I was thinking 24 years ago. And as I say, it's, it's. I, I, as Kate said, I read each page three times. I read the page. I'd read Belcando 24 years ago, but I read each page. Then I'd read her annotations and then I'd go back and read the page a second time to see how the annotations applied. Well, we, we've told you.
- [06:39]
Kate
Yeah, we have very full.
- [06:40]
Unnamed Guest
We have very full lives.
- [06:42]
Kate
You can tell we have. That's right, with very well rounded, full lives.
- [06:46]
Charlie Gibson
And you can tell we're very enthusiastic both about Ann Patchett and this project, which, as I say, I don't think any other modern author of such good repute as Anne has done. And I think it is a tremendously, tremendously valuable for readers to understand what writers are thinking and also for writers to get an idea of how a great writer like Ann Patchett approaches a project. So here is the first part of our conversation with Ann. Ann Patchett, it is a real pleasure to have you back in the bookcase. Writing Bel Canto with your annotations, I think is a brilliant idea. But you do point out to me people authors don't go back and reread their books. And they have said that to us over and over. So why did you decide to do this? And having done it, what do you come away thinking about Bel Canto?
- [07:41]
Unnamed Guest
Well, the reason that I did it is because I was asked to do an annotation for a charity auction. And a little bookstore outside of Boston that had been hit really hard by the pandemic, asked 20 people to annotate one of their books. I did Tom Lake. I finished it very early because that's the way I fly. I am whatever the opposite of a procrastinator is. So I got my homework done three months early. I put it on my desk, and then I came back to it just before I was ready to put it in the mail. And I thought, I really hate to give this up. I would rather write the bookstore a check than give them this thing. I had enjoyed making it so much. I had learned a lot from it. So I got another copy of Tom Lake, and I spent three days and I recopied all my notes. And that's where I started to really see what it was that I had done. And I thought, this is really interesting, and I think it would be very beneficial to a book club or an interesting reader or a student or a teacher, but mainly to somebody who wanted to know how to write a novel. So I sent my second copy to my editor, said, take a look at this. Do you think that this is something that we could do? Because what I would like to do, my diabolical master plan, is to have a series of HarperCollins books. Louise Erdrich, Barbara Kingsolver, Edward P. Jones, Michael Chabon, Aaron Datte, Roy. That's my dream team. Have them go back to their most famous book and annotate it. So I said, let's try to put this together as a series. And he said, great. And I decided to do Bel Canto. And then I was halfway through, and I own a bookstore, as you know, Parnassus in Nashville. And I thought, there are no books coming out from the middle of October till the middle of November and even through to the end of the year. It's slim pickings out there. So I thought, wouldn't it be such a gift to booksellers to have this come out on election day? All books are published on Tuesday. So Tuesday November 5th, there's not going to be a book. What kind of an idiot would publish a book on November 5th? I thought, this kind of an idiot, you know, because there's. There's no. There's nothing to lose, right? They. They didn't pay me for this. It was my idea. It's a craft project, and I'm not going on tour. A couple of nice friends are letting me be on their podcast. This thing is just going to sink or swim on its own. And so I just put the pedal down. I did the book, and now I'm gonna send it to those other people and say, are you interested if, in fact, this does anything?
- [10:37]
Charlie Gibson
So you go back and you reread the book and you go over it with a fine tooth comb to annotate it. 24 years after writing it. What do you come away overall feeling about Bel Canto?
- [10:49]
Unnamed Guest
I did very well on the macro and very poorly on the micro, if you were scoring the test. So the structure of the book, the idea, the concept of the novel is really fantastic. It's a big overarching plot. It's a whole lot of people. What I do with point of view is excellent. And this is very interesting. The language that I'm using to talk about this book, I would never use to talk about a book I had just written. I'm way too Catholic for that. So it is like I'm talking about something cute I did in childhood or something. I mean, I'm 60, and this book, I think I was 36 when I finished it. 35. And so I'm talking about myself in another life. And I'm saying, anne, good job. Really ambitious. You bit off so much. It's an incredibly moving book. I found it so emotionally wrenching. It is tender. Tender without any irony. No guile. It's loving, it's gentle, and then it's horrifying. And that's what makes the ending so hard is it is like some. I remember somebody saying they could have called this book Lord of the Butterflies. And it is like they just all get totally decimated at the end. So that, good job, me. Well done. But then the little things, the writing is actually really bad. And I think there are seven commas in the entire book.
