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TO MIZ DIXIE BELLE'S SOUTHERN BOOK CORNER
I'm so glad you could drop by. I love reading books and I enjoy sharing my thoughts with my friends(just like you) about the books that I've read. I don't recall the exact moment that my intense love affair with books began but I think it was around the age of eight or nine. I do recall that Little Women by Louisa May Alcott was the first book that made a lasting impression on me. And of course, the moment that I finished Little Women I couldn't wait to read her next novel Little Men. From that point, I was hooked on books and I've always been indebted to Miss Alcott. Since books have always been such an important part of my life, I thought it only fitting to include this topic among my pages. Books have that magical way of transporting us into many dimensions. They can take us back in time or into the future. They can make us laugh one moment and then just two pages later we're dragging out the tissues to wipe the tears from our eyes. But most of all, books make us use our imaginations like no other media source.
This Month's Book Corner is devoted to a master novelist and a great Southerner
MR. PAT CONROY I must tell you at the outset that I just recently had the genuine pleasure of meeting Mr. Conroy. What a wonderful treat that was! He is truly a gracious person and looks just like his picture on the cover of his book jackets. But what I hadn't expected was his immense sense of humor. I'm not quite sure why this was so unexpected as I should have known that one who can write such descriptive sentences as this one has a wonderful sense of humor....and I quote from his most recent novel Beach Music. "....mark my words. You'll be back soon. The South's got a lot wrong with it. But it's permanent press and it doesn't wash out."I found this statement not only humorous, but in fact, it's very true. The South never does leave us regardless of how far we may roam or how long we're gone. Our Southern--ness is forever "permanently pressed" into our speech, our mannerisms, and our personalities. Mr. Conroy's dominent theme throughout all his books are about family relationships. Very often, the theme will involve unspoken secrets within the family, and the main character's desire to escape his Southern roots. In the novel, Beach Music, the main character, Jack McCall, is painfully suffering from the suicide of his beloved wife, Slyla, and has taken his young daughter and fled to Italy. It is Jack's intent never to return to his beloved home in Charleston, South Carolina. But of course, circumstances arise that the character ultimately must return to his roots and deal with the ghosts that lay waiting for him there. Mr. Conroy always manages to pull the loose ends together and make them fit perfectly into the whole picture by the end of the novel. However, that is not to say that he provides prefab answers to his character's questions or problems, but rather he lets the reader know that his character has worked through life situations just the way that you or I would. So there is no room here for writer's manipulation, if you will, of his characters. And this is what is so compelling about Mr. Conroy's work. He gives us his version of answers to preplexing family issues and does it in such a way that it's very plausable and realistic. Moreover, he does it with a Southern rendering and flare. In, The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini Mr. Conroy's uses the same marlevous methods to describe and expound upon what it means to be a Southerner. Again, the main theme is dealing with the dynamics of family relationships. And although the issues and problems that revolve around these characters are not neccessarily all that different or unusual from what a lot of us experience in real life, what is different is how Mr. Conroy manages to make these characters so rich and colorful in true traditional Southern form. Another recurring element in Mr. Conroy's novels is how his main character always has a love/hate relationship with the the father, while the mother, is almost always held is high esteem. And after having met Mr. Conroy and listening to him speak about his youth and upbringing, this seems to be have been the case in his real life. One of the introductory speakers made this comment just prior to Mr. Conroy's appearance on stage, "...by the end of Pat Conroy's novels one gets the feeling that he has reached so deeply down inside himself and wrenched his emotions that he has completely exhausted himself both mentally and physically." I would say that this more than fairly sums up Mr. Conroy's novels. I would only add that Mr. Conroy gives himself completely and totally in the truest sense of the word when writing a novel.
Mr. Conroy, I patiently await and look forward to your next novel...whenever that might be.
"For the Love of Books"
The Collective Works of Pat Conroy
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