This is the third “non- fiction” book I’ve read by Pat
Conroy. I put that in quotation marks as
the line separating his novels and his memoirs of his youth at the Citadel (My Losing Season), the influence of his
mother and teachers on his maturation as a writer (My Reading Life), and now, finally, this tortured history of his entire family (The Death of Santini) completes the trilogy of his autobiographical
works. His memoirs are the building
blocks of his fiction. And that is not a
criticism, but a fact. For some writers
it may be more subliminal, but where else does a writer derive his/her deepest
experiences other than those lived? That
is what makes moving, meaningful literature, theatre, paintings, you name the
art.
I have a profound respect for Conroy’s writing ability. It flows, whether it’s memoir or fiction. This particular work, I would think, puts his
life story to bed, or one hopes so. As
he movingly puts it at the onset …in the
myth I’m sharing I know that I was born to be the recording angel of my
parents’ dangerous love. Their damaged
children are past middle age now, but the residues of their fury still torture
each of us…Our parents lit us up like brandy in a skillet. They tormented us in their own flawed, wanton
love of each other. This is the telling
of my parents’ love story – I shall try to write the truth of it as best I
can. I’d like to be rid of it forever,
because it’s hunted me down like some foul-breathed hyena since childhood.
Throughout this angst-ridden work I hear the refrains of
John Bradshaw. I’ve met Bradshaw. I wish Conroy had, although he has himself has
gone through years and years of therapy.
Bradshaw puts his case very clearly in his seminal work The Family – the family is a system
which shapes our lives and survival in a dysfunctional family involves creating
a false self, playing a role – getting typecast so to speak – and it is
multigenerational.
It was not until Conroy wrote The Great Santini at the age of 30 that he first heard the phrase “dysfunctional
family:” Because I had studied the biography of Thomas Wolfe with such
meticulous attention, I thought I knew all the pitfalls of and fly traps into
which I could fall by writing on such an incendiary subject as my own
family. When I began to write the book,
I had never heard the phrase “dysfunctional family.” Since the book came out, that phrase has
traveled with me as though a wood tick has attached itself to my armpit
forever…My portrait of my father was so venomous and unforgiving that I had to
pull back from the outraged narrative voice and eventually decide to put the
book into third person. But even then, the words flowed like molten steel
instead of language.
In parts of this blog I’ve revealed some of my own family
sicknesses, a rageaholic mother and a passive father, sort of the opposite of
Conroy but we share some of the same burdens.
And as the oldest in the family of many siblings, Conroy bears the brunt
and he is trying to excise those demons in his memoirs and fiction.
It was not until after he had a physical confrontation
with his father physically that the impact of multigenerational family sickness
dawned on him. His father had left
Conroy’s house drunk after being plummeted by his son. It suddenly dawned on Conroy that his father
had no business driving a car in that condition and ran down the street to find
the car – which he did with his father passed out in the driver’s seat. He
studied his father’s face. I realized I
would always be serving a life sentence without parole because of the
unpardonable cruelty of this one man. Now on this night, my father had
proffered his final gift to me – because I had kicked him across the lawn and
beat him with my fists, I sat studying him at my leisure, deep in thought on
the first night I ever thought of myself earning my natural birthright as a
violent man. I was devastated. All during my childhood, I had sworn that I
would never be a think like him, and here before me, drunken and beaten, was
living proof that I was the spitting image of Don Conroy.
As Tolstoy posited “happy families are all alike; every
unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
I’ve heard of such families (the happy ones), although I’ve rarely met
one without some secret lurking. I think
a more benign way of putting it is that some families get along better than
others, but all families have their crucibles to bear. I like Conroy’s way of putting it: I don’t
believe in happy families. A family is
too frail a vessel to contain the risks of all the warring impulses expressed
when such a group meets on common ground.