- [12:46]
Kate
Did you mark them out like days in prison when you were reading? You just marked them out like, was.
- [12:50]
Unnamed Guest
I traumatized by a comma in my 30s? And I just said, no, I'm not doing it. There are no semicolons. Obviously, the EM Dash hadn't been invented back in 2001. But anytime I could say something once, I said it three times.
- [13:08]
Charlie Gibson
And I apologize for characterizing you maybe incorrectly. You're easier on yourself as you talk to us. It seems to me that you are on yourself when you write the annotations. One of the things you say in the introduction is, the success of a novel isn't just based on the writing or the structure. You have to start with a great idea. And the idea for Velcanto was so stupendously bad that I found it almost impossible to talk about. Now you're saying, well, the macro, the structure is pretty damn good. So, Patchett, which is it?
- [13:39]
Unnamed Guest
Well, go out into a coffee shop and say to somebody, I've got this novel, and it's about terrorism, a bunch of people kidnapped in South America, and it all centers around an opera singer. You just find out how many people say, wow, sign me up for some of that. It doesn't play well when you say it. But if what I'm trying to do is create a circumstance where the point of view where time is suspended and the point of view moves like water around all the different characters, then I'm like, yeah, that was actually great.
- [14:21]
Kate
You do a great job in your page by page notes of examining your own themes. You know, how time gets destroyed in this situation. Having a huge language barrier, us versus them. And I'm interested. When you went back, do you remember how many of those themes, that structure was conscious at the time? Or how much just sort of came out where you were like, ooh, time is sort of destroyed? Or when you sat down to write, did you think to yourself, I'm gonna make a mockery of time? Like, how much was conscious and how much was just came along as you.
- [14:51]
Unnamed Guest
Wrote, the part about time was very conscious. It's about the suspension of time. And, you know, the character finally gives his watch away. And then at the very end, when everything's going to hel. This little clock on the mantel begins to chime. This fog envelops the house. They hardly know day from night between the fog and the klieg lights coming in through the windows. So, yes, I was very aware of the suspension of time. But the thing that I was. There were two things I was trying to do. I was trying to wrestle with the idea of melodrama because we had been taught when I was in school that melodrama was such a bad thing. And I think, okay, I can see that. I can see that melodrama is a bad thing in many circumstances. But when Is melodrama a good thing? And when does it have its place? It's not like we can just throw out the whole concept. So the idea of melodrama, of things being operatic, that was very, very interesting to me. And then the other thing was the narrative, the omniscient structure, the idea that there are some paragraphs where the point of view switches, like, four or five times in a paragraph. Sometimes it switches in a sentence. And it's good. It's really well done when you were.
- [16:14]
Kate
Writing that, because you do you talk a lot about your choice of omniscient narration. How do you know as a writer to get into somebody's head at that moment and say, oh, yeah, I want to see this moment from Oscar's perspective, or I want to see this moment from Ruben's perspective? How do you know to get into somebody's head? And then how do you know you're done and you want to get out and get into somebody else's?
- [16:30]
Unnamed Guest
It's that you learn to think of the point of view of something that is fluid. So it's almost like people are looking at each other. And in so much of this book, they're not allowed to speak, or they can't speak to one another. And it creates the perfect environment. So I'm trying to get something across to you. Either I can't use words, or you can't understand my words. Therefore, I can go into your head and you're not understanding me, or you are understanding me, but that becomes the communication. And it's a covenant. That was the word that I kept thinking of, a really holy covenant between these people in which they are able to understand and communicate beyond language.
- [17:25]
Kate
How do you keep your emotion out of your own critique? Like we've talked to writers about, how do you keep emotion out of your writing? Because there are days where you're like, ugh, I just didn't have it today. But if you are having a miserable day, how do you sit down and annotate Ann Patchett without being unnecessarily hard on Ann Patchett?
