TITLE: Reading "My Reading Life"
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: December 27, 2010 9:21 PM
DESC:
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BODY:
I first became acquainted with Pat Conroy's work when,
as a freshman in college, I watched The Great
Santini as a requirement for one of my honors
courses. This film struck me as both sad and hopeful.
Since then, I have seen a couple of other movies
adapted from his novels.
A few years ago, I read his My Losing Season,
a memoir of his final season as a basketball player
at The Citadel, 1966-1967. Conroy's story is
essentially that of a mediocre college-level athlete
coming to grips with the fact that he cannot excel at
the thing he loves the most. This is a feeling I can
appreciate.
The previous paragraph comes from a
short review of My Losing Season
written only a few weeks before I began writing this
blog. That page gives summaries of several books I
had read and enjoyed in the preceding months. (It
also serves as an indication of how eager I was to
write for a wider audience.)
This break I am reading Conroy's latest book, My
Reading Life. It is about his love affair with
words and writing, and with the people who brought
him into contact with either. I stand by something
I wrote in that earlier review: "Conroy is prone to
overwrought prose and to hyperbole, but he's a good
story teller." And I do love his stories.
I also value many of the things he values in life.
In a moving chapter on the high school English
teacher who became his first positive male role
model and a lifelong friend and confidant, Conroy
writes:
If there is more important work than teaching, I
hope to learn about it before I die.
Then, in a chapter on words, he says:
Writing is the only way I have to explain my own
life to myself.
Even more than usual, teaching and writing, whether
prose or program, are very much on my mind these
days. Reading My Reading Life is a great
way to end my year.
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