- To the detriment of my own posting regularity I have ended up posting a lot more to my del.icio.us account than anywhere else. In the six months since September I have posted to it 432 times. Compare that with the 1561 entries I have posted to the blog over the past four years. That’s more than twice the frequency. Granted, the posts to del.icio.us are less substantial, but it is obvious that it is seeing a lot more activity from yours truly. With the del.icio.us Firefox extension you just have to right click a link or page to send it to del.icio.us. I dump much of the information I sift through directly into there. Since anything goes you can gather a good idea of the kind of stuff I’ve been reading about. Del.icio.us is a godsend for people who like to sift through massive amounts of varied information.
- I finally finished reading Pat Conroy’s novel “Beach Music“, which I’ve been nursing for a few months. Like most of his other books I’ve read (The Prince of Tides, The Lords of Discipline, The Great Santini) I could really relate to the story and the characters. Conroy also has an effusive, bittersweet style that I enjoy.
Now that I have read a few of his books I am starting to see a number of similarities among them all. Most of the characters possess a lot of the same personality traits, and the family circumstances are often strikingly similar. There is usually a harsh military father, a sibling with schizophrenia or mental illness, eccentric grandparents, and an overwhelmingly dominant yet fiercely loving mother figure. I’ve also noticed that several of Conroy’s female love interests are emotionally remote, and troubled. Usually his protagonists are in love with someone who is either unwilling or unable to love them back. His protagonists find some way to come to the rescue while also ultimately failing to achieve the love they want. Loss seems to be a common theme. It is interesting how Conroy resolves certain relationships. It’s hints at an actual lack of resolution the author might have felt when writing.
At times, I feel amibivalent about his work. Much of what he writes is only thinly disguised as fiction and you feel like you become a part of his very real and palpable family suffering and drama. There is so much of his raw emotional reality dripping from the writing. It makes me wonder what drives him to tell his story as fiction. Is it a desire to express something that still causes pain thereby creating distance from it? Does he want to confess to his readers but hide from their scrutiny? I can’t help but feel that there is something sadly narcissistic about turning important life experiences into novels. The pain is very real, but he wants to draw attention to it as well.
All that being said, I’ll probably check out the non-fiction work, “My Losing Season” next. Here are a couple related links:
- Pat Conroy interview on “Beach Music”
- Pat Conroy audio interview on Fresh Air
This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 16th, 2005 at 4:11 pm and is filed under Literature.
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I can’t help wondering if he writes “his” story as fiction in some part because it allows him to keep writing it over and over again (nobody wants to read the fifth version of your memoirs). Of course, any time someone fictionalizes their own experiences there is that element of wish fulfillment/idealization of some things (making the “you” character better than the real you, etc.) and conceptualizing/processing difficult things.
I think that’s a great point. Once you write about your horrible childhood experiences once, no one would understand why you would do it again, unless you have just totally not come to terms with it.