Conroy Goes South

The first time I read a Pat Conroy book was a conversion experience as stunning as being knocked off a horse. It was on a plane, at the end of another exhausting school year teaching English, and I would have been happy to be reading sheer drivel as long as I didn't have to either grade it or make up a test on it. But the gods of reading must have decided that I deserved a reward, and they guided my hand to The Prince of Tides in the airport bookstore. I devoured it, named it the best book ever written, and went on to Conroy's earlier novels, The Lords of Discipline, The Great Santini, and The Water Is Wide. All were dramatic stories (some would say melodramatic; I'll say Southern) about passionate, wounded people spewing dialogue that could move me to tears or make me laugh out loud, often in the same scene. The settings were brought to life with some of the most gorgeous language I'd ever read. Conroy became my religion. I taught his books, I followed his trail to bookstores and lecture halls, I wrote him fan letters. I sat at the kitchen table with my daughter weeping over passages of tragic beauty. I insisted all my friends read him, and I insisted they love him as much as I did.

After those first four books there was a lull during which we Conroy acolytes held our collective breath in anticipation of his next book, which turned out to be Beach Music. It was a long exhale, ending in silence. A good book, but one that tried too hard and told too many stories, losing its momentum along the way. I can recite whole passages of those first four books, but Beach Music is a blur.


Never mind, I told myself, he'll be back. And finally he was, with My Losing Season, a memoir about his basketball days. I liked it, but I didn't love it. I had to skim some of the endless basketball scenes, but I appreciated the trademark Conroy beauty and passion with which they were written. But after this I didn't search Book World and Library Journal for news of what he was working on. I almost missed his next work, a cookbook of Low Country recipes. A cookbook! I didn't even bother looking at it. (A friend recently told me its essays are wonderful, as well as its Charleston "receipts," so I may have to give it a look.)

So I thought I was done with Conroy. It had been a great ride, some of the most memorable reading of a life spent among books. But when his latest novel, South of Broad, came out last month, I couldn't resist. I bought the hardback, I read it, and I mourned. It read like a pale imitation of the real Pat Conroy. All the old ingredients were there, but they were like spices that had sat took long in the pantry and lost their flavor. A few had even turned rancid. The witty, bitter dialogue was there in spades: every character spoke it--all in the same voice. The characters were still haunted by their pasts, but those pasts weren't as interesting, and took too long to be revealed, and the group of friends at the center of the story lacked fine-tuning as individuals. The once-brilliant metaphors were off, as if he'd used a thesaurus to find beautiful words and then strung them together without checking to see if they worked.

There is one thing to celebrate: the narrator's father is a man of nobility, kindness, and love. He is the father Conroy and his fictional counterparts had yearned for in all those other books where cruel fathers scarred their children for life. It was a joy to finally meet him. I hope his presence means that Conroy himself is healed, and that the pain he turned into art has finally left him at peace. I'll try not to mourn the loss.