Pat Conroy Speaks About Growing Up with Santini

     
Video courtesy of Open Road Media

In Memory of Junior

For many readers, there is something particularly appealing about comic novels set in the South.  Perhaps it goes back to their exposure as young readers to the classic novels of Mark Twain.  It might even be that they see a little of themselves and their families in the plots of these novels.  Are comic Southern novels, after all, as popular elsewhere as they are in the very part of the country in which they are set?  I have to doubt it.

Clyde Edgerton’s nine novels are filled with quirky characters so busy living life according to their own rules and traditions that they seldom stop to consider what the rest of the world might think of them and their efforts.  His books are, at times, laugh-out-loud funny, but his humor is more often of the type that makes one smile at the antics of his characters as they navigate their way through Edgerton’s rather eccentric plotlines. 

In Memory of Junior is no exception.  Although I had read six other Edgerton novels, I was unfamiliar with this seventeen-year-old novel (1993) prior to discovering a pristine first edition copy of it in a local used-book bookstore.  I figured I would enjoy the story and, despite an overabundance of characters (15-20 main and secondary characters) in such a small book, I was correct. 

Brothers Faison and Tate Bales were deserted by their mother when Tate was just a toddler.  Glenn, their father, eventually remarried and gave his boys a half-sister by the name of Faye.  Now, Glenn Bates and Laura, his second wife, seem to be in a contest to see which one of them will die first, a contest that will determine the immediate futures of Faison, Tate, and Faye.  If Glenn dies first, the family farm passes to Laura and, eventually, to Faye.  If Laura dies first, the farm and the valuable land on which it sits passes to Glenn and, finally, to his sons.  The Bales find themselves involved in one of the most bizarre death watches imaginable since it seems that both the elder Bales could die at any moment.

The real fun of In Memory of Junior comes from Edgerton’s use of several first-person narrators to tell the family’s story, both past and present.  These narrators range from the old black housekeeper who has made a career of caring for old white people before they die, to Uncle Grove, a Bales family outcast because he is the brother of Glenn’s runaway, first wife.  Along the way, readers will watch as Uncle Grove tries to wrangle a spot for himself in the family cemetery, Faison and his ex-wife fight about what name should appear on her young son’s tombstone, and as Tate’s teenaged son surprisingly bonds with Grove.

If you are not offended by graveyard humor, this one is great fun.  I will warn you, too, that if you want to keep up with the story, you need to pay particular attention to the family tree Edgerton provides at the front of the book for your reference.  It is difficult enough to keep up with twenty or so characters even with the tree, impossible to do so without it.

Rated at: 3.5

Tulsa Time

I'm in a Tulsa Holiday Inn Express tonight watching The Houston Texans stink it up again this week - this time against the team that ran out on Cleveland fans a few years ago (Baltimore Ravens). It's a good bit colder here than I'm used to but I couldn't resist walking a quarter of a mile earlier this evening to a really nice Barnes & Noble I spotted as I was arriving at the hotel.

That turned out to be a good decision as it turns out, because I found two overstock books I had to have. Some of you know that I've been collecting Joyce Carol Oates books since the '80s. Ms. Oates is so prolific that I lose track of what she is publishing sometimes. As soon as I turn my back for a month or two, she slips in another new title. And then there are titles like the one I found tonight, My Sister, My Love, a book I failed to pick up in 2008 when it was released, and then forgot all about. With the exception of the remainders mark across the bottom of the book's pages, this is a pristine first edition copy.

The other book I found is book five in Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache series, The Brutal Telling. I just raved here about book six in this series last week and mentioned that I wanted to read the first five, so finding this one for five bucks was a nice surprise.

I'm typing this entry on my iPad so, if it looks a little strange, that's my excuse. This thing is great for web browsing, games, book reading, etc., but writing a blog entry on it is definitely not a treat. Editing is particularly difficult inside the Blogger software, so I'm going to call it a night.

My Lost Weekend

I'm having one of those weekends where I just cannot focus in long enough on any one activity to get it done.  That has been particularly frustrating since this was a rare three-day weekend for me because I have to use my last three vacation days before December 31 or lose them.  I really thought I would be able to do some catching up with that extra day - instead, I've accomplished less than I do in a normal weekend.

 I see now that my intentions were unrealistic from the start, but I didn't expect to be so overwhelmed by what seems to be an unlimited list of little tasks that have to be done by the end of today.  Throw in all of life's little unexpected bonuses and, well, you know what happens.  My wife has been away since October 1 and she is returning for the day on Tuesday.  Of course, I will be in Tulsa on Tuesday.  And, you guys can only imagine the amount of housecleaning I need to do today in order to get anywhere near a passing grade on my housekeeping efforts since she's been away helping out at her mother's. 

I've done some editing for a family member, flitted around between three or four books, spent some real quality time with two of my grandchildren, made a run to the cleaners, the bank, the rent-a-car location, the library, etc., but still have to get to the grocery store so that I don't have to do that when I get home on Wednesday night.

But I do want to share a couple of bookish things with everyone before I start on the dreaded housecleaning routine:

Sean Scapellato sends word that Pat Conroy signed extra copies of My Reading Life when he was at Charleston's Blue Bicycle Books -  and that signed copies are still available if anyone wants to order one by mail.  Here's the link Sean provided for those interested (I certainly am).  Sean also mentioned that there's a new Pat Conroy book in the mix for the fall of 2011.  As Sean said, three Pat Conroy books in three years is a new world's record for Mr. Conroy.  I can't wait, as this one sounds like another very personal memoir about the fascinating Conroy family.

...

