Blog #4 - Barbara - Lessons from Conroy

I learned so much from the world of Conroy in Prince of Tides. I appreciate his framing technique, from the opening. By writing the prologue in the voice of Tom, Conroy effaces himself and pulls in the confidant-reader. that's one level of framing: the author has disappeared (like Melville in Moby-Dick by saying "Call me Ishmael") and now the main character has taken over. The next level of framing occurs with the continuous relating of incidents, anecdotes, and quotes throughout the work. As the reader walks the streets of New York of the marshes in Colleton with Tom, Tom repeats information from his past. The third level of framing happens with Dr. Lowenstein, Savannah's therapist, who wants to know about her patient's twin brother. The reader, who already knows Tom somewhat, gets to sit in on those sessions, unseen, like the author, and hear more wonderful or ghastly stories, and witness violent interactions (as when Tom tells the doctor that her son could easily kill himself, and she throws a hard object to his face, causing a nosebleed).

I also appreciate his varied style: memoir, travel journal, psychological, natural science, poetic, philosophical, and political, so that fiction and nonfiction get knitted together.

I respect Conroy's use of archetypes. Savannah is a modern-day Ophelia, from Shakespeare's Hamlet, the oppressed and disturbed, love-starved young woman. Also I like the tiger--a real live one!--representative of the near-the-surface violence and destructiveness of the Wingo family, with a self-defeating father, an approval-obsessed mother, a near-autistic twin sister, a woman-fearing twin brother, and an action-oriented bully of an older brother. The tiger also relates to the classics. Shakespeare's rival, Robert Greene, described him as a tiger in a player's skin. Also, there's Blake's "Tyger, tyger shining bright" poem.

I especially like the guaranteed-conflict situations using the trio concept: the older brother and two twins; the two parents and the unit of three kids; two boys and a girl; Tim, his wife and his wife's doctor-lover; Susan Lowenstein, her violinist husband and Tom; and finally, Susan, her husband, and his flutist-lover.

I also appreciate the concept of duality or doubles. The two twins, especially fraternal, of two sexes, represent two sides of the complete (perfect) person. Also, Conroy juxtaposes the very rural and provincial small-town South to the very densely-populated and cosmopolitan big-city Northeast, namely New York City, target of past international terrorism. Because geography and setting take on the importance of a character, Conroy gives America a leading role. With his insistance on physical location, Conroy reminds me of Elizabeth Bishop, with her Geography III poem collection.

Blog No. 4 - Jessica Quinn

In Prince of Tides I absolutely loved Pat Conroy’s use of narrative voice. I loved how he would lead you through the pages and without even realizing it you would go from a remarkably crafted description of your location to an engaging conversational dialogue between characters. It was the ideal flow. As a reader, there wasn’t a gap or any misunderstanding of where you were or who was speaking. You knew “I” meant Tom and the rest went on from there. I’m writing my book in first person and I hope that I can set the PR stage of my book with even a smidgen of description that Conroy so eloquently uses and then tell the parts of the story I have to tell through dialogue and interviews as the book carries on.

What impacted me most though, through reading the dynamics of this family’s plight, was that it made me want to write a fictionalized account of many of the events of my youth. It was a reminder of what I mentioned in my discussion that there is nothing new under the sun, and that is what we are drawn to as readers. We’re drawn to stories with universal themes we can all relate to, but written in a unique way—set apart in some fashion. I want to do that. I want to try to accomplish that. Conroy does that with his descriptive settings—apparent he knows these places intimately, his character conflicts—another place where you see the truth of his past interwoven into the story, and his style—the man is truly Southern. For Conroy he writes what he obviously knows. I want to do that. However for me, I’ll wait a few more years until all who would be hurt by my fictional truth will be gone and I can write with peace of mind about an obsessive-compulsive, hoarding mother and a hurricane in the panhandle of Florida—maybe I’ll title it Scattered Treasures. For Conroy, his recent ex-wife Barbara was alive and well had to live with her ex-husband’s incredible success based on a book highlighting the main character’s affair. A main character based on himself. Even though they were divorced when he wrote it—that must have been painful. She already knew he wrote what he lived.

(And yes, Raymond, The Water is Wide was quite autobiographical. Barbara lived that story with Pat. Barbara used to be my husband’s boss at the DeKalb County DA’s Office. She is now retired and remains a dear friend. She and Pat are still close and he is a wonderful father to their three daughters—funny he gave Tom Wingo three daughters, a wife with long dark hair and in reality it was law school instead of medical school. ☺ Pat’s daughter, Melissa, also has a children’s book out, Poppy’s Pants, that gives great insight into her relationship with her father. Her parents are very proud of their now author daughter.)

Photos: Following Hurricane Ivan and the loss of my parent's home, the Red Cross brought us hot meals during clean up. I'm forever grateful to them!;My sister, Caron, deemed "Princess Ivan" wearing an old bridesmaid's dress from another sister's wedding, wielding my father's Navy sword, and Mardi Gras beads crowning her head--all found in the pile of "treasures" surrounding the house;Me standing in what was once my childhood bedroom. Two other rooms used to separate me from a view of the bay...

