Yesterday I heard some really sad news. Author Pat Conroy has pancreatic cancer.Last year one of my high school classmates passed away after battling pancreatic cancer. It's hard to detect in the early stages and people typically don't live long after it's diagnosed according to the Mayo Clinic.
I never met Pat Conroy but I almost saw him, years ago. He was scheduled to speak to a group in Knoxville and I talked one of my grad school professors into going with me to hear him speak. We got to the location and learned we had the date wrong and he wouldn't be there for another month. We were very disappointed.
My professor was a cool guy and we were friends so we went out to dinner instead. We were really bummed about not seeing Conroy. [There was some reason we couldn't get to hear Conroy when he finally did get to town, but I don't remember what it was..]
It was 1987 or 1988 and Conroy's book The Prince of Tides had just come out. The professor read parts of it to us in class. We were mesmerized by the beauty of Conroy's words describing the area of the low country where the book is partially set. (I know the area well because I've vacationed in the area my entire life.) Years later when the movie came out I was so disappointed to hear Nick Nolte's dreadfully bad southern accent. Hollywood always screws things up.
Everything I've ever read by Conroy has left me with a great feeling of emptiness and sadness when it was over. I literally feel, every time, like I have been thrust into another world, so rich is his imagery. His books take me out of my life and give me another life.
His life has been something of a mess, though. His parents were abusive. He's been married three times. His sister and his daughter don't speak to him. I think this quote by him is very telling because it speaks to his genius and his misfortune:
"You know, when I started writing, Robin, I told myself this. I was going to tell the truth as I saw it, as I lived it. So, all these stories, you know, that are so painful, but I thought by not trying to at least write about the pain, I was not telling the truth. And if I'm not telling truth, why do I write? And, you know, I think over the years, I've developed a thing with readers that they expect it of me, and I try to oblige. I try to tell as much as the truth as I can get out of myself. You know, it's a pledge I've made to myself, and it's a pledge I've made to the books I write."
It takes guts to tell the truth people don't want to hear, and to risk alienating folks in your own family. The painful truth needs to be told however. It needs light, because only then will it cease to torment us. I have told the truth a few times and gotten burned too. There are people in my extended family who don't speak to me. So be it. I don't lose any sleep over it.
The last thing I want to do here is quote Pat's wonderful book, The Prince of Tides:
"I grew up a river boy with the smell of the great salt marsh predominant in sleep... Nothing pleased me more than the sight of the shrimping fleet moving out before sunrise to rendezvous with the teeming shoals of shrimp that made their swift dashes through the moon-sweetened tides at first light."
Conroy writes prose that often sounds like poetry, and that's an incredible feat. I can write poetry and I can write prose but I cannot marry the two the way he does. It's a marvelous gift. I pray he somehow beats this cancer so he can keep writing for us for a long time..
my copy of Prince of Tides with my dad's inscription to me..
POSTSCRIPT of March 5, 2016: I just heard that Pat died last night. The world is a much poorer place today. Heaven, however, has gained a great storyteller.
