My Evening With Pat Conroy, Prince of Stories

Years ago, I had the amazing experience of greeting a large audience at historic Thalian Hall in downtown Wilmington, North Carolina and introducing the main speaker for An Evening with Pat Conroy, the first of many events held that year to celebrate 100 years of story telling in the libraries of our county. I had the even more unusual opportunity of spending time with the author, just the two of us, for about an hour backstage before the festivities began, where we could talk freely.

He just wanted to talk about me and my time at Notre Dame. And of course, I only wanted to talk about him and his writing. If my wife had been there, we'd probably have spent all our time talking about her. But that's just the kind of man he was—gracious, kind, humble, and friendly.

Born and raised and educated in the south, Pat Conroy was a man who paid attention growing up and stocked his mind and heart with the stories of this distinctive region that he shared with the world for many years. He wrote his first book while he was still in school, and then followed up with a string of best sellers that continued for quite a run. I've read a bunch.

The Water is Wide is an extraordinary account of a heroic year of teaching on a small island off the coast of South Carolina, and the basis for two great movies.

The Great Santini is about growing up in the home of a fighter pilot, and having to fight for a small measure of independence and dignity in the midst of violence, prejudice, outrageous demands, and some surprising sides of love.

The Lords of Discipline gives us the experience of a southern military school and encompasses hazing, torture, friendship, self-mastery, hope, betrayal, and honor.

The Prince of Tides reveals one family’s struggles with tragedy and madness, much of it in the midst of great beauty, along with one man’s attempt at making sense of it all.

Beach Music helps us feel the gravitational force of family and how hard it is to achieve escape velocity from place and blood, no matter what you do. 

My Losing Season is a book where basketball meets the rest of life.

And, yes, I've even looked through the work that many people with culinary talents I don’t have tell me is one of the more compelling cookbooks of our time and place here in the south.

Pat Conroy’s themes were as universal as his sense of place was particular: The experience ofadversity, the power of friendship, the complex cauldron of family in which we’re all formed, the lure of the low country with its rich display of the wonders of nature, here at the edge of America. You can experience shock and trauma on one page, and find yourself laughing out loud in the very next chapter. 

Some of the best reading times I’ve ever had have been in Pat Conroy’s books. Probably like many of you, I’ve read them even when I really should have been doing other things around the house. I’ve relished every one, and I’ve even taken notes. Pat was a good philosopher, an astute diagnostician of human nature.  But, most of all, he was a master of stories.

You’ve likely read his books, you’ve probably seen and enjoyed the movies based on those books, maybe you’ve even cooked his recipes. With his passing, we all have the opportunity now to reflect with gratitude on his life and body of work. He was a southern original, a prince of his craft and a man I wish I could have gotten to know better. He will be missed.

Deeply Connected

We're all deeply connected. So, how did we get so far apart?

The news is always full of anger, hatred, murder, and theft, not to mention war and threats of war, and to read it every day, you'd come to think that the most common mindset in the world is the adversarial stand: Me against you, us against them, ours versus theirs. And yet, as all the deepest thinkers across the most profound sciences and religions tell us, we're all connected at the most fundamental level imaginable. We blossom from the same roots. We've bubbled up from the same soup. We're also touched by a common spirit, and inhabit a common home. We need to appreciate these deep connections more. We need to put aside false division and live our unity.

I came across an odd little story recently. And it stuck in my head. We have a lot of great writers where I live, in Wilmington, NC, both novelists and nonfiction types. And among our local magazines is a great monthly celebrating the arts and culture, called Salt. In the most recent issue, the great novelist Wiley Cash (A Land More Kind Than Home, This Dark Road to Mercy) tells some stories about southern writers on book tour. This one tweaked my attention. Wiley writes:

When my friend Tom Franklin left Mississippi on book tour, he told his wife that he was taking along his copy of Cold Mountain just in case he ran into Charles Frazier on his stop in North Carolina. "You're crazy," his wife said. "North Carolina's too big. What are the odds?" Halfway through his tour, Tom realized he needed a new pair of blue jeans, so when he arrived in Raleigh for his book signing at Quail Ridge Books, he headed first to the Crabtree Valley Mall, where he ran into Charles Frazier. "I saw him in J.C. Penney," he said. "I told him I had a copy of Cold Mountain out in my car, and he said he'd be happy to sign it."

Ok. How strange is that? Think about it for a second. In a state with millions of people, scattered through hundreds, and maybe even thousands of cities and towns and hamlets, all moving around here and there, or sometimes, if they're writers, staying inside their own homes while writing all day, what's the probability that this one guy visiting a few cities in North Carolina for a book tour will personally see a particular famous author he admires, and has prepared to see by bringing along a book to be signed, in a J.C. Penney - not in a bookstore, or library, or public radio station lobby, or Apple Store, where writers sometimes go to get their Macs fixed? And yes, of course, I know that coincidences, minor and major, happen all the time. But really. My life has been chock full of such things, and it's almost like I've been destined to hear other people's stories of the like, so that I'll think hard about what these marvels may indicate, or mean, far beyond just the real but still odd fact that even the immensely improbable is probably going to happen now and then.

I've come to suspect that our deep connections, at the most fundamental level, give rise to a form of potential informational access, and knowledge, for which we don't have either clear categories, or any solid understanding. And yet, our understanding has never been a requirement for reality. Throughout human history, we've failed for long stretches of time to understand many things that were nonetheless real. Sometimes our understanding catches up with the experienced realities that have formerly eluded us, and sometimes the mysteries continue. But their actuality does not depend on our conceptual grasp.

Are there then connections and ways of knowing that we could, in principle, be using to enhance our lives and positive impacts on the world around us? A psychologist friend once told me that he thinks the single most important quality for human beings to have is open-ness. Are we open enough to the strange and potentially fruitful interconnections that we may enjoy with others?

In a world of obvious and noisy divisiveness, perhaps we should think about such things more. Pay attention. Listen. And when you feel a nudge that maybe doesn't make sense, on the surface, and that might even elicit an "Are you crazy?" response if you mention it to someone else, maybe you should show it some respect, and act on it. You just never know. Or maybe you do.