Blog #4 Characterization

True Confession: The Prince of Tides is the only book by Pat Conroy I have ever read. That being said, after completing it, I felt a bit awed and overwhelmed. His word choice alone made me decide to begin reading the dictionary every night. Quite frankly, the whole time I was reading it I thought—I am going to have to read it again so that I can analyze every jot and tittle. However, the one thing that I know I want to look at more carefully is Conroy’s excellent characterization.

I love his physical descriptions.

“When I looked up, Dr. Lowenstein was staring at me from the door of her office. She was expensively dressed and lean. Her eyes were dark and unadorned. In the shadows of that room with Vivaldi fading in sweet echoes, she was breathtakingly beautiful, one of those go-to-hell New York women with the incorruptible carriage of lionesses. Tall and black-haired, she looked as if she had been airbrushed with breeding and good taste” (58).

Collonwalde—“He was the largest, most powerful man I had ever seen…He grew out of the earth like some fantastic, grotesque tree. His body was thick, marvelous, and colossal. His eyes were blue and vacant. A red beard covered his face, but there was something wrong about him. It was the way he looked at us…that alerted us to the danger” (129).

“Isabel Newberry had the most soul chilling presence I had ever encountered. Her lips were thin and colorless and her mouth registered a most articulate narrative of unspoken disapproval. Her nose sharp and well made, was her one perfectly wrought feature, and it twitched prettily as she stood in the gloom of her house as though the smell of me was repugnant to her. Her hair was blonde, but with help. But it was the cold aquamarine glitter of her eyes enclosed in a harsh fretwork of lines that arrowed out toward her temples…”(232).

I love the way he uses dialogue to reveal his characters thoughts.

Discussing Savannah’s latest suicide attempt, Tom asks his mother, Lila, “How did she try to do it, Mom…”

“She slit her wrists again, Tom,” my mother said starting to cry. Why does she want to do those things to me ? Haven’t I suffered enough? …

“ Are you going to New York?”

“ Oh, I can’t possibly go, Tom. This is a real hard time for me. We’re giving a dinner party Saturday night and it’s been planned for months. And the expense. I’m sure she’s in good hands and there’s nothing we can really do.”

Being there is doing something, Mom. You’ve never realized that” (21).

Overall, I want to go back and carefully analyze how Conroy characterizes each character because he not only shows us how they look but also how the

Blog Post # 4: Ray will have the Raspberry Cobbler

The real problem with stealing from The Prince of Tides—excuse me, in being derivative of Pat Conroy’s writing style—is in choosing which particular technique or device to borrow. He does so many things so exceptionally well that it makes it hard to choose. It’s kind of like when they roll the dessert cart up to your table. The Key Lime pie looks as good as the carrot cake, and the peanut butter brownies appear to be just as tasty as the raspberry cobbler. Still, it would be unwise to have them all, so I guess I’ll choose the raspberry cobbler, also known as dialog.

In The Prince of Tides, as in Conroy’s other books, the conversations flow effortlessly, and the reader feels privy to an actual discussion between the characters. Conroy uses these conversations as a means to define the characters in his stories. He fleshes out his charactes with their own words. His dialog is the ultimate show, don’t tell device. I would say that his conversations are just as good as real conversations, but they are better than that. Often, real conversations are just controlled noise, but Conroy’s conversations have a function and a purpose.

He has the skill necessary to add layers to his characters using the words that they speak as the mortar. To illustrate this point, I will now open my copy of the Prince of Tides to a random page and quote some dialog. Okay, it’s page 141. Well, of course that was totally random. You’re just going to have to trust me.

“I want you to call me Coach.”
“The feminist coach.”
“Yes, the feminist coach.”
“Is there a part of you that hates women, Tom?” she asked, leaning toward me. “Really hates them?”
“Yes,” I answered, matching the dark intensity of her stare.
“Do you have any idea why you hate women?” she asked, again the unruffled professional, dauntless in her role.
“Yes, I know exactly why I hate women. I was raised by a woman. Now ask me the next question. The next logical question.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“Ask me if I hate men, New York feminist doctor,” I said. “Ask me if I hate fucking men.”
“Do you hate men?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “I hate men because I was raised by one.”

This is obviously a conversation between Tom and Lowenstein, but I want you to forget about that for a minute. Put what you know about these characters out of your mind and concentrate on this conversation. If all you knew about this pair was what you could infer from this excerpt—which is clever, entertaining, and reads exceptionally well, by the way—you would know a great deal about the characters. And that is my point. It is why I picked the raspberry cobbler.

Blog 4 - Kathleen - Writing Large

If I could steal one writing skill from Pat Conroy it would be his big, bold, rich, facile use of the English language. Man, oh man! His plots are too big for my taste. I often feel like he needs to bifurcate his books, take a cutting from the plot of one, say, and transplant it so that it can grow into another book.

