To Thine Own Self...Remembering Pat Conroy

            The most honest writer in America is gone.  Pat Conroy passed away last week and the literary world is remembering him as a giant who used the stuff of his own life to craft unforgettable fiction and nonfiction.  I remember him as one of the warmest, most generous people I’ve ever been around.

            It was 1986.  My first novel, Home Fires Burning, was scheduled for publication, and my editor, on a lark, had sent Pat a copy of the bound manuscript.  Pat was already a household name in American letters with The Water Is Wide and The Great Santini, both of which had been made into acclaimed movies -- not likely to have any interest in a novice like me.  But, incredibly, he did.

            Pat had been living in Italy, but came home to do the promotional tour for his new novel, The Prince of Tides, which was becoming a huge success.  One of his stops was Charlotte and a signing with his longtime friend, bookseller John Barringer.  And one of the publicity events in conjunction was a visit to the television station where I worked.

            I made it a point to meet Pat, mostly because I admired his work so much, but maybe secretly hoping some of  his talent might rub off on me.  He recognized my name immediately.  “My agent gave me your book, and I read it on the plane back home.  It’s terrific.”  I, who made a living gabbing on television, was speechless.  Pat was not only effusive in his praise and encouragement, he offered on the spot to write a “blurb,” a brief appraisal that my publisher could use in promoting the book.  Over time, I learned that Pat was just that way – a kind-hearted man who always had time to share himself with other writers, especially the new and struggling.

            Several years later, I introduced Pat to a standing-room-only crowd at a Charlotte literary festival.  We had a chance to visit backstage before the event, and I told Pat that like him, I was raised by a hard-nosed military father.  “I’m so sorry,” he said with a smile.  Pat’s dad, a Marine Corps pilot, was a monster who browbeat, belittled, and physically abused his wife and children.  Pat captured him exquisitely in The Great Santini.  My own father was mild by comparison, but Pat and I toted around similar baggage. 

            Pat was brutally honest in his writing.  In both fiction and nonfiction, he used the angst of his youth to craft stories that were so painfully authentic that they could make you cringe and cry.  He stepped on some toes and made some enemies, but he did it anyway because he had to.  “The reason I write,” he said in an interview, “is to explain my life to myself.  I’ve also discovered that when I do, I’m explaining other people’s lives to them.”

Pat created out of himself, and in that, he was a great inspiration to me and so many others who scribble, and even those who don’t.  He was the epitome of that oft-quoted line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, when Polonius says to his son Laertes, This above all: to thine own self be true.

I’m working on a new novel now, and reaching back into my own sometimes-painful youth, the way Pat Conroy did so eloquently and unflinchingly.  As I write, I’m aware of a dim figure looking over my shoulder, and with that presence, I feel braver, more sure of myself.  No, the Pat Conroy I knew did not die last week and never will.

Barry Hannah and the Big Tricks

My fiction teacher in graduate school was the late novelist and short story writer Barry Hannah, who told his students in general right off the bat, “I can’t teach you to write, but I can encourage your writing.”

To me in particular he said, “When you learn the big tricks, you’ll be okay.”

“What are the big tricks?” I asked.

“You’ll figure them out as you go,” he said with a smile.

I think, after a good number of years of making up stuff and putting it on paper, I’ve figured out at least a couple of the big tricks:

1. Be honest with your characters;

2. Trust your readers.

Since all stories are about people, the way to make stories authentic is to tell about authentic people, and that means presenting them warts and all.  We human beings are a fascinating stew of good and evil, joy and sorrow, light and dark.  Even the best of us have some secrets of the soul we’d rather nobody else know about.  And even the nastiest, smelliest of us have some tiny redeeming quality.  Since the great privilege of the fiction writer is to plumb the depths of characters’ souls, what we find down there – the dark as well as the light – is what makes them real.  Sometimes my characters infuriate me; sometimes they embarrass me.  But always, they fascinate me with their spirit, their energy, their insistence on being human in every way.  My job is to be honest with them.  So if you read one of my stories and find characters who seem authentic, I’ve succeeded.

Then that other big trick, trusting the reader – first, to be able to deal with authentic characters honestly presented.  My characters may occasionally infuriate and embarrass you, as they do me, but I believe you can handle that.  I trust that you will find something in them, in their honest presentation, that rings true and possibly resonates in your own life, or the lives of people you know.

Then too, I have to trust that you will bring your own imagination to the work.  I don’t have to tell you everything, and in fact, the more I try to tell you, the more I get in the way of the story and the characters.  I need to tell you just enough to get your imagination engaged, and you will fill in the blanks and make the story much more than what I could offer.  It will become your story, and the characters will become your people.

My good friend Ralph Keyes, a wonderful writer and a wise and perceptive man, has written a book called The Courage To Write.  Every person who writes, or wants to write, should read it.  Ralph talks, in part, about this business of being honest.  I don’t know if Barry Hannah ever read Ralph’s book, but part of what he encouraged in my writing was this business of honesty.  It was the best thing he did for me.

By the way, Barry encouraged some pretty darn good writers in his many years of teaching, including Mark Childress and Donna Tartt.  He was generous and nurturing, and he knew what he was talking about.  In a way, Barry’s at our elbows every time we sit down to write.

In my next post, some thoughts about the writer’s imperative to be honest with himself.  Warts and all.  Stay tuned.