My Reading Life
As library and grade school billboards often earnestly proclaim, reading can be educational, even fun.
But reading can also change your life, and maybe even save it.
That鈥檚 the message of My Reading Life, Pat Conroy鈥檚 account of how literature rescued him from a troubled youth, sustained him through periods of trial, and helped make him not only an avid reader, but a celebrated writer.
Conroy has written numerous books, but he鈥檚 perhaps best known as the author of 鈥淭he Great Santini,鈥� a searingly autobiographical novel about a son鈥檚 coming of age at the hands of an abusive father.
Perhaps not surprisingly given Conroy鈥檚 wounded childhood, his Marine pilot father appears in the very first paragraph of 鈥淢y Reading Life鈥� as Conroy recalls his migratory and often turbulent childhood as a military brat.
Displaced and often desolate, Conroy sought solace in the woods around Marine bases, bringing home 鈥渁 series of captured animals, from snapping turtles to copperheads.鈥� Conroy鈥檚 mother brought him books to identify his quarry, and he was hooked.
鈥淲hatever prize I brought out of the woods, my mother could match with a book from the library,鈥� Conroy tells readers. 鈥淪he read so many books that she was famous among the librarians in every town she entered. Since she did not attend college, she looked to librarians as her magic carpet into a serious intellectual life.鈥�
Although reading, like writing, is often regarded as a solitary act, 鈥淢y Reading Life鈥� reminds readers that books can also be a strong, bright hearth where communities form. Conroy鈥檚 memoir is a frequently winning celebration of that fellowship, with tributes not only to his mother, but to others who stoked his passion for language.
They include Gene Norris, a high school English teacher who noticed the troubled Conroy鈥檚 early promise and became a surrogate father; Norman Berg, a book executive who prodded Conroy to read and write more deeply; and Cliff Graubart, an Atlanta bookseller whose shop became Conroy鈥檚 informal university.
Conroy credits Norris with sparking his lifelong passion for Thomas Wolfe, Conroy鈥檚 literary hero and the subject of an entire chapter of homage.
鈥淢ost flaws I have as a man and a writer I can trace directly to the early influence of Thomas Wolfe,鈥� Conroy writes, adding at another point that quite possibly, Wolfe鈥檚 style 鈥渃an be the worst influence on a young writer鈥檚 life and work.鈥�
That observation looms as the clearest evidence of Conroy鈥檚 genius for being his worst 鈥� and most accurate 鈥� critic. Like Wolfe, whose grandiloquence has rendered him unfashionable among many modern critics, Conroy sometimes lapses into metaphorical excess.
Of James Dickey, another favored writer, Conroy says that Dickey took language, 鈥渟trung it to its bow and aimed it at the carotid artery of poetry itself.鈥� It鈥檚 hard to know from such imagery if Dickey is being praised for making poetry or killing it, and 鈥淢y Reading Life鈥� is freckled with similar instances of rhetorical overreach, as when Conroy writes somewhat cryptically of poets that they 鈥渃andle the pilot light where language hides from itself.鈥�
With a charming sense of self-deprecation, Conroy concedes that both Norris and Berg urged him to use more economy and restraint in his writing, but near the end of 鈥淢y Reading Life,鈥� he offers a rebuttal: 鈥淪afety is a crime writers should never commit unless they are after tenure or praise.鈥� (He adds that more timid souls should stick to safer pursuits, including book reviewing.)
Conroy鈥檚 enthusiasm for Wolfe underscores his broader passion for writers who embrace an epic sensibility. He devotes a largely affectionate chapter to Margaret Mitchell鈥檚 鈥�Gone with the Wind,鈥� conceding its dated attitudes toward race, but praising its masterly grasp of 鈥渢he art of pure storytelling.鈥� He writes perceptively of Leo Tolstoy鈥檚 鈥淲ar and Peace,鈥� flatly declaring that once a reader tackles it, 鈥測ou will never be the same.鈥�
Eschewing any pretense of high-blown literary theory, Conroy confesses that what he wants most when he sits under his reading lamp is a good story: 鈥淚n every great story, I encounter a head-on collision with self and imagination.鈥�
In 鈥淢y Reading Life,鈥� Conroy has delivered such a story 鈥� a tale that sometimes strains, as many full-throated hymns do, to grasp the divine. For Conroy, after all, reading is not only an education and an ecstasy, but a private religion.
鈥淩eading and prayer,鈥� he writes in one of the book鈥檚 more beautiful passages, 鈥渁re both acts of worship to me.鈥�
Danny Heitman, a columnist for The Baton Rouge Advocate, is the author of 鈥淎 Summer of Birds: John James Audubon at Oakley House.鈥�
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