Conroy champions better way in new book

So I finished "My Reading Life," Pat Conroy's ode to the books (and the book people) that have shaped him. Completed the slim volume in one last gasp, just before 1 a.m., having passed the point of no return, the moment when a book screams "Finish me!" and you obey.

Like my usual time spent with Conroy from Carolina, I left it feeling enraptured, engaged, delighted, and yes, a bit deflated. I'm not sure why.

It made me want to hole up and hibernate for the winter, primed with a plethora of books, to tackle the tomes he loves. Thomas Wolfe and Tolstoy. Balzac. James Dickey. He even suggests another go around with "Gone with the Wind."

I, too, know what it's like to feel the pulse begin to pound at the sight of a used bookstore. I, too, know what it's like when a book grabs you, stabs you, haunts your dreams, rearranges your life. I loved hearing Conroy's version in his curious way.

But the best of the rest was his chapter about Gene Norris, a beloved English teacher who gave a trembling, terrified adolescent a gift he could never quite repay. Norris taught him, yes. He gave him books, indeed. But he drove him to the Wolfe boardinghouse in Asheville. He took Pat to meet a poet. He saw a spark and ignited an inferno.

In a way, "My Reading Life" is almost elegiac. He laments being born in the century in which novels lost their stories, music lost its melody, art lots its form. He says he read something claiming that paper-printed books will be obsolete in two years.

Maybe, maybe not. But I get his point. We no longer live in a literary age. Sound bites have made us spastic. Can't sit still. No time for stories. No time for depth.

We're a worse nation for it. Cheers to Pat Conroy for championing another, better way.

Ready to read

And so the rains have arrived on Rocky Top.

The meteorologists are now saying we might get lucky, that this sudden squall has weakened, might save us from the Category 3-like pressure that shocked the Midwest earlier this afternoon. What a strange day. We set a record here -- mid-80s in late October. Crazy.

I am hunkered down at the house, tired of the television, ready to read.

For some reason, I can't get Pat Conroy out of my mind. Maybe it is because I finally got around to reading "Beach Music" when we were in Florida back in September. Maybe it's because he is releasing a new book, "My Reading Life," next week. Maybe it's for no reason at all.

I keep vowing that I'm going to give up Conroy. He keeps writing the same book. He's too wordy. His books are like mini mental breakdowns, full of pain and passion and misery and mysticism.

But, heck. He's such a good wordsmith. And he tells a good tale.

I think I'm going to like this next one. It's a memoir, about the writers and the writing that shaped his life. One can relate. Don't know where I'd be without Hemingway, Hamill and the Hardy Boys.

I've told you before how much it bothers me that people don't read books anymore. It scares me for one thing. Occupational hazards and all that. But it also makes me wonder what kind of society we've become.

Plus it's so much fun.

Maybe I will venture into the Spanish Civil War later tonight with Papa Hemingway's Robert Jordan. Maybe I will "Look Homeward, Angel" with Thomas Wolfe. Or maybe I'll find myself walking once again along the Carolina coast with Conroy.

Whatever I choose, the journey will be mine, singular, solitary, satisfying.

Such is the pleasure of a good book on a rainy Tuesday night.

Summer snowflakes

Listened to the thunder a long time last night.

Storms upset people. Violent bursts of rain and electricity. Disruption. Danger.

In a way, though, I find them relaxing. It makes me wish I still had a front porch. So I could sit out in the remains of the day and watch the rain.

I thought tonight about Pat Conroy, particularly about his book "The Lords of Discipline," about the young girl that sends the cadet the broken sand dollars through the mail. I thought about her a long time. I thought about the symbolism of pieces of a romance, shattered and scattered, all that's left of the round, perfect summer snowflake.

The human heart is a funny thing. It has such a capacity to care, to love, to empathize. But, it also has the capacity to hate -- and to break.

Maybe that, in the end, is what bonds us together. By knowing the pain of loving and losing, we better cherish the beauty, the kindness, the woman who comes later to make you forget about the past.

It's funny. I once agreed to go out with a girl, back in high school, because I didn't have it in me to tell her no. The thought of upsetting others makes me sick. I cannot stand to see somebody cry.

I don't know. Life is one strange trip. I guess what you have to do is balance the blue skies with the gray. Chances are the scales will tip the right way.

Points pondered on a rainy night.

My losing season

Leave it to Pat Conroy to be able to sear into my soul, penetrate that part of me nobody sees, expose my hurts and fears, force me to be honest with myself.

Didn't go to the UT opener tonight. Didn't feel well. Came home from work, curled up in the easy chair, and slept.

I did watch the game. The Vols look good, even if Chris Lofton didn't. It's going to be a fun year. Temple has a couple of players that are darn good, I'll tell you that.

Anyway. Enough of that. I didn't come here to talk hoops.

Watching that basketball game tonight reminded me of a Pat Conroy book I read a few years ago, back during one of the worst bouts of the Black Dog I've ever experienced. Called "My Losing Season," the book chronicles Conroy's senior year at The Citadel, when youthful dreams of basketball glory gave way to the stark realization that this shy, insecure boy was destined to become a writer.

It isn't as good as Conroy's masterpiece, "The Lords of Discipline," but it's pretty darn near wonderful. If you love sports books, or basketball, or reading a wordsmith at the top of his game, run don't walk to Amazon or some such place and find a copy of "My Losing Season."

Conroy says he's haunted by the boy he used to be. And, in a lot of ways, one can relate. To this day, I can't pass by a group of people and hear a gaggle of laughter without wondering if it's me they tease. I watch baseball on TV and remember a forgotten summer at the community park. Every time I gaze at a photograph of a woman I loved and lost, I'm back there, too. Isn't that silly?

But look at it like this -- if I'd gotten the girl and been able to hit a curve ball, I wouldn't be a writer, would never have gone to work for a newspaper. I know that just as sure as I know the sky is blue. Happy people don't write. They raise a family or make money or attempt something normal.

I get irritated at Conroy because I think he keeps writing the same book over and over. Dad was bad. Dad beat boy and mom and siblings. Boy gets pissed. Boy goes nuts. Charleston looks beautiful in the moonlight. Yada, yada, yada...

But he writes so well and with such honesty; that makes the nervous breakdown that is reading one of his novels worth the arduous journey. I'm remembering a poignant moment in "Lords of Discipline" involving an envelope of broken sea shells and am having to fight this strange wet sensation around my eyes. Read that book, too, by the way, if you've never gotten around to it.

I remember where I was and what I was doing a year ago tonight. And I miss that girl more than a thousand words could ever tell and a lifetime of trying will never forget. Why do we forever love the ones that got away, or never were quite in one's grasp?

I don't know, but I suspect that the answers lies with that shy, awkward little boy -- be his name Conroy or Mabe or whatever.