My Reading Life

If you have read any of Pat Conroy's works, but especially the Prince of Tides, you know what a gifted writer this man is. As they say, he is the real thing. His ability to turn a phrase, to tease out the exact emotion he is looking for and then take that feeling and rework it, and get right down into your gut is extraordinary. In this partial autobiography he takes us the reader on a literary tour of the world of the mind, as explored though the books he has read. From poetry, and philosophy through history, you realize the deep importance that books have had on his intellectual development, and just maybe in his words - his sanity.These are the people, the places, the experiences that he has gone through, that have molded him into one of the truly gifted writers of his generation. Could it have been different? The answer is of course it could have, but by reading Tolkien, and Milton, and the Greek historian Thucydides, he had to turn out the way he did. His love of language was developed through the written word, and if you were to go into his house today in the South, you would discover something very interesting.You would find a set of notebooks that he has kept all these years written in his hand. When he would find an interesting phrase, he would write it down. Whether it was a description, or even words about a sound, his love of language would dictate that somehow he needed to write it down, and then play with it. After doing this for years, when he became a writer, Conroy had a deep reservoir of language, and phrasings that he could apply to his own work. He would keep going back to those notebooks.There is honesty in this book on every page, and there is wisdom. In every utterance you feel what some writers have referred to as the power of books to help shape a human life. In the case of a writer, this shaping is then reflected back in the written word that becomes his book. We still know however, that no matter how much we read, and Conroy says it much better when he contemplates that if he could read a million books, he would still find himself to be a mediocre thinker. There is just so much to read. I found that the three most interesting chapters in the book were:Gone with the Wind (Chapter 2)Conroy's mother reads the masterpiece to her son every night beginning at age five, and the boy finds himself transformed by the words.The Old New York Book Shop (Chapter 6)It's not in New York by the way. There are shelves of books and Conroy wonders just how long each of those books can sit on a shelf, just waiting to transform the person that is going to pick them up, for books are living things and they have the power to change us.Why I write (Chapter 14)If you have ever thought about what are the different rituals that an author must go through to be able to pick himself up and sit down and write, then this chapter is for you. Each author is different in his technique, but many experience writer's block, some just go at it. Conroy requires a special location to get going. It is a very interesting chapter, and be sure not to miss it.CONCLUSION:This book is physically smaller than most books, and it fits nicely in the palm of your hand. The pages are referred to as deckle edging which has a nice feel to it, and the font made it easily readable. I read it while on an airplane, and as I flew, time flew with me. That is the power of a great book. It has the ability to make you escape time, and be absorbed into what the author is conveying to each of us, and for each it is different. I gladly gave this book five stars and wish there were more like it. Order it today, and thank you for reading this review.Richard C. Stoyeck

Pat Conroy's latest gift to his many fans will most surely please them. All his trademarks are here: telling a story at breakneck speed with no stops for intersections, decorative language all over the page and extreme self-confidence. While the title does not quite hit the target dead center, it's close enough to be counted. By that I mean that Mr. Conroy includes a lot of material not quite about what he reads.Here are some of the books that have, in his own words, brought him to his knees. (1) GONE WITH THE WIND. Apparently this was his mother's favorite book and the one that convinced him to become a writer. (Of all of the family members of Mr. Conroy's who show up thinly disguised as characters in his works, his mom is the one person I would most want to have known. She was obviously one classy lady.) (2) LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL. "The books's impact on me was so viseral that I mark the reading of LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL as one of the pivotal events of my life." I sometimes think this writer is channeling Thomas Wolfe as they have so much in common. Certainly Conroy is right that Wolfe's fictionalized account of the death of his young brother is one of the most moving passages in all of literature. (3) WAR AND PEACE. Mr. Conroy believes Tolstoy's masterpiece is the greatest novel ever written. Although I haven't read the book since high school, Conroy convinced me to reread it before I throw off this mortal coil. (4) The poetry of James Dickey. Conroy opines that Dickey's POEMS 1957-1967 "is the finest book of poetry ever published in America," overshadowing the poems of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens and T. S. Eliot. Apparently Robert Frost is not even in the running. To the best of my recollection I have read two of Mr. Dickey's poems; however, I do not believe for one minute that Conroy is even close to being right in that opinion.Mr. Conroy writes-- always with unbridled passion-- about people who have influenced his life and gives a moving account of a high school teacher in particular. His recounting of his first writer's conference at the Callanwolde Fine Arts Center in Atlanta where he could barely contain "his excitement over attending the poetry workshop of Adrienne Rich" is a hoot. He, along with all the other males, were summarily evicted from the room because, as the great Queen Elizabeth I would say, they were "crested and not cloven." He also remembers that at that conference that Alice Walker was rude to him-- she never spoke to him-- when she, at his request of course, signed his copy of MERIDIAN. We can only hope that Ms. Walker has mellowed with time. Conroy's recollections of the Old New York Book Shop on Juniper Street in Atlanta are worth reading as well. For instance he once met there the exotic Michael Jackson wearing expensive dark glasses and accompanied by three burley bodyguards--"do you have any books on freaks?"-- without recognizing him. His stories from his stint in Paris while writing PRINCE OF TIDES are some of the best of the book.Finally about Mr. Conroy's love of metaphor: sometimes his similes and metaphors work quite beautifully. Then you read a sentence like this one: "Within those walls, the sun filtered through the stained-glass windows like lozenges of light through the tail feathers of peacocks." What on earth is that all about? I sometimes get the feeling-- to throw in a bad metaphor of my own that I hope Mr. Conroy would love-- that this writer has this bag of decorative words-- he admits to keeping a dictionary and thesaurus by his side while he writes-- that he just dumps on the reader, much as a woman might empty out the contents of an oversized handbag onto a table as she sorts out various items.

Excellent

Great