Review: SOUTH OF BROAD by Pat Conroy

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       South of Broad by Pat Conroy held my attention although it wasn't that hard to put down and take a break. Full of characters, the primary one is the city of Charleston, South Carolina. It is lushly developed with Conroy's substantial vocabulary, and rarely does a place take on the character that Conroy's favorite city does. 

     The author chooses a clever way to develop his favorite character. The protagonist and narrator is a newspaperman who is writing his memoirs beginning with his life as a young teenaged newspaper boy. This gives Conroy the ability to describe the homes and characters along the newspaper route of Leo King, nicknamed "Toad."

     It also provides more than a glimpse of the boy's mind as he recounts his traumatic experience of finding his idolized older brother's body drowned, suicidally self-mutilated, in their shared bathroom. Leo cannot deal with this tragedy and is admitted to a mental institution. 

     He continues to ruminate about the six other young people, new to Charleston, that he meets during his summer before starting high school. Along with three Charleston natives who have gotten into some minor drug trouble, they all become friends. Four of these are emotionally disturbed with lives that began in tragedy. None of these characters are developed fully to my satisfaction like Leo is. Conroy focuses more on their behaviors and victimization than on character. He tells the reader a lot about what they say and how they look, but little about what's going on in their emotional lives.

     There is a tremendous amount of drama that happens over a period of 20 years, but all of it during high school, or mid-life. I wasn't even sure what the career was for one major character, Niles, who originally came from the North Carolina western mountains, until near the end when it was casually mentioned. The intense drama includes childhood sexual molestation, alcoholism, a murderous perverted father, exciting football games, a cold distant mother who is also the high school principal, a Hollywood star, a wayward wife, Hurricane Hugo, suicide, a perverted Catholic priest, and a search in San Francisco for one of the friends who is a lifelong effeminate homosexual dying of AIDS and kidnapped by a villain who is taking his welfare money. Whew!

     There is just too much of one thing throughout this novel and not enough of another.

Everything is tied up in the denouement, however, although two of the glamourous friends have had tragic endings. Everyone else ends up with the spouse they began with. Except for Leo, our narrator. But even then, there is a small hint that there is a woman for him waiting in the wings. 

     The real story here is the relationship between a man and his city. I quote from one of the last pages when Leo, now a middle-aged man takes a bike ride along his old newspaper route, "I am riding hard through the most beautiful streets in America, my native city. I know I have to cure myself with Charleston. There is nothing that the Holy City cannot right...I ride past concealed gardens flush with morning glories, ligustrum, white oleanders, and lavender azaleas galore."

     Yet, I read the entire book which is on the lengthy side. The lushness of the descriptions of Charleston was one thing I enjoyed, and the dialogue was another. I admired the structure. Overall, I couldn't help but think that Conroy was writing about himself. That would have been enough to satisfy me without adding so many tragic characters to create a literary overload in hopes of producing a best seller. You have so many fans, Mr. Conroy, that just your last name guarantees a best seller. I'm glad I read your book because now I can see Charleston with more appreciative eyes.

The Big Read

Last Saturday afternoon, I attended a group that was sponsored by the "Big Read" program in Abingdon, VA. "The Big Read" is a community project, usually sponsored by a local library, to encourage reading and literacy. Each community chooses a book which is read over a certain time period and community events such as movies, plays, book discussions related to it are scheduled.

The book that Abingdon selected was The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, published in 1940 when McCullers was only 23; it was her first novel.

I have to admit that I had never read the book. In fact, the only thing I had ever enjoyed by McCullers was a television production of her play, Member Of The Wedding. I had very much identified with the adolescent girl in that play who idolized her older brother and fiancee. So, I proceeded to read The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter and in popular idiom, was "blown away." Where was this book when I graduated high school in 1952? Or at the very least, I think it should have been assigned reading for American Literature 101 instead of Hemingway; ...Lonely Hunter is far more relevant than the Spanish civil war.

I couldn't believe that I was reading about race relations and the U.S. economic system in a book published a year prior to the start of World War II. I kept returning to the publication date to make sure I had read right because the sentiments were those of the mid-1960's cultural upheaval. Besides, it was difficult believing that a 20-year-old white Southern girl could have had the perception of the characters that she revealed.

In short, I was, and am, impressed!

Admittedly, the book is depressing and I had to put it down for a week at one point. I burst into tears at other points

I wasn't able to attend everything that was scheduled during "The Big Read," not even the kick-off, but I did attend two events during March. The first was a play at the Barter Theatre, Adjoining Trances, which consisted of an intriguing dialogue. The characters are Carson McCullers and Tennessee Williams, and the setting is a summer home in Cape Cod where the two of them, platonic friends,

worked side by side on their projects.

The second event was the discussion I attended last Saturday. It was meant to be a meeting for those who had memories of the "Great Depression" of the 1930's.

There were a dozen people present at the Abingdon Seniors Center besides the library director who facilitated, and a young female reporter from The Bristol Herald-Courier, with her toddler on her hip. 

The oldest storyteller there was an 89-year-old M.D. who had been a teenager when the banks failed in 1929. The next oldest was another gentleman from Greeneville, TN who had been born in 1930; then me, born in northern Indiana in 1934; and another gentleman from southern Ohio born in 1935. Several women sat in the circle, but did not participate in the discussion. 

We talked about the hardships of that time and how people conquered their obstacles and survived. There was an overriding tone of pessimism about today's events, and that old-age attitude that the current younger generation doesn't have what it takes and have been spoiled. I wouldn't let the meeting close with those words, so I commented that I was more optimistic, that if our young people today could figure out all the gadgets they have, they'll be able to figure out how to solve their problems. I must have resonated with the young reporter because I was quoted in the newspaper the next day!