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."
