Customer Reviews

What now?

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's that time of year again. The advent of spring brings warmer weather, budding trees, gorgeous new flowers, and commencement exercises. Ann Patchett's "What Now?" is an essay based on an address that she delivered to a group of freshly minted graduates at Sarah Lawrence College, her alma mater.

In a postscript, Ann admits that her first draft was a disaster. She was saved from humiliation by the advice of her former college professor, who warned her that she had better start over again. Her speech should be much more personal. "It should be about me," Ann writes, "my time in college, my life as a writer. He said it should be funny." So she rewrote the whole thing after staring into space for a while (a good way to get the juices flowing, Patchett assures us).

Most of us can relate to Ann's words about the swift passage of time, the weird twists and turns that lead us down unanticipated paths, and the ingenuousness of youth. "Even if you have it all together you can't know where you're going to end up." She describes the loneliness that she felt as a seventeen year old from Tennessee during the days before email and text-messaging connected people electronically. Long-distance phone calls were prohibitively expensive, so Ann had to fall back on old-fashion methods of communication. Remember letter writing? By sending missives to her family and friends, Ann says, "I learned how to transfer the contents of my heart onto a piece of paper." This "proved as instructive to me as any writing class."

Fortunately, Ann's Catholic school background prepared her well. She already knew all about humility and reaching out to others, and these qualities helped set her on the right path. One of the first friends she made at Sarah Lawrence was Alice Ilchman, the new president of the school, and a woman whom she would grow to love dearly. Another lesson that Ann passes on is one that I, as a librarian, have known for a long time. "Pay attention to the things [you'll] probably never need to know...listen carefully to the people who look as if they have nothing to teach [you]... see school as something that goes on everywhere...." Never underestimate the value of listening. Even Ann's work as a line cook and waitress were useful in making her the person she aspired to be. At a time when so many distractions demand our attention, including our kids, our jobs, events of the world--Patchett recommends that we occasionally welcome "stillness, silence, and studied consideration." Sometimes we have to let the answers come to us rather than frantically hunt them down.

"What Now?" is a lovely little book that works because the author tells us what we know in our hearts to be true in a way that is gentle, funny, and beautifully expressed. The art consists of black and white photos of jigsaw puzzles, people standing before closed doors, individuals wending their way through mazes, footprints in the sand, and lots of road signs. This small volume would serve nicely as a gift for your favorite high school or college graduate. Let some young person know that "what now...is a declaration of possibility, of promise, of chance." I have always been sentimental at commencements, and the idea "that at every point in our development we are still striving to grow" still fills me with wonder.

After seeing Maria Shriver on Oprah taling about her book, I decided to buy it. Then I stumbled across What Now? I love Ann Patchett's novels so I thought I'd try this book, too. I am so glad I did. This book makes you think back on experiences in your own life that have made you into who you are today. It makes you realize that it is not too late to make new choices each day in how you look at things, react to them and learn from them. It helped me to remember how much of an impact we can all have on each other. Plus, it made me cry . . . in a good way. Which for me, is a good thing.

"What now?" is the extended version of Ann Patchett's graduation speech at Sarah Lawrence College. In a nutshell, Patchett uses her life story to make the slightly overmade point that we should embrace the uncertainty and change we face. Patchett's points are original enough--they are a bit clichéd, but they are put here in poignant form, as Patchett is a master at language. But as with Patchett's fiction, she dots around beautifully for many pages, but never really settles down with some great conclusion or moral. Thus, the book ends up feeling very thin. That's partially because it is thin--only 97 small pages, with oversized font. But it also is heavy on the details of her life journeys and very light on the meaning of it. In a book that's supposedly inspirational, I would've liked to have been inspired more. I don't really a care about every little step along her way.

I'm sure it was a great graduation speech. It's a great coffee table book. But it's not a book to live your life by.

For some reason, I kept seeing What Now? by Ann Patchett; I saw it at Barnes and Noble, I saw the book on the page at Amazon where my book is sold ("customers who have bought this book have also bought...,") and so I read it.

Turns out, Patchett's alma mater was Sarah Lawrence College--just like me--and we graduated a year apart! What Now? is an expanded version of the commencement speech Patchett delivered at Sarah Lawrence College. The speech is based on the author's personal experiences and what she has learned from them. It was emotional and greatly enjoyable reading about her experiences at Sarah Lawrence and even TGI Fridays, where we both waited tables.

Patchett recounts the story about how she met and became friends with the president of Sarah Lawrence, Alice Ilchman. The unexpected encounter and subsequent friendship become an important part of Patchett's life and she shares this in her book.

She writes of the incident: "Sometimes circumstances at hand force us to be braver then we actually are, and so we knock on doors and ask for assistance. Sometimes not having any idea where we're going works out better than we could possibly have imagined."

What Now? is filled with wisdom, humor and beautifully told stories of Patchett's life. It is an optimistic but realistic look at life and should do a great job of easing any fears that young people experience when faced with the "real world" after graduation.