- [17:43]
Unnamed Guest
I've got to separate out your question here, because making this book, this annotated Bel Canto, or as we call it around the Shop, abc, making this thing was, in fact, a craft project. It wasn't writing. I'm not judging myself. I'm just making notes. I went through the book probably six times, making notes each time. So it layered and layered and layered up, and there was nothing emotional. Nothing emotional about it. It was just interesting work. And I'VE had friends say to me, how could you make yourself so vulnerable by pointing out your mistakes? And I'm like, because they're really interesting. I don't feel I have no emotion around it. I don't feel vulnerable. I don't feel ashamed. I feel a little proud. So that's one thing. But the other half of it about writing. So I am writing a novel now, and there are days that I feel I am doing a terrible job. And such an important lesson in writing is to separate out the part of you that is creative and the part of you that is critical. They can't coexist. So when I'm writing, I try to just put that critical part of myself in a box and say, when I am finished, be it with this page, this chapter, this book, whatever, I will go back. There will be time for me to be critical. Now is not the time. Because if I allowed myself to be fully critical, I do this thing called. I edit myself off the page. So I have an idea for a sentence. And actually before I can type it, I think, well, that's trash. And then I don't type it. And then at the end of the day, I've done nothing. It's like, no, put it down. Step away. Look at it later.
- [19:52]
Charlie Gibson
Well, there are times when I suspect, in retrospect, you might have said to yourself, okay, put that down. Get that out of the book, Ann. Because you just to quote some of your annotations, weak sentence, bad idea. Awkward. A ridiculous observation. Who needs this? Embarrassing. A sloppy mistake. I've just written a pointless bit of fluff. Clunky. Yeah, those are all the micros. But you're a tough critic, Patchett.
- [20:24]
Unnamed Guest
But this is the other thing. In the same way that I wouldn't praise myself on anything that I had done recently, I would never, never use that level of critical voice which I possess on anyone else. I wouldn't use it in a student, a friend review. I would never talk like that about someone else's work. I can say whatever I want to about my work.
- [20:55]
Kate
You write a lot about. I want to quote you back one of your notes back to you. Page 35. You say, Whenever I finished a scene in bel canto in parentheses, I would lose my way. All these things are happening at the same time. I'd finish one point of view, know this. Others were waiting, and I would freeze up. So how did you. You never talk about how you overcame that. How did you overcome that? Like, how did you know what scene came next? And how did you sit down to write it.
- [21:19]
Unnamed Guest
I mean, it just, I lost my way in that book so many times because of the suspension of time. Time is an animating force. It's the piece of rope that you use to pull yourself forward through the blizzard. And if there is no rope, you just get lost. And I was just kind of wandering in circles, which was completely appropriate for the book. Do I go into the kitchen? Do I go into the living room? Do I see what's happening in the closet? Do I look upstairs? All of those things need to happen. So I would get stuck. I would get lost. I would wait, I would put it away and I would think, just, you know, just write another scene. Just write another scene. And then I would finish that. Just write another scene. And they stacked up. And the weird thing is I never moved any of them. I never went back and thought, oh, well, you know what? That part in the closet, that needs to come first. It doesn't need to come first because it's not animated by time.
- [22:26]
Charlie Gibson
So, Anne, let me ask you to pause for just a second. We'll tell you about the people who pay for this program and then we'll be right back with more of Ann Patchett.
- [22:40]
Kate
Oh, such a clutch off season pickup Dave.
- [22:42]
Unnamed Guest
I was worried we'd bring back the same team. I meant those blackout motorized shades. Lines.com made it crazy affordable to replace our old blinds.
- [22:49]
Ann Patchett
Hard to install?
- [22:50]
Unnamed Guest
No, it's easy. I installed these and then got some from my mom. She talked to a design consultant for free and scheduled a professional measure and install hall of fame son. They're the number one online retailer of custom window coverings in the world. Blinds.com is the goat.
- [23:03]
Charlie Gibson
Shopblinds.com right now.
- [23:05]
Ann Patchett
And get up to 40% off select.
- [23:06]
Unnamed Guest
Styles plus a free professional measure.
