My December 3rd post was the beginning of my declared commitment to read several literary treasures from both the near and distant past. First, I wanted to finish the books I already own. I’ve done that, and it’s most fitting that the last in my stack was Pat Conroy’s: My Reading life.
I’ve written two reviews, one short one that I’ve posted at Amazon and one long one that I wrote for today’s blog. Writing these reviews has definitely caused me to read the book more carefully. Reading books as if I were in school is my goal. The good part is I don’t have to worry about grades or due dates. Hopefully, my skills will improve as I continue down my own reading list.
Here’s what I wrote for Amazon.com:
It wasn’t long before I realized that the title, My Reading Life, pertained as much, if not more, to how the author reads people and situations as it does to the books he’s read, studied, and admired. My Reading Life has a memoir quality to it, which is good for me because I can’t get enough of his take on the world. Finding refuge in the written word armed Conroy against the epic dysfunction he faced at home and provided him with a framework in which to view the world, to read the world. I’m forever in search of a kindred spirit, a person who has endured harrowing events and is willing to write about them with a “mind blazing with the dignity of language.” About his brutal, fighter pilot father and cronies, Pat Conroy wrote “For the most part, they were third-rate men who spread rich marmalades of loathing over their own wives and children.” Right on! It’s his unique powers of interpretation that I’m drawn to. With great literary flair, Pat Conroy communicates what it means to be seen — whether it is comic or tragic. My Reading Life is the philosophical aftermath of events he’s endured and now speaks of with the lustrous and precise language of the classics.
And here is what I spent more time on:
Pat Conroy, author of several books including The Great Santini and The Prince of Tides, has a new (2010) work of non-fiction out: My Reading Life. It didn’t take long before I realized that the title pertained as much, if not more, to how the author reads people and situations as it does to the books he’s read, studied, and admired over the course of his life. The works of literature that he references are seamlessly interwoven with descriptions of friends and family, work and retreat, giving My Reading Life a memoir quality.
From early in his youth, Pat Conroy’s mother nurtured his extraordinary appetite for the writen word by regularly taking him to libraries and co-reading every single schoolbook he brought home. The mother of six children, Peg Conroy’s education was piggybacked onto Pat’s. When they came upon an unknown word, they’d look it up and discuss its meaning until it was understood. Shakespeare’s use of the word “surfeiting” in Twelfth Night was one such word. Peg’s adult sophistication enhanced the definition and its overall context in the comical play about love when she suggested that the word was being used in a pun.
In chapter two, we learn what sway Gone With the Wind had over the Conroy household. Margaret Mitchell’s novel was read over and over by both mother and son. To know the character of Scarlett O’Hara is to know Peg Conroy. Pat Conroy’s mother was a southern beauty with as much determination to turn her son into a famous southern writer as Scarlett was determined to turn adversity into triumph. We get it that Peg was a force not to be denied. Unfortunately, her powers of persuasion were mute when it came to the routine beatings Pat received from his father. Apparently, Peg’s role was to sooth, not protect. A pure Pat Conroy zinger of a sentence comes as a description of his brutal, fighter pilot father and the man’s Marine cronies: “For the most part, they were third-rate men who spread rich marmalades of loathing over their own wives and children.”
Finding refuge in the written word armed Conroy against the epic dysfunction he faced at home and provided a framework in which to view the world, to read the world. Committed to reading a minimum of 200 pages everyday, Pat Conroy was pleasure reading Balzac, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky in high school. Enraptured by the character developments and detailed plots of the classics, Conroy unapologetically owns his preference for rich stories told with elaborate and skillful phrasing. It’s with this preference in mind that we meet Gene Norris, Conroy’s English teacher and life-long friend — a dedicated yet irascible educator, forever attempting to reign-in Conroy’s extravagant literary flair. Norris, also a lover of the perfect word choice, referred to Conroy as “creature,” and “scalawag.” When controversy over J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye erupted, the English teacher coached his young student to write an essay that was brave and from the heart.
