As Conroy saw, when you don't get the life you want, you live anyway

A few more thoughts about Pat Conroy:

If you've read his work from "Lords of Discipline" on, you certainly are aware that mental illness is a major theme for him. Suicide and attempted suicide is a theme in four different novels, and several other characters go through long periods of depression and self-loathing.

Indeed, the reason "Lords" is a wonderful book and a mediocre movie is at least in part because the suicide in the book is taken out of the movie. It doesn't help that the entire subplot of Will and Annie Kate is left out of the movie as well.



"Beach Music" starts with a suicide, and Conroy's final novel, "South of Broad," has a mysterious suicide at the root of its story.

It wasn't until his final book "The Death of Santini" in 2013 that we saw how much depression limited Conroy's work.  Only five novels in 40 years, although he wrote four nonfiction books and one cookbook.

In an interview a couple of years ago, Conroy said it generally took him five years to write a book. A writer who isn't in his league talent-wise but is well on her way to becoming a billionaire, novelist Danielle Steele, has five novels scheduled for the first seven months of 2016.

This is no criticism of her. My wife enjoys her books very much and she tells a good story, but I'm amazed at how often I see dangling participles and awkward sentences that would have been easily corrected by a good editor.

I never see that with Conroy.

His writing is, well, elegant.

Consider:

"My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of all."

With those 13 words, we meet Tom Wingo, the damaged hero of "The Prince of Tides." In fact, the protagonists in all five of Conroy's novels are damaged men. and while none go on to miraculous turnarounds, all continue with their lives.

They do their duty.

In the end, that's all we can ask.

Whether we're Ben Meechum, Will McLean, Tom Wingo, Jack McCall or Leo King, the answer is to wake up every morning, put one foot in front of another and make the most of the life we have.