- [23:08]
Ann Patchett
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- [24:15]
Charlie Gibson
We have talked a lot with authors about foreshadowing. And on page 13, I think everybody knows everybody in the world should have already read it. Bel Canto is about a hostage situation. There are hostage takers. There are people who have been taken hostage. On page 13, you said it was the unspoken belief of everyone who was familiar with this hostage taking organization and with the host country that they were all as good as dead, when in fact it was the terrorists who would not survive the ordeal. You just told me the book on page 13. Yeah, that's, that's not foreshadowing. That's hit me over the head with what's, what's, what's ahead. Why did you do that?
- [24:53]
Unnamed Guest
Oh, I'm so glad you asked because it's a good answer. I call it the Love Story principle. Y'all remember Love Story? Eric Siegel, Ali McGraw. And okay, so in the movie, the.
- [25:06]
Charlie Gibson
Love is not having to say you're sorry.
- [25:08]
Unnamed Guest
That's exactly right. So in the movie, it starts off with Ryan O'Neill, and he's sitting in an empty baseball stand and he says, what can you say about Jenny? She loved Bach, Beethoven and me. Jenny's dead. And then we start back to the day he met Jenny. And Jenny has leukemia or whatever Jenny has. And so we know this is not. We are not spending our emotional energy thinking, will she make it? Will Jenny pull through? Jenny's not going to pull through. That's the first thing he tells us. She's dead and he's young. We know this has just happened. So what we are left to do is examine the beauty of Jenny's life and the love that they have. What this all plays on is the fact that we are also going to die. And yet every single day, we get up and we forget it. We think somewhere in the back of our brain, maybe not me, maybe everyone else in human history, but maybe not me. What I want to do is say to the reader, this is life. And it is so beautiful and rare and fast, and no one's getting out of here alive. Let's take a minute and look.
- [26:40]
Kate
That's actually an interesting segue to my next question, which is there are a couple of priests in this book and faith Plays a role. And you Write on page 53. I was better at writing about faith when I was young. Why?
- [26:55]
Unnamed Guest
Well, I was closer to my faith. I went to Catholic school for 12 years and I went to Mass pretty regularly until I was 30. I started writing that book when I was in my early 30s. I still would go to church every now and then. It was just easier to access. And I was very, very touched by it. Again, the faith in this book is only helpful. It's only kind and comforting. There's no dark side to it at all that would be hard to write.
- [27:37]
Kate
Now, do you look at that choice with joy? The fact that there is no dark side to faith in this book? Is that a choice that you are pleased with?
- [27:46]
Unnamed Guest
Yes, because that certainly was what it was for me growing up. And I still have it. I am not bereft of faith. I'm fairly bereft of Catholicism, although not completely. I would still tell you I'm a Catholic, but the comfort, the comfort and joy and tenderness. The priest who's saying, come here, hand me your burden. The scene in which Beatrice confesses and she doesn't want to, and she's trying to be all tough and he's saying, look at this, look at this sin and let it go. And she feels. It just feels the lightness coming into her by being able to let go of her own sin. Beautiful.
- [28:46]
Charlie Gibson
In one of your annotations, and it's well, well into the book, you say, you sort of say, by the way, if you're not getting all of this reader you write, this book is about love and community, violence and the absence of violence, art and the ability to see life in the moment it is lived and be grateful. That's interesting that you, first of all, you get to it late in the book. But secondly, I wonder if you sort of had that sentence or sentences in front of you the whole time as you. As you wrote the book. In other words, do you have to have that? I'm going to write a book about love and community, violence in the absence of violence, etc. Is that all in your mind when you start or as you're writing? You begin to realize, oh, this is what the book is about. This is what I want it to be about.
- [29:32]
Unnamed Guest
I don't think that I would have known it so clearly. And in that I would say opera played a big role. I wasn't someone who grew up with opera. I really didn't know a thing about opera when I started this book and I threw myself into the study of opera. When I was writing it, and I was again and again and again moved by the incredible beauty and beauty in the face of violence. Right. What is opera but beauty in the face of violence? I went to see Rigoletto a couple of weeks ago. I was in New York, and I just went to the vet and saw Rigoletto. Such a great opera. And one of the operas that I really spent a lot of time studying when I was writing this book. But, you know, there's Gilda at the end, dying for love, Happy, Happy to take the knife that was meant for her lover who is so bad to her, and she'll cause so much pain to her father, but she can't bear to see the Duke hurt. There, there. That's it. That's exactly what I'm talking about.