Conroy seems to have a penchant for the cantankerous type, perhaps in an effort to find his father without the fists. Gene Norris was no pushover, neither was Miss Eileen Hunter, the school librarian. She was “wrathful” and “troll-like,” a closeted alcoholic and blatant racist. Then there was Cliff Graubart, the cashier and owner of The Old New York Book Shop. When Conroy pointed out that the man never said hello to him, he received an uninterested “Hi” for his efforts. Conroy volleyed, “What warmth, what charm!” To which the gentleman replied, “You want a hand job instead?” Conroy’s book rep wasn’t much warmer. He got described as “pugnacious,” “caustic,” “wintry,” and “implacable,” yet Conroy wooed his affections and actually spent some time living with the man and his wife. In the chapter titled, “My First Writers’ Conference,” we see where Conroy couldn’t befriend every prickly character he encountered; he was unable to win over Adrienne Rich and Alice Walker despite their rudeness of the first order.
My Reading Life is chalked full of titles and literary characters, authors and celebrities that Conroy has befriended both literally and figuratively. He’s well read and well known, but all of that seems to fade into the background when it comes to his stated standards as a communicator. In 1978, Conroy found himself in the crosshairs of fate when he encountered two separate bombing incidents while living in Paris. In their philosophical aftermath he discovered something about himself as a writer. He discovered that a writer must endure harrowing events, whether they are familiar or distant, and then speak of them as if on fire, his “mind blazing with the dignity of language.” And it’s his opinion that the more lustrous and precise the language the better.
And while I can’t claim to possess such skill, I agree with the sentiment.
Pat Conroy “grew up a word-haunted boy.” Here are a few of his words that had me reaching for my dictionary:
Insouciant (p. 14) – free from concern or worry, carefree, nonchalant, blithe, indifferent
Zeitgeist (p. 31) – a general trend of thought or feeling during a particular period of time
Flummoxed (p. 46) – perplexed, bewildered, confused
Milquetoasty (p. 51) I’d heard this word before but I thought I was hearing “milk toast.” – sissy, timid, meek
Amanuensis (p. 216) – secretary or typist
Fulminations (p. 223) – vehement protest, thunderous verbal attack, violent explosion or flash like lightning, rant
Inchoate (p. 249) – just begun, not fully formed, rudimentary
Ordure (p. 281) – excrement, dung
Abjure (p. 301) – to renounce under oath, to recant solemnly, repudiate, to abstain from
Glockenspiel (p. 327) – percussion instrument with a series of metal bars played with two light hammers
Inimitable (p. 294) – unsurpassed, incapable of being imitated, matchless
Kvelled (p. 298) – Yiddish-beaming with pride
And my favorite: Clochard (p. 227) – a tramp, vagrant, beggar of food and wine
I wonder if I’ll ever have the confidence to wield such a vocabulary? Are there any words here that are new to you?
The Catcher in the Rye is next on my reading menu. I know, just about everybody has already read it, but not me. I can’t wait to learn what all the fuss was about.
Oh! By the way, HAPPY NEW YEAR and HAPPY NEW DECADE!
2011 Here we come!
Sorry – CORRECTION… your name is Terry, not Terri.
Terri – the Reply Button worked! I just now read the word “inchoate” and could NOT remember what it meant, so was checking back to review the list. I am reading Lynne McTaggart’s book, “The Field” and it is a Zeitgeist changer.
Cool! This makes dialog much easier.
Inchoate looks like chocolate to me. I never get that one right.
Zeitgeist is a great word. I like the hard consonants at the beginning and end, and I like the visual repeat of ei. Zeitgeist, now that’s no mamby-pampy word; it’s so powerful, so Germanic.
Actually – “ordure” has real possibilities!
This “Reply button is new. Please let me know if you get this, otherwise I’ll send you a regular e-mail.
So yeah, “ordure” is a pretty good one. It sounds enough like odor that I may remember it. Now, whether I’ll ever use it personally or not, I’m not sure. I think I would feel pretentious if I got too carried away with the college prep vocabulary. Clochard is still my fav.
Catcher in the Rye! All my life I think of it every time I trim my toenails (you’ll see). I have never read The Great Gatsby, or On The Road. I spent my youth reading horse books.
I have heard most of these words, but only knew the meaning of less than half. Several I have looked up repeatedly but they don’t stick. They don’t sound like their meanings: “insouciant” ought to be kind of sassy, “inchoate” is so close to “chaos” that it throws me, and “ordure” is too close to “ordeal” for me to get it. Should we let such words die? If we use them, most people will miss the meaning. I try to use the words most likely to be understood, unless an obscure word is needed. In fact, I have already forgotten the meanings in this list. Dang it. I’ll need to review often. Like every Friday.
Rita