If a family gathers in harmony for a reunion, everyone in attendance
will know the entryways and exits have been mined with improvised explosive
devices. The crimes of a father or the
carelessness of a mother can defile the taste of oyster dressing and giblet
gravy on the brightest Thanksgiving Day….The pretense of being festive at these
events is both crushing and debilitating to me…My parents taught me many
things, but they never taught me a thing about faking joy…The happy family is
one of the treasured romances of the American epic, something akin to the
opening of the West. Holidays
brought out the worst in my own family, hopes ridding high, with no way of
scaling those walls of expectations.
Much of the book is devoted to the ironic reconciliation
with his father. I say “ironic” as it
was through the publication (and ultimately the making of the movie) of The Great Santini, the main character, "Bull"
Meecham being based on his father, that a reconciliation becomes possible. It was not an attractive portrait, so much
based on Don Conroy’s incendiary persona.
Upon publication -- as in the case of Conroy’s literary hero Thomas
Wolfe when his autobiographical Look
Homeward Angel was published -- there was an upheaval in the family. But eventually Don Conroy became proud to be
known as the “Great Santini,” talking down the unflattering parts as being due to
his son’s “over imagination” and playing up the heroic parts. To Pat Conroy’s credit he accepted this part
of the reconciliatory bargain and even allowed his father to participate in
book signings, his father becoming sort of a “wingman” to Pat for the rest of
his life on those occasions.
The deaths of his mother (who had divorced his father
years earlier) and then the Great Santini himself are movingly described by
Conroy. The affect the family dynamics
had on the siblings and particularly his estrangement from his sister Carol Ann
(“her talismanic powers over me extended into the deepest realms of self”) and
the suicide of his youngest brother (“Tom was born to hurt”) are detailed. His beautiful eulogy to his father is
appended at the end of the book.
Towards the end of his father’s life, we began a year of submitting to Dad’s whims
as he made a final tour of the most significant places in his life. He planned visits to every person he’d ever
considered a friend, paying special attention to my daughters, who had
worshiped him ever since they had learned to talk…A hundred new moons would
appear in my horizon whenever my daughters had a child. Because of fate, love was a million-footed
thing, and so was hatred. My father was
behind the wheel of his car, urging it down the peripheries of blue highways,
and he carried what was killing him as an honored guest in his liver. He connected himself to Chicago, to Atlanta,
and the surprising realm of Beaufort, where his children had planted their own
flags of belonging and home.
Finally the end of this cathartic work, Conroy saying “I will
not write about you again” to his now dead parents, He also has found peace in
his marriage to Cassandra King, a novelist as well. And they have settled in the low country of
Beaufort, a place he loves, a place Conroy can call home in spite of being an
army brat and having moved all over God’s creation. I hope for no more
non-fiction from Conroy as he promises.
Yes, any future novel he may write may be steeped in the roots of his
own life, but that is how it should be. The
book’s dedication is lovingly made to his all his brothers and sisters, a sure
sign of healing.
It’s all out there now, other than the parts which, for
whatever reasons, he has chosen to keep private. He again makes reference to his estranged
daughter Susannah (he dedicated My
Reading Life to her), this time in the Acknowledgments, “…the door is
always open and so is my heart.” But
that obviously painful story essentially remains untold. He is such a powerful, lyrical writer, and
now that his memoirs have been put to bed, perhaps he’ll feel freer in future
fiction.
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| Bob Next to Wolfe’s Shoes |
We have visited that home, ultimately a boarding house managed by Wolfe’s mother, now a museum, a few times and felt moved and privileged. I’m sure Conroy felt the same way when he has been there. And he has the right stuff to fill Wolfe’s enormous shoes, which were bronzed and are part of the sidewalk outside the “Old Kentucky Home.”
I might also note that I read the hardcover edition of The Death of Santini,
beautifully produced by the Nan A. Talese imprint of Doubleday, printed on a cream shade deckle edge paper, and set in the very
popular, easy to read Caslon typeface.
It’s hard (for me) to imagine reading this on a Kindle. Holding
the book itself when reading such a moving memoir is a more tactile, spiritual
experience.