What Now? advises to listen to other people and to do so without judgment, for wisdom comes from everywhere and everyone and can happen at any time. She writes, "the secret is to keep adding voices, adding ideas, and moving things around as you put together your life. If you're lucky, putting together your life is a process that will last though every single day you're alive."

I will be giving this book to my oldest friend's daughter (along with Just Who Will You Be?: Big Question. Little Book. Answer Within. (ROUGHCUT) who will be graduating college this Saturday, but I recommend it to people of all ages.

By the author of the award winning book, Harmonious Environment: Beautify, Detoxify and Energize Your Life, Your Home and Your Planet.

This Book is a very motivating read... went through it quickly. The speech has some very important message for all of us at any stage of life. It really does spark deep thought!

Patchett's commencement speech to her alma mater - Sarah Lawrence U. A tour de force of life's epiphanies delivered in a humorous, personal and artful style. No pomp and circumstances. At once profound and down to earth.

I found Ann Patchett's short essay "What Now?" in the library and wanted to give it a read. Patchett is the author of the successful novel "Bel Canto" and several other books. "What Now?" is an expanded version of the commencement address Patchett gave in 2006 at her alma mater, Sarah Lawerence University. Far from graduating and setting out to work, I have just retired from a lengthy career of over 30 years. Thus, although not part of the specific audience for Patchett's essay, I am again at something of a crossroads of the type Patchett describes. I face the question "What Now?" many times as people ask me what I plan to do in retirement. And I respond, as Patchett did when she heard the question herself with something of frustration. The question marks in the title of this review are meant to be appropriate. They show better than anything else, with the possible exception of the many photos accompanying the text, the nature of the book and the open-ended character of the question. Patchett uses the question marks repeatedly in separating out the various sections of her essay.

Drawing well on her own experiences, Patchett shows how people face the question, "What Now?" at various apparent turning points of their lives: where will you go to college? what will you do after graduation? when should I change my job? and of course "what will I do when I retire"? The essay gives a good sense of how this question can be frightening, invasive, and befuddling. She also shows how the question can be parried or redirected. Sometimes a person needs to wait and reflect and take life in the moment. An individual changes, life moves on, and direction is taken unobtrusively, not only in seemingly critical moments of choice.

Learning is continuous and comes in unexpected places. Patchett describes an encounter with an adherent of Hare Krishna years ago at a Chicago airport. While Patchett was leary of the man and his sect, his goal was not to convert or to seduce. Rather, the Hare Krishna adherent wanted only to talk and to help Patchett with the mundane task of moving her heavy baggage from one section of the large airport to another, destant part of the terminal. Patchett learned from the young man's eagerness to talk and from his devotion to God, as he understood God, in the life he had chosen at least for that moment. The Hare Krishna adherent had answered the question "What Now" by his life. In other episodes, Patchett shows how she unexpectedly spent time after her graduation from Sarah Lawrence in simply wandering, and in working as a waitress at a chain fast-food restaurant. She seemed far from her goal of becoming a writer but learned things in unexpected ways from people she would not have thought had anything to teach her. She came to her dream in a circuitous way. Other people develop their dream as they go along.

I do not feel especially stressed at retirement or at thinking about what to do. But I did feel stressed much of the time as a younger man as I faced the "What Now?" choices Patchett describes -- college, Law School, career, advancement, and the possibility of uncertainty and disappointment. There undoubtedly was much to learn as I faced these "What Nows?". Patchett's essay is simple and wise. There is something to be said for both change and patience. And people find what they need in unexpected places.

Robin Friedman

As luck would have it, I was heading out of the public library when I glanced at a table near the exit. There was a display of CD boxes of audio books, most of them of no interest to me, when I saw "What Now?". I avoid most unabridged audio books because they take hours to listen, but this single CD set requires only an hour. I've never heard of Ann Patchett but on an impulse, I added it to my borrowing.

While driving to my meditation session, I played the CD in my car. When I reached the carpark, I found to my horror that I was unable to get out of the vehicle until I've at least heard her finish narrating her encounter as a 20-year-old girl with a Hare Krishna devotee in an airport.

Her story is both hilarious and serious, and hits me with a long-forgotten truth: that it pays to listen to people, even first-time strangers.

Like Steve Jobs' 2005 Commencement Address at Stanford, Ann's essay offers many home truths that are given out in the guise of life's stories. I didn't know until today that waitressing is such a noble profession!

Post Script: Another important reason to get the audio book is the sheer beauty of Ann's soft voice. I just fell in love listening to her.

Ann Patchett gave a commencement speech at Sarah Lawrence College that was so widely regarded that it ended up as this book. I liked this part: "The secret is finding the balance between going out to get what you want and being open to the thing that actually winds up coming your way. What now is not just a panic-stricken question tossed out into a dark unknown. What now can also be our joy. It is a declaration of possibility, of promise, of chance. It acknowledges that our future is open, that we may well do more than anyone expected of us, that at every point in our development we are still striving to grow."

This little book is a nice inspirational, thought-provoking gift for seniors graduating from college, or for seniors in high school who may not be college-bound.