Blog #4 Dina - How to Choose?

How do I choose only one thing from Conroy's writing that I would like to apply to my own? I love it all - his characterizations, his language (oh, joy!), his dialogue, his settings, his use of progression/digression (which I also liked in A Pearl in the Storm) and on and on. I kept wondering if this was truly a piece of fiction because the world and the people he creates are so real. How could someone just make up a story like this? Everything about his writing impressed and scared me and made me want to throw my current book out and start all over again. But I suppose what I got the most out of and most want to emulate is his characterization.

Conroy's physical descriptions are more than "she had brown hair and blue eyes." He is able to distinguish a character from the hundreds of other brown-haired, blue-eyed girls by offering more. He couches his descriptions in poetic language but creates vivid pictures such as in this description of his mother, "My mother appeared in the doorway, immaculately dressed and groomed, and her perfume walked out on the porch several minutes before she did. My mother always carried herself as if she were approaching the inner chamber of a queen. She was as finely made as a yacht - clean lines, efficient, expensive" (19). We don't really know what her coloring is yet I have a clear picture of her in my mind. It's probably not the same as yours, but the essense of Lila Wingo will be the same for both of us. That's what's important about character - more than the color of their hair and eyes, it's how they appear, how their appearance reflects who they are, that matters.

Conroy also reveals his characters through dialogue. Directly after the prologue where we hear Tom sing Lila's praises but also say she "would cause the ruin of my family and the death of one of us" (4), we find out how Tom feels about his mother as an adult in a few lines between Sallie and him. The phone rings and Sallie answers:

"It's your mother," Sallie said, returning from the phone.

"Tell her I'm dead," I pleaded. "Please tell her I died last week and you've been too busy to call."

"Please speak to her. She says it's urgent."

"She always says it's urgent."

Tom's lack of respect and combative relationship with his mother comes through loud and clear, as well as his habit of dealing with stress through humor. Conroy says so much here about both characters with so few words.

These are just a very few examples of what he does and how he does it. He plumbs the depths of his characters through physical descriptions, dialogue, stories of their actions, and their relationships to other characters. He creates rich, real people in his stories and draws you into their lives - their trauma, their drama, and the outcome. I loved reading about these characters and learned more about myself and my view of the world in the process. My brain was so boggled by the book that I couldn't even write about it for a day; I had to process everything. That's the power of a great book.