BEACH MUSIC BY PAT CONROY, A REVIEW

Beach Music sat in my TBR pile for years while I passed by.

At over 700 pages it intimidated me.

I like novels around 200-250 pages.

The Great Gatsby clocks in at 208 paged; Catcher In The Rye runs 234 pages, more or less.

Beach Music at 800 pages? I got a Harry Potter vibe at the length.

Then I picked it up and started. What did I expect?

This wasn’t my first Pat Conroy rodeo. I had an idea of what to expect, which is why I dodged it for so long.

Would there be a father figure who beats his wife and kids?

Of course. It wouldn’t be a Pat Conroy book without dear old daddy.

The thing about the fathers in his books is they have important jobs and kicking ass on vulnerable people is an excuse.

One time he’s a fighter pilot, this time a judge, but a drunken judge for good measure.

It feels like the dads get a break because of who they are, along with being a wife beater and kid walloper.

This time out the main abuser is a Marine Corps general with a free-spirited son he backhands for good measure.

General Jackass smacks his kid for losing a baseball game not knowing his friends are in the backseat.

Junior takes another shot from his old man at an important juncture of reconciliation, who added a big loogie he hacked on his kid’s face.

As if getting knocked around by dear old dad wasn’t enough, Conroy adds saliva.

I feel, after finishing Beach Music, that my own dad could have done so much more for my writing career.

He was a Marine who did the sort of things Marines do.

If only he would have kicked his sons’ asses and beat his wife for good measure. But, no.

How did it work out for Pat Conroy?

Southern Man Explains Himself

From Southern Living:

When I refer to myself as Southern I am talking about the part of myself that is most deeply human and deeply feeling. It is the part of me that connects most intimately and cordially with the family of man.

There are qualities of grace and friendship and courtesy that will always seem essentially Southern to me no matter when I encounter them on the road. 

One of the keys to Pat Conroy’s work is how deeply he feels things. Deeply human, deeply feeling.

I get a feeling he is deeper than me.

I felt it when I started crying toward the end of Beach Music when his momma died.

This isn’t a spoiler because the mom was dying most of the book.

And like mothers in his other books, this mom is a misunderstood beauty who gave the world to her oldest son.

And he loved her deeply for it.

What else was he going to do?

What Happens In Real Families?

In Pat Conroy families everyone works to get along, to find a way to forgive.

In other families this would never happen.

There’s the story of the oldest son who punished his mother by cutting her off from her grandkids for a decade.

Why? Because mom didn’t do what sonny thought was the right thing. She got divorced and remarried.

Grandma spent ten years complaining about how much she missed her grandkids even when her other kids visited with more grandkids.

Then there’s the story of the youngest kid who found out the details of the new arrangements on his mom’s doorstep.

“Your father doesn’t live here anymore.”

Just like that.

In real families there’s a comeuppance.

The jerk older brother gets his; younger brother feels left out.

Then there’s the middle child, their parent’s favorite, who makes peace and everything works out to a happy ending.

Sure it does.

At least that’s how it works out in Pat Conroy stories. Everybody reconciles, has a good cry and a hug, and carry on until the next upheaval, and there’s always the next one.

And you can be sure it will be deeply felt in a deep way.

Where’s The Portland Beach Music, The Oregon Story?

If One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is the state movie of Oregon, does that make Ken Kesey the state author of Oregon?

I’ll go one further. If Ken Kesey is the state author, then Sometimes A Great Notion ought to be the state book.

“Sometimes a Great Notion” is a terrific, funny, tender, and psychologically demanding work of art that has few equals and no superiors in the entire body of 20th century American literature. Some parts “The Grapes of Wrath,” “Absalom! Absalom!” and “The Brothers Karamazov,” Ken Kesey weaves together a compelling story of a labor strike in a coastal Oregon town while simultaneously crafting a portrait of the Stamper family — Henry, Hank Jr., Leland, Vivian, and Joe Ben — expertly alternating between first person narrators w/o warning or indication (e.g. Faulkner), often in the middle of a paragraph.

Or?

Honey in the Horn is a 1935 debut novel by Harold L. Davis. The novel received the Harper Prize for best first novel of 1935 and won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1936. The title of the book is from a line in a square dancing tune, and is only found in the book in the author’s introductory overleaf.

There’s room on the bookshelf for a new Oregon story, a coming of age story of a boy who left the state only to return to find everything he thought he wanted was where he came from, not where he’s going.

We can dance to that beach music.

I’d read that book. How about you?