When I was a travel editor, writing a bi-weekly column, one of the ideas I kept in my back pocket was a column imagining a chance meeting, in some foreign backwater, between Anthony Bourdain and Rick Steves. The two most famous American travelers presented an interesting contrast in styles, not unlike Goofus and Gallant, and I thought an invented conversation between them might make for an amusing column.
I was reminded of that unwritten column while reading Ann Patchett’s essay in Sunday’s New York Times. It was about email, and like many of the Patchett essays I’ve read, it illuminated her enviable life: a highly successful author – one of email’s benefits, she says, is that it brings her unexpected writing assignments – surrounded by love. She loves her neighbors, she writes, and she loves her sister, who loves her back; she enjoys “the warmth of husband and dog.” She is blessed, as not that many writers – or, for that matter, people – are, and she is appreciative of her blessings.
So l like to imagine a meeting, at some secluded writers’ retreat, between Ann Patchett and Annie Ernaux.
