Ann Patchett

speaker

1,333 appearances 9 recordings 5 series first heard May 2026 last heard 6 Sep

Ann Patchett’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 9 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 5.

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TED Talks Daily · The art of the novel | Ann Patchett · 29 Aug 2026 podcast

It goes back to reading wiretaps.

It's just that I understand that if you want to get something across, you can't do it by giving every single detail.

For example

My real stepfather, who was a neuroontologist, he dealt with a very specific kind of brain tumor between the ear and the brain.

But he wanted to be a novelist.

And he wrote

Huge novels.

practically every other month that he would then find and give to me.

It was both abusive and really so instructive.

But if he had a character who was going in to take a shower, which for no reason didn't figure into the story whatsoever, but the character would go in, would turn on the faucet, would adjust the heat, the cold, pull back the shower curtain, check the soap, undress, make sure there was a towel.

And and I was like, oh, it would take ten pages.

And and the shower

Didn't you think?

anything about the character.

It didn't move the plot forward in any way.

And I really do think we can learn so much more by seeing people fail than by seeing them succeed.

So I would read Chekhov and think

Well, I mean, I'm never gonna be able to do that.

I I can't even imagine how Chuck Off did that.

But I could read my stepfather's novels.

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