- [30:51]
Charlie Gibson
Interesting that you would write a book so formed about opera when you didn't know anything about it going in. That's kind of gutsy, I think. Why would you?
- [31:01]
Unnamed Guest
I don't know anything about anything. But that's what it means to be a novelist. To be able to make things up and be convincing and to be profoundly interested. I just interviewed Simon Van Boy, who wrote a book that I loved, called Sipsworth. And he was such an interesting man. And the passion with which he spoke about all these different things he had studied. And I said to the audience at the end, this is what it means to be a writer. That you are profoundly interested in things you knew nothing about.
- [31:47]
Kate
And yet. And I wonder if you're describing yourself Here on page 147 of Bel Canto, you say gennin, genius for language, was often at a loss for what to say when left only with his own words. You're known for not loving interviews, this one notwithstanding, because I know you're hitting a ball a lot better, but. But I wonder, do you feel like that sometimes as a novelist?
- [32:10]
Unnamed Guest
What, that I'm at a loss?
- [32:12]
Kate
Well, that you are a g. You are at a genius for languages, but often, sometimes left only to your own words. That. That. That. That is a detriment.
- [32:20]
Unnamed Guest
No. You know, I am two people. I am Ann Patchett, who writes books, sells books, talks about books, is a champion of books. And I am Ann Van Devender. And I am thinking about what I'm going to make for dinner tonight. And my neighbors come over and I go to dog playgroup in the morning. They're very, very different people, very different worlds. But I don't feel like I am not myself unless I'm writing or unless I'm engaged in Literature. I am myself when I am Ann Van Devender. And I'm going to shampoo my carpet. Later today, Ann Patchett's going to talk to you about the annotated Bel Canto. But Ann Van Deventer has been noticing some spots on the rug lately.
- [33:21]
Kate
Well, and I. I was left with sort of a, huh, question after this, after this book. Because you also write in a note, you never know what will date a novel. And I asked my father right before we got on the phone, would a hostage. I mean, obviously, Branch Davidians, et cetera, et cetera. But would a hostage situation, would a standoff like this last this long, long anymore? Or did like, September 11th change all of that?
- [33:43]
Unnamed Guest
And in that way, in the sickest possible way, it's a very nostalgic novel because so many people have said to me, now they just shoot them all. You know, they just. They'd shoot the. The terrorists would shoot all the hostages. The military would shoot all the terrorists. The idea that you're going to hold on to people and negotiate, I think doesn't exist. You think about a movie like Dog Day Afternoon?
- [34:14]
Charlie Gibson
Yeah.
- [34:16]
Unnamed Guest
Can you imagine? Yeah.
- [34:18]
Charlie Gibson
One of the things that makes me realize I'm reading a good writer here is something that you make note of in an annotation. You say, small details are how we get to know people. Some novelists will tell you will write out very specifically what their characters are about. And it's so much more enjoyable if you can infer things from just the way a scene is set or just the way a character is noticing things or where things are placed on the table. Little details that just illuminate what a character is about. Are you conscious of that when you. When you write? How am I going to really bring Roxanne to your consciousness? And how can I make you understand her? And it has to be done in little details.
- [35:05]
Unnamed Guest
It's not exactly like that. It's not that I'm thinking, what detail can I show about a character to make sure the character is believable to the reader? It's. I believe in this person and their humanity. And I see the smallness of their gestures. There's a moment in which Roxanne is walking down a hallway and she just holds out her hands. I don't even know who it's to, but she sees someone and reaches forward with her hands. And I think that's who she is. It's expansive and it's warm. And it's not the other person coming towards her saying, she's expansive and she's warm. It's that she's holding her open hands.
- [35:51]
Kate
To them that's interesting, because I think the same way of Gen, you don't really get to know Gen through what he does for himself. You only get to know him in the service of others.
- [36:00]
Unnamed Guest
Right until the end. Until the end, yes.
