The New Yorker & Me: Interesting Emendations: Ann Patchett's "Flight Plan"

Introduction

What is The New Yorker? I know it’s a great magazine and that it’s a tremendous source of pleasure in my life. But what exactly is it? This blog’s premise is that The New Yorker is a work of art, as worthy of comment and analysis as, say, Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Each week I review one or more aspects of the magazine’s latest issue. I suppose it’s possible to describe and analyze an entire issue, but I prefer to keep my reviews brief, and so I usually focus on just one or two pieces, to explore in each the signature style of its author. A piece by Nick Paumgarten is not like a piece by Jill Lepore, and neither is like a piece by Ian Frazier. One could not mistake Collins for Seabrook, or Bilger for Goldfield, or Mogelson for Kolbert. Each has found a style, and it is that style that I respond to as I read, and want to understand and describe.

Sunday, January 2, 2022

Interesting Emendations: Ann Patchett's "Flight Plan"

Illustration by Sam Alden, from Ann Patchett's "Flight Plan"

Ann Patchett’s “Flight Plan” (The New Yorker, August 2, 2021) is one of my favorite pieces of 2021. It has a wonderful opening sentence: “The three of us were in a 1957 de Havilland Beaver, floating in the middle of a crater lake in the southwest quadrant of Alaska.”

Recently, reading the piece again, this time in Patchett’s new essay collection These Precious Days, I was surprised to find the first line altered. It now reads, “Three of us were in a 1947 de Havilland Beaver, floating in the middle of a crater lake in the southwest quadrant of Alaska.” Two revisions, both interesting: “the” is deleted, and “1957” is changed to “1947.” Normally, I relish the use of zero pronouns, but in this case, “the three of us” seems more precise. As for the change in the de Havilland Beaver’s model year, I’m curious; which is it? Does it matter? Not if it’s fiction. But this is a personal history piece, so, yes, accuracy matters.

I suspect what happened is that Patchett submitted her manuscript to The New Yorker. The magazine fact-checked it, found that “1947 de Havilland Beaver” should be “1957 de Havilland Beaver” and changed it. But when Patchett collected the piece in These Precious Days, she used her original text, ignoring the fact-checked New Yorker version. That’s just my theory; I could be wrong. Whatever the explanation, it’s an unfortunate discrepancy in a piece that seems destined for classic status.