But, oh, his language! Thick, chewy, sensuous sentences just dripping with adjectives and similes and multi-syllabic words - sentences of epic proportions. And because he writes of the Lowcountry, the land I was also born in and deeply love, he's even more likely to make me swoon.

Take the very first sentence of the Prologue of The Prince of Tides, for example:

My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call. (Me, too!)

And these, also from Prince, to capture but a few:

I was the son of a beautiful, word-struck mother . . .

My soul grazes like a lamb on the beauty of indrawn tides.

There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory.

My enemy was indeterminancy . . .

And one particularly fecund paragraph on page 277 of my hardback edition of the book, that includes this sentence:

There is a river, the town, my grandfather steering a boat through the channel, my sister fixed in that suspended rapture she would later translate into her strongest poems, the metallic perfume of harvested oysters, the belling voices of children on the shore . . .

Heavy sigh.

Decades ago I read William Faulkner's novel, The Unvanquished. He unforgettably describes one of the characters, Druscilla, standing in a yellow ballgown under the crystal chandelier, holding out a pair of dueling pistols, as "the Greek amphora priestess of a succinct and formal violence." I love that. And there is Norman McClean, author of A River Runs Through It, who wrote this and gave me the shivers:

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

That's the kind of stuff I'm talking about.

I wanna write large and lofty and lyrical prose like the big boys.

Blog #4 Heather

I was completely blown away by Conroy’s novel. I had never read anything by him before, and because the book was long and the description on the back didn’t seem very interesting, I feared that I would have a difficult time reading the book. However, I was greatly surprised from the very beginning. In fact, he had me from the prologue. And what captured my attention at the outset was not necessarily the plot, but the writing style. Conroy’s writing is so flawless that it seems like he wrote the novel so effortlessly. His writing is convincing and his characters are very well rounded that I had a difficult time remembering that this was fiction and not an autobiography or memoir.

Besides the writing style and the beautiful descriptions of both New York and South Carolina, I appreciated the complexity of the characters. Although I don’t typically read 700 page novels, I enjoyed the fact that Conroy took his time to carefully and thoughtfully create these characters. Each detail about them, such as Tom’s inability to love women, Savannah’s haunting dogs, Luke’s compassion and protective nature, Lila’s love for her kids and for her position in society, and Henry’s failed entrepreneurship, create a world that is close enough to our own but far enough away to escape to. What was most essential in creating the complexities of each character, I believe, was time.

From Conroy’s Prince of Tides, I’ve learned to slow the pace of my own novel. Conroy’s book would not have been as interesting if the characters had not been so fully developed. In my fantasy novel, I’m going to strive to write the main character, Byrn, with more depth. Conroy taught me that every good novel has action, yes, but every great and beautiful novel also has interesting exposition. I want to explore each character in my work and even develop the setting, which is earth after the core has erupted, with a back story. And through this process, I hope to discover more about the characters myself.

Blog 3 _ Barbara _ Nuclear Blast!

§ I was born and raised in different countries. I was born in Paris, France, to a U.S. Foreign Service officer and to a French mother, and I lived in Malaysia, Norway, Spain, and the U.S.
§ Concurrently, I was raised speaking several languages. French is my mother-tongue, though my father spoke it fluently. English is my father-tongue. I learned Spanish at age eight, in Spain, at a Spanish private school. I learned Italian at age twelve, in Spain, at an Italian private school. I learned German in college. I learned Japanese some years back.
§ I grew up playing the piano, though, unfortunately, with a teacher who neither pushed me nor encouraged me to play in public. I attended a conservatory in Baltimore, MD, but quit from lack of my professor’s encouragement and from depression over my parents’ divorce.
§ I joined a cult in Virginia, which precluded me from marriage, from a career, and from seeing my own family. I stayed with it for eleven years, my entire youth.
§ When I left the cult I reconciled with my family, went back to college, and joined a dating service. I stayed in touch with my parents and my siblings, graduated in eleven months, and met the man I married and with whom I had a child.
§ After twenty-two years of marriage, my husband wanted us to go our separate ways. My name has reverted to Barbara Cramer.
§ I completed four semesters as a music major (pianist) but decided, based on memory slips, to change my major to English and to make music my minor. I graduated from KSU as an English major and music minor.
§ I’m now preparing for an amateur piano competition next spring.

§ I’d like to cruise around Alaska.

§ I’d like to go up and down the Rhine River in Germany.

§ I’d like to stay several week s in Provence, in the south of France.

§ I’d like to spend a month in Florence, Milan, Rome, and Naples, to visit leisurely all the architectural sites and all the artistic sites.

§ I’d like to spend a month in the Outer Banks of the Carolinas, a string of islands with little commercialism and noise.

§ I’d like to build a house in North Carolina, facing the Smoky Mountains.

I imagine managing the threat of a nuclear explosion, which involves team-work with specialists. I need to trust them and their expertise. I need to trust myself to ask pertinent questions. Ultimately, I need to trust them more than myself in order to eliminate or neutralize the threat. All I need to do is extrapolate on my past experiences dealing with danger, perceived threat, insecurity, and then remember the feelings and the way I managed those feelings.