How to Practice

by Ann Patchett

“I wanted to get rid of my possessions, because possessions stood between me and death.“

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays

Unknown Binding

Published March 1, 2021

About the author

Patchett was born in Los Angeles, California. Her mother is the novelist Jeanne Ray.

She moved to Nashville, Tennessee when she was six, where she continues to live. Patchett said she loves her home in Nashville with her doctor husband and dog. If asked if she could go any place, that place would always be home. "Home is ...the stable window that opens out into the imagination."

Patchett attended high school at St. Bernard Academy, a private, non-parochial Catholic school for girls run by the Sisters of Mercy. Following graduation, she attended Sarah Lawrence College and took fiction writing classes with Allan Gurganus, Russell Banks, and Grace Paley. She later attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she met longtime friend Elizabeth McCracken. It was also there that she wrote her first novel, The Patron Saint of Liars.

In 2010, when she found that her hometown of Nashville no longer had a good book store, she co-founded Parnassus Books with Karen Hayes; the store opened in November 2011. In 2012, Patchett was on the Time 100 list of most influential people in the world by TIME magazine.

Reviews

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m glad I didn’t have to talk to anyone while I was reading this. I had a sob caught in my throat the entire time. It had me immersed in the idea of giving away possessions at the end. The end in this case was a marriage but it can also be life. I’m still clearing out stuff from over 30 years of marriage which ended with my husband dying. So hard to decide what to keep, what to toss and what to give away.

We had no silver to sell or give away, no fine china, no collectibles and I also want to say that if we’d had a manual typewriter, there is no way I’d ever give it away. At one time I planned to make a living using that typewriter. Heck it got me through high school and the need to pay tuition and buy uniforms and textbooks. I loved that heavy little beast. I still can pound away on the keys in a pretty steady rhythm. I once typed entire mortgage documents on one of these before my employer graduated to selectric ones. Life was never the same. Sure it was less pounding away but lots more typos. I loved that old one but tolerated the new improved one. .

[Kari Yergin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This personal essay will get you. Especially if you’re a person who endows your belongings with feelings. Or if you’ve ever tried to lighten your load, rid yourself of clutter, downsize. It’s just lovely. I read it once this summer and just now again remembering what a treasure Ann Patchett is. .

EXCERPTS:

I had miscalculated the tools of adulthood when I was young, or I had miscalculated the kind of adult I would be. I had taken my cues from Edith Wharton novels and Merchant Ivory films. I had taken my cues from my best friend’s father.
I had missed the mark on who I would become, but in doing so I had created a record of who I was at the time, a strange kid with strange expectations.

With every acquisition she asked me again, “Are you sure?”
I went through the motions of reassurance without being especially reassuring. The truth was, I felt oddly sick—not because I was going to miss these things but because somehow I was tricking her. I was passing off my burden to an unsuspecting sprite, and in doing so was perpetuating the myths of adult life that I had so wholeheartedly embraced.

This was the practice: I was starting to get rid of my possessions, at least the useless ones, because possessions stood between me and death. They didn’t protect me from death, but they created a barrier in my understanding, like layers of bubble wrap, so that instead of thinking about what was coming and the beauty that was here now I was thinking about the piles of shiny trinkets I’d accumulated. I had begun the journey of digging out.

I scooped it out of the nightstand in her room after she died, not because I wanted it but because I didn’t know how to leave it there.
In the end, I decided to let it go, because who in the world would understand its meaning once I was gone?

[Caro · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short story was published in The New Yorker and also as part of a collection of essays in These Precious Days: Essays. I’ve read it twice and love it every time.

You can read it here https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...

[Kataklicik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Audio : The New Yorker, 1 March 2021.
Read by Ann Patchett.

Dang. Hits home. Even with the kids leaving the nest, we are still drowning in stuff. It’s just stuff, right? Yes. But also no. But Ms Patchett hits me deep when she says, “I was starting to get rid of my possessions, at least the useless ones, because possessions stood between me and death.”

Yeah, that.

[Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did in fact sob at this.

[Jennifer Lindsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

note to self: re read every time I go through the boxes of my moms stuff under the stairs
❤️

[lau ౨ৎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

it felt like listening to a friend talk