I know that some of you are really into short stories and I've been meaning to mention that Library of America sends a classic short story each week (via direct email) to those who sign up for the service.The current "Story of the Week," number 50 in the series, is All Parrots Speak, by Paul Bowles.  Last week it was I'll Be Waiting, by Raymond Chandler.  I think you can sign up for the free emails here. 

 That's it for the moment.  I'm hoping that my relatively quick toilet-scrubbing skills (and general lack of attention to the details of housecleaning) will allow me to get back here before I have to leave tomorrow morning for my drive to Tulsa.  Read on, guys.

Pat Conroy and Sean Scapellato

Book Lust to Go

Nancy Pearl has outdone herself this time.  By the time I got my hands on Book Lust to Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers, I was already familiar with the first two books in the series.  I found both Book Lust and More Book Lust to be useful additions to my personal library and I turned to them often to get some ideas about what direction to next take my reading.  I discovered many books that way, books I would have otherwise missed.  But neither of those little volumes are the kind of book I felt compelled to read from cover-to-cover.   I recognized early on that would not the case with this one, and I read the whole thing in just a couple of days.

I was particularly happy to find that Book Lust to Go was not just a listing of the most helpful travel guides, as I at first feared from its title that it would be.  It is much more than that.  Pearl focuses on travel writing, of course, and some of the books she recommends are the old fashioned travel guides most travelers have come to depend on over the years.  Also prominently featured under the general heading of travel books are those written by adventurers, explorers, solo travelers, long-long distance walkers, women who travel alone, and “star trekkers” (those who seem to spend most of their lives traveling around the world).  I have a small collection of books by distance walkers, those people who walk from one country to the next for months, or years, at a time, and I was a bit surprised that not a single one of my books is mentioned in Book Lust to Go.  At first, that perturbed me; than I wised up and saw it as a wonderful opportunity to increase my collection by adding some of the titles that Pearl recommends. 

Book Lust to Go is arranged by country, alphabetically, and presents the best fiction and nonfiction works from, or about, those countries.  Pearl, as much as possible, includes books written by the natives of each country as well as the best books written by outsiders who have fallen in love with their adopted countries.  I was particularly intrigued by all the modern crime fiction Pearl included in the lists because I have found that there is much to be learned about a country and its culture from crime fiction writers who grew up there.

I am convinced that Book Lust to Go will be a long-term desk top companion of mine, a book I will reach for each time I need someone to guide me on another stage of the armchair travel I so much enjoy.  My copy of the book is so marked up now that someone not knowing how new a book it is would believe I have been dipping into it for several years already.

Regardless of whether you do your traveling by actually leaving your home, or prefer to do it while seated in your most comfortable reading chair, this is a book you will be happy you found.  Don’t miss it.

Rated at: 5.0

(Review Copy provided by Publisher)

Bury Your Dead

Bury Your Dead is book number six in Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series but, as has so often been the case for me, I am arriving late to the party.  This audio book is my first experience with Louise Penny and the Chief Inspector.  However, if Bury Your Dead is any indication as to the quality of the five earlier books, I have some great reading ahead of me because now I plan to catch myself up on the entire series.

There are several unrelated plotlines in Bury Your Dead and Louise Penny juggles them like a champion, maintaining the reader’s keen interest in each of them as they slowly reach their separate climaxes.  In addition, and an aspect of the book that particularly appealed to me, there is a very painless history lesson at the heart of the murder with which Armand Gamache is most directly connected.  

Gamache is resting in Quebec City following an investigation that went horribly wrong some six months earlier, leaving him so severely wounded that he was lucky to have survived.  He spends his time researching the old English language books in the city’s Literary and Historical Society building, particularly those referring to the fateful 1759 battle between British and French troops (Battle of the Plains of Abraham) that would ultimately result in France losing her claim on eastern North America to the British for good.  Although the battle occurred more than two centuries ago, there is still a lingering animosity between the majority French-speaking citizens of Quebec and the minority English-speaking portion of the population.  Gamache senses that this mistrust and animosity may have played a key role in the murder he is trying to solve.

Augustin Renauld, one of Quebec’s francophone citizens, is on a mission to discover the location of the missing remains of Samuel de Champlain, Quebec’s founding father.  That Renauld’s body is discovered inside the anglophone Literary and Historical Society library creates a politically sensitive atmosphere that complicates the investigation of his murder.  Gamache, a francophone himself, realizes this and investigates Renauld’s murder with current day politics always in mind.

At the same time, Gamache has asked that Inspector Jean Guy Beauvoir do his own recuperating in the little town of Three Pines so that he can unofficially reopen a murder case that happened there (featured in book five of the series) because Gamache is uneasy about whether the right man has been convicted of the murder.  (This part of Bury Your Dead does make me wish I had read book five before this one.)

That Penny is able to keep the two investigations separate in her readers’ minds while reminding them of the connection between Gamache, Beauvoir, the convicted Three Pines murderer and many of the citizens of Three Pines, is a difficult enough task.  That she manages, at the same time, to intertwine the details of the case that only six months earlier almost killed both Gamache and Beauvoir is even more remarkable.

Fans of character-driven mysteries will love Bury Your Dead.  The murders are not complicated or unusual, but the amount of time spent developing the book’s main characters is.  Even the bit players in the story seem to be real people.  This one had everything I enjoy most in a mystery, not the least being an emphasis on atmosphere, backstory, characters, and a history lesson.

The audio version of Bury Your Dead, excellently read by Ralph Cosham, is ten CDs and thirteen hours long.  Despite the complicated structure of the book, the audio version is easy to follow once the numerous French names have been assimilated by the non-francophone “reader.”

Rated at: 5.0

(Review Copy provided by Publisher)