- [36:04]
Charlie Gibson
And that actually brings me to. You know, you write in your annotations about how the novel builds, how the first hundred pages, all the characters are on the floor and really can't do much as the hostage takers keep them in submission. And gradually the hostages begin to be more active and there's more dialogue and whatever. But I thought what was really interesting as I read it, it's interesting that your characters are most alive just before they're not. Which is a really interesting. You know, you build and you build and you build in here. I like them and I've got them and wham, they're gone.
- [36:39]
Kate
Yeah, well, I don't know. It's not.
- [36:44]
Unnamed Guest
But I will also say that's life. And if these characters had lived for another five months or five years or 50 years, we would have known them more and more and more, and you would have said, we lost them at the moment at which we knew them best. That's life. So.
- [37:11]
Charlie Gibson
Okay, we'll get to the second part of our conversation with Anne next week. But. But I'm just, as I say, I'm fascinated by so many parts of this. We've talked a lot about foreshadowing, for instance, in these podcasts, and one of the things she does just on page 13, she tells you flat out how the book is going to end. Well, in conversation number two, you'll find out why she did that. It made no sense to me as I read it, but she has a really good explanation for why she did it. What else interested you?
- [37:43]
Kate
I love that she looks at being able to. Of course, I've gotten to that age where you look back on your life and go, so I never learned a lot of languages. I love that she thinks of. She keeps writing in the margins. And we talked about the fact that she looks at being able to translate languages as a superpower. And I love that. That really stays with me. I love that this whole book is about juxtaposition and that she writes about that in her margin notes, that essentially there's this violent coup around art, you know, and again, I. I don't know. I. I'm still interested in that part of our conversation, dad, that we talked about, where we. We talked about could this situation happen today? And is in some ways the idea of having a hostage situation that lasts two to three months. I hate to use the word quaint, because there is no hostage situation that is quaint. But is it something that would happen today since all of the. Everything that's happened in the last 24.
- [38:42]
Charlie Gibson
Years, the branch Davidians, which was a story I covered, and the federal authorities let that play out over a number of weeks before it came to sort of a tragic end when all the Branch Davidians were killed. Would you do that? Would that be allowed to play on as long as it did today? We asked her about that, and you'll hear about that in part two, if I can make this enough of a plug. But anyway, as I. We can't be enthusiastic enough about this book because, as I say, it just is. It's such insight into a writer's mind and. And the fact that the writers are so uncertain of themselves. And at the time she wrote this, it's about opera. She was so broke that she couldn't afford to go to the Metropolitan Opera. She couldn't afford it, so she went to the City Opera instead. That was cheaper. And then, of course, once this novel hit as big as it did, that she was in a much more comfortable situation anyway.
- [39:39]
Kate
And isn't it. And isn't it interesting also that it would be a relief to go back and look at your work that everybody reveres and admires and think to yourself, oh, it's somewhat of a relief that I don't think I wrote my best book when I was 36. I would imagine. She says that right in the introduction to this annotated version of Bel Canto. She says, I'm relieved that I didn't write my best book at 36 because it's held in such reverence. And I would imagine that is so. I would approach a project like this with great trepidation. She has courage.
- [40:09]
Charlie Gibson
It's a cliche question, and therefore Kate and I don't ask it, which is, you know, is this the best novel you've written? Or what is your best novel? And writers will always say, well, you can't ask that. You can't answer that. It's like asking you which is your favorite child. Of course, you wouldn't give that answer. Answer. But she does. She says, this was not my best novel, but I learned a lot from it. And I'm sort of amazed that I did as well as I did at such a young age. Anyway, part two of our conversation next week. We hope you have found Part one to be instructive. Here are the folks who help us put together this podcast and and we will get to Anne's coda next week. We thank you for being with us and hope you will be next week as well.
- [40:48]
Kate
The bookcase is a production of AB welcome to ABC Audio and we want to thank our executive producers Laura Mayer and Simone Swink. And we want to mention Taylor Rhodes, Amanda McMaster and Sarah Russell at Good Morning America. We also want to mention Asala Sanapour, Nania McLean, Josh Cohen, Vika Aronson and Brenda Salinas Baker at ABC Audio. And a special thanks to Tom Butler, our editor this week.