Guest Book

I don’t know why I’m making an entry to a guestbook of someone already passed on-except to perhaps let family and friends that had the honor to be called such might once again be reminded of what they undoubtedly know.

I love to read. I love books. It is a love passed down to me from my mother, who would have 3-4 books “going” at any point of her life. It was through her that I discovered Pat Conroy. She had a system for handing down bags of read books to me... one check on the title page meant that she’d read it, but that I should only resort to reading if there were no books left in the bag. Two checks meant worth the time and three meant read first! When she gave me the book, “Beach Music”, it not only had the valued three checks, but she wrote-“Really good” followed with three exclamation points!!!

I saved the book to read on a long plane trip to Colorado with my husband. I, like my mother, am a very fast reader. If going on a 10 day vacation, I will bring 3 books. But this book was different...Pat Conroy created something that made that book last for the entire vacation. I found, that instead of flying through a book, I would read then reread and, as with the first pages of the prologue, read a third time, think about what I’d just read and then interrupt my husband’s book to read it to him. When I finally did finish the book, as is the experience with a truly good book, I was sorry I’d finished it. So was my husband who had essentially listened to a near entire reading of the book through me.

Without belaboring more than I already have, Pat Conroy changed the way I read when I read any of his works. They are prose and fiction, but so much more. He writes in poetry and tells a story in such detail that whether funny or tragic pulls you in and makes you experience the written situation as a silent but present observer.

I wish I’d been able to tell him that I read him differently than I did other author’s works. I wish there were more of his books. So, I’ve bought “Beach Music” again. I’ve only read three sections to my husband so far. I’ve just finished the prologue.

Pat's books are so hard to put down - they haunt your sleep in a good way. I'm about to start South of Broad and am so looking forward to another masterpiece.
Beach Music was bittersweet and I'm almost positive I'll feel the same about this one. Thank you Mr. Conroy for your wonderful books!

I’ve read Beach Music three times, the Prince of Tides twice. When I close my eyes, I can see the Piazza Farnese coming to life with the first light of the sun. It’s breathtaking. At the same time, I can walk the Street of Tides and imagine the aromas of Colleton. Pat Conroy’s dexterity with verse draws the reader into the story like no other author I have ever read. I will borrow a line from the Prince of Tides and take literary license because it perfectly expresses my feelings once I’ve read a Pat Conroy novel. “His secret, we would discover, was that once you have traveled (through one of Pat’s novels), the voyage never ends, but is played over and over again in the quietest chambers, that the mind can never break off from the journey.”

I arrived in Bluffton today for the first time and I feel like I have been here before. Of course! In Conroy’s books. “The Water is Wide” and “Beach Music” made particular impressions on me. His humanity came shining through his perfect and unique combinations of words. RIP Pat.

Pat,
I miss your beautiful words, love of language, and your immense talent which cultivates a writer in all of us. Rest in perfect peace.

It is a blessing and a curse to have read Pat Conroy's books: blessing is clear for us all, but the curse part is that after reading all of the books, you have a hard time finding another author that can mesmerize you like Conroy. Nowadays I find myself reading books for the first 50 pages and then totally bored giving up... if anybody has good ideas to help me out of this misery by revealing some other conroy-style-authors, PLEASE help!

I watched Conrack last night. Now I want to read every book written by Mr. Pat Conway. I feel inspired. I was saddened to read he was no longer on this earth... it is a great loss.

This is not a comment but a response to Mihai Radulescu's question. My last name is Lay as in "now I lay me down to sleep".

How wonderful that you actually worked on the cookbook from Cassandra's emailed transcriptions of Pat's handwritten work. When you mentioned that you pulled up the Word file and again laughed till you cried at the pig roast story, I remembered Pat's account of taking Nathalie Dupree's class and her describing, in between laconically issuing instructions to them, how she amassed the ingredients to cook a fabulous meal for a lover which consisted of escargot and calf testicles, her screams as she came back from going for wine to find the snails all over her kitchen and her screams drawing the two gay men who were her neighbors to her rescue until they saw the gruesome organs in her sink whereupon they ran screaming, thinking she might be the serial killer of gay men that was on the loose.

I tried to read this to my husband and could not get enough breath while laughing to read it. Dupree telling such an off-the-wall tale while critiquing their culinary skills was funny enough, but Pat's colorful account of her doing it was hysteria-inducing.

I have loved Mr. Conroy's books. He wrote about subject matters I love... Watching Conrack on TV reminded me of how much I love his work.

He will always be remembered by readers everywhere...

So after reading Beach Music for millionth time, I did some research and learned the book was originally over 1000 pages but was condensed at the insistence of his publisher. I would LOVE if the publisher would go back and release the whole uncut book. His writing is to be savored. It cannot be binged or gulped. I find the older I get, the more I understand his artistry and nostalgia.