Pat Conroy: Prince of Authors

It was with great sadness that I learnt of the passing of Pat Conroy, who I considered was America's Prince of Authors. 

What always impressed me was Conroy's love for the scenic marshlands of coastal South Carolina. As an Aussie I have never been to SC but Conroy made sure that it is top of my list of places to visit. Conroy lived in Beaufort, SC because 'it's too beautiful to leave'. 

Some people considered Conroy's prose too flowery but I loved its lyrical and almost poetic style. 

To describe our growing up in the low country of South Carolina, I would have to take you to the marsh on a spring day, flush the great blue heron from its silent occupation, scatter marsh hens as we sink to our knees in mud, open an oyster with a pocketknife and feed it to you from the shell and say, 'There. That taste. That's the taste of my childhood.' 

Pat Conroy had a tortured family life which was an unending source of inspiration for his fiction, notably the novels “The Great Santini,” “The Lords of Discipline” and “The Prince of Tides”. He said:

One of the greatest gifts you can get as a writer is to be born into an unhappy family.

Recently I revisited Prince of Tides as an Audiobook narrated brilliantly by the late Frank Muller. In his introduction to the audiobook, Pat Conroy said that Muller "gave me ... a work of art". I strongly recommend that narration which turned a really great book into a minor masterpiece.

Another Conroy quote that I will always remember was:

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

Conroy died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 70. I hope that he will be able to enjoy Beach Music wherever he is.

Pat Conroy: Prince of Tides

Superb emotional story by Pat Conroy
Many of you will have seen the Oscar winning movie of Prince of Tides with Barbra Streisand and Nick Nolte. It was a great movie but you are really missing something of this great emotional story if you don't read the book as well.

Pat Conroy is one of my favourite contemporary American authors. His prose is almost poetic and his love for his the beauty of South Carolina's low country stuns the imagination.

Prince of Tides is the story of the Wingo family living in comfortable poverty on a small island of the South Carolina coast. It is the turbulent story of Tom Wingo and his supremely talented but very troubled twin sister Savannah as they come to grips with the legacy of their extraordinary family and the dark things that happen to them during their childhood. It is also the story of their elder brother Luke, a Vietnam War hero with dreams of how his home country should remain.

A lot of the story is set in New York where Savannah is recovering from yet another suicide attempt. Tom, now an unemployed English teacher and football coach, leaves his family and travels to NY (which he hates) to help Savannah, now a renowned poet telling the world about the Carolinas. To help Savannah he must tell her psychiatrist, the beautiful but enigmatic Dr Susan Lowenstein, things about his family history that he and Savannah have repressed to try to keep their sanity.

While the story is really about the Wingos, the sub-story about Tom's relationship with "Lowenstein" is also laced with psychiatric and romantic undertones as Tom and Susan discover how to help one another.

This wonderful book is arguably Conroy's most acclaimed and well-known novel. While I have seen the movie several times I am so pleased that I chose to read the novel as an audiobook narrated by the late Frank Muller. In his introduction to the audiobook Pat Conroy said that Muller "gave me ... a work of art". I totally agree as it took me into the dark world of the Wingos and the strange relationship between Tom and Lowenstein in a way that would not have been possible reading the book myself.

Pat Conroy: The Great Santini

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This is not an easy book to review because it is so good but so gut-wrenching. It is not an easy book to review when you know and continually realise that it is so closely connected to Conroy's difficult childhood where he experienced the kinds of mental and physical abuse that form the central theme of this book. What is uplifting is that Conroy survived to become an author of the first order who can write with passion and understanding about this difficult subject.

Colonel Bull Meecham is a top-gun Marine fighter pilot whose life and family are driven by his dedication to the Marines' way of life. While he has reached almost to the top of his career, his personality is still back in boot-camp which he brings home every day to his long-suffering family. His immaturity, egotistical, and personal excesses dominate the book. Even his family nickname, "The Great Santini", displays his inability to accept his parental responsibilities. He rules his family like a boot-camp sergeant and has no understanding of parental responsibilities for nurturing and providing love to his four children.

Lillian Meecham is a beautiful Southern gentlewoman with a love of literature, who unsuccessfully tries to defend her children from the excesses and abuse of their father. After moving from base to base each year, the Meecham's finally settle down in a fictional Marines base in Southern Carolina and try to live a normal life. Ben, the eldest, struggles to adulthood with a father both telling him he is a sissy and attempting to get him to act like a man (according to the rules of the Great Santini). The love- hate (or more the hate-love) relationship with his Father dominate the book.

While Ben is the main recipient of his father's pressures, his other children, especially Mary Anne the eldest daughter, suffer in other ways. They survive and protect themselves through a ritual of mutual self-degradation and black humour.

Despite all of this there are glimmers of hope. Ben shows that he can mature independently of his father and can defy him at moments of crisis. But at other times he succumbs to the pressure with painful consequences. I really felt sorry for Mary Anne, who does not have her mother's beauty and protects herself by immersion in literature and self-degradation.

One thing that does shine through is Ben's discovery of the beauty of the rivers, creeks and swamps of Southern Carolina and the surviving antebellum architecture of the region. This love of SC is ever-present in Conroy's other books.

I have read and enjoyed most of Conroy's later books and somehow missed this one. I am glad that I finally had the chance to read it and strongly recommend it to anyone who wants a challenging book to read which will make you sad and happy and you will remember for a long time.