From Woman's World · Julianne MacNeill · · 2m
Ann Patchett on the friendships that made her
The bookstore owner and novelist has spent her life writing about female friendship, and living it.
In brief
The bookstore owner and novelist has spent her life writing about female friendship, and living it. Patchett treats friendship as the great love story of a life, which is why her closest bonds keep turning into books. Originally reported by Woman's World.
Friendship is her subject
Patchett has written some of the rawest friendships in modern fiction and memoir. Much of it comes straight from her own life.
All about female friendship
Girls' school for 12 years, then Sarah Lawrence with about a dozen male students. Her mother, grandmother, sister and girlfriends are the center of her life.
“I am all about female friendship. It's been the specialty of my life.”
Love without the burden
She sees friendship as an unburdened love story, the place where the messy, unfiltered version of you gets to show up.
Do you want to be my friend
In 1990, at a Provincetown arts fellowship, Patchett knocked on apartment doors looking for a friend. Three or four went unanswered before Elizabeth McCracken opened hers.
“I said, 'Do you want to be my friend?' I was pathetic, I mean, 'Do you want to go have ice cream?'”
Ice cream and Kevin Costner
They drove to Ben and Jerry's and bonded over a shared dislike of Kevin Costner. It was the start of a decades-long friendship.
“We drove to Ben and Jerry's and discussed our mutual hatred of Kevin Costner.”
Each other's first reader
Patchett and McCracken became each other's trusted manuscript readers. Patchett taught her to drive; McCracken watched her write her first novel.
Still showing up
The friendship kept growing through both careers, including McCracken's support when Patchett opened her Nashville bookstore, Parnassus Books.
Lucy, huge and permanent
Patchett and Lucy Grealy became roommates in Iowa City in 1985. They had overlapped at Sarah Lawrence without ever meeting.
“I only remember that she came through the door and it was there, huge and permanent and first.”
The friend she lost
Grealy, who wrote Autobiography of a Face, carried chronic pain and trauma from childhood cancer. She died of a heroin overdose in December 2002 at 39.
“We were better off when we were together.”
A coat and a conversation
In 2017, waiting to interview Tom Hanks, Patchett complimented the peony-embroidered coat worn by his assistant, Sooki Raphael. A letter-writing friendship grew from it.
“Such a beautiful coat, I said to her.”
Lockdown in the basement
When Raphael joined a Nashville cancer trial, Patchett put her in the family's basement apartment instead of a hotel. COVID turned a short stay into months.
“Everything was tremendously present tense for Sooki. We were living exactly in the moment.”
The takeaway
Patchett treats friendship as the great love story of a life, which is why her closest bonds keep turning into books.
