"My Reading Life" by Pat Conroy Doubleday: 2010
This book is a library book and I have no idea when it is due. It is so well written that I wanted to savor the language and the commentary on books as well as the love that Conroy has for reading. I could not. Still, it was a wonderful journey into Conroy's mind for there is no mistaking this author's love of books. It is a love that unites him with his mother who also loved reading too but not his father who thought of books as furniture. His mother gave all of her children a love of books that lives with them still although she is gone now.
As with most writers, writing and reading is so intertwined that it is hard to separate the two activities. The reader gets a strong dose of Conroy as the writer as well as Conroy as the reader in this book. We roll around in his ocean peaks of admiration, elation and enjoy his love of language as well as the books that he read throughout his life. There is humor as the he describes his mother's love of the book, "Gone With the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell and all of the times his mother read it and made her kids watch the movie. For her, it was not so much a novel as a book of manners and they way things were supposed to be in the South.
Conroy is considered a Southern writer and it is evident in this book that he agrees with this assessment for his mother, Peg Conroy, is Southern raised as well. His father Donald Conroy, is a U.S. Marine fighter pilot. He will move his family 23 times before Conroy is 18 years of age. At one point in the book, the author states his father raised him to be a fighter pilot too but his mother got him with her reading and love of books. He became a writer instead and one of his sister is a published poet. He also said that he has spent his whole life trying to understand who his mother was. He also wrote the novel, "The Great Santini" so he could understand his relationship with his father who was a abusive husband and father so he could have a relationship with him. His mother divorced his father after he retired from the service.
There were many special people in Conroy's life and one of them was a special English teacher. He introduced him to different writers especially Thomas Wolfe ("Look Homeward, Angel" (1929)). His mother would follow behind him reading the same books Conroy read for she did not have a college education and always felt inferior to others because of that. Whatever classes he took in high school and even at The Citadel, a military college, she followed behind him absorbing the same lessons and books that he took. He states: "Your mother plays witih snakes and poison and raises you to tell the stories that will make all our lives clear. It all congeals and moves and hurts in the remembering." The author writes he could not ask for anything more.
I found this book a wild and fascinating ride through books, reading, writing and one man's life. I am not a big fan of Conroy although I have read several of his novels, but if anyone loves to read, this is a book to glide through for it is one long trip of of enjoyment and literary knowledge. He states many times how much he enjoys language and this book certainly is an example of his love affair with language, books and writing.
