Pat Conroy, southern author has died.

http://www.npr.org/2016/03/05/469337158/remembering-pat-conroy-a-master-who-searched-out-the-world-in-stories

I  never  met Pat Conroy except through his books. I read about him in articles and interviews, but I feel I really came to know  him when I read his memoir, The Death  of Santini. I know others like Dana Wildsmith who knew him personally and  they tell about a generous man, a kind man, a person they liked. 

I have always found it interesting that Pat Conroy is known as a southern author but he was raised on military bases and never felt he had a real home, not until his family settled in Beaufort, SC when he was twelve. He made that area his home and you will visit there in his novels. I have enjoyed his books, Beach Music, South of Broad, The Water is Wide, The Death of Santini and My Reading Life. I haven't read The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini which were made into movies.  

I hear that The Pat Conroy Cookbook is excellent. In the description of the cookbook, it says: A master storyteller and passionate cook, Conroy believes that "A recipe is a story that ends with a good meal."

That statement makes me think of my own family of storytellers and the good meals we enjoyed together.

I loved his books because he wrote with such an appreciation of language. He admitted he was a wordy writer. He told his editor Nan Talese, of Doubleday, when he first met her, "I will tell you, if there are ten words for something, I will use all ten. Your job is to take them out."

I relate to that trait. One of Conroy's books that I enjoyed and recommend to my students, is My Reading Life.

 ..."He has for years kept notebooks in which he records words and expressions, over time creating a vast reservoir of playful turns of phrase, dazzling flashes of description, and snippets of delightful sound, all just for his love of language. But reading for Conroy is not simply a pleasure to be enjoyed in off-hours or a source of inspiration for his own writing. It would hardly be an exaggeration to claim that reading has saved his life, and if not his life then surely his sanity."

He grew up in a terribly dysfunctional family with a father that beat him and abused his mother.

"Writing has been not therapeutic for me, but it has been essential," he said in an interview for Morning Edition. "I have written about my mother, my father, my family ... and if I get it on paper, I have named the demon."

I understand that sentiment as I have been writing all of my life trying to understand why I was different from my siblings, and trying to understand  my large family. Those of us who write autobiographical stories and books learn more than we ever expect to learn when we set to the task of explaining on paper how and why things happened as they did.

Many of us think we have dysfunctional families, but the Conroy family is one that makes me feel my family was perfect. Although I had a distant and cold relationship with my father, he was never abusive or mean to me. Like Conroy, however, I learned to understand and forgive my father for those things he did that seemed cruel to me or unreasonable. I learned by writing about him and researching the man, not the troubled father I knew.

Before The Great Santini’s death, Pat and his father had come to terms with Pat's writing openly about the family and his father's cruelty of his family. They could be found signing Pat's books together. 

One reason I so admire Pat Conroy is because he was extremely honest, not holding back on the painful and embarrassing or humiliating events although he knew he would suffer consequences from siblings and relatives. That is why his memoir, The Death of Santini, got to me. He told the truth without intentionally hurting those he loved. Although a sister, whom he said he adored, became so angry with him that their relationship was irreparably strained, he hoped to repair that damage.

A woman commented online that as a fifteen-year-old, she met the author  at one of his book signings, and he took time to meet with her and encourage her with her writing. They continued to correspond, and he became a part of her life. She said she would be forever grateful to him for his kindness and his generosity. She was not  the only one. Others commented on his giving his time, going the extra mile, to help a wanna be writer.

"Pat Conroy's writing contains a virtue now rare in most contemporary fiction: passion."

The Denver Post

I also like that Pat Conroy was very successful without studying writing in college or earning an MFA. He said there were no classes on writing fiction at the Citadel, a military school, his father insisted he attend. But he began writing fiction while there.

Some people believe that you cannot be a successful writer unless you take writing at the university and go on to get your Masters in Fine Arts. Pat said he was a storyteller and came from a southern family of storytellers. He told his stories in poetic language and captured his readers with his ability to clamp our minds and our eyes on his words.

I think Pat Conroy proves you have to love writing, be a reader and study writing by others, practice every day and have a passion for the craft. I believe that taking writing classes goes a long way toward building your writing career, but some people have a gift that they recognize, a desire to share their stories whether in fiction or nonfiction, and when they are ready and are good enough, they find the kind of success Conroy found.

"'Pat has been my beloved friend and author for 35 years, spanning his career from The Prince Of Tides to today,' said his longtime editor and publisher, Nan A. Talese of Doubleday. 'He will be cherished as one of America's favorite and bestselling writers, and I will miss him terribly,' Talese said."