Pat Conroy has become one with his words

I didn't discover Pat Conroy until Bestest was asked to speak at his birthday celebration in Beaufort, South Carolina. It was hard hearing he had pancreatic cancer a few weeks ago, but when Bestest called last night to tell me he had passed away it was like losing a favorite uncle, or brother, or someone very close to me.

When James Agee died David McDowell was able to finish A Death In The Family and publish it so that it received a Pulitzer Prize.  I don't think anyone can really do that for Pat Conroy.

His writing is so personal. There is enough continuity in his characters, that even though they are totally different people in completely different circumstances, the main character is the same. I feel like I know him and his beautiful self absorbed mother and alcoholic father. I find his ability to write about them so truthfully and poignantly a mystery. And I find his incredible love for them, in the midst of all the history and angst, a treasure. They are characters in his books who figure in in tiny ways that balance out everything else.

Pat Conroy's writing is irreverently honest. It is pithy and sweet and riveting in ways I cannot begin to describe.  I want to cringe and applaud and laugh all at the same time. I want to be like him, but I wouldn't have the courage.

His command of our language is immense. His grasp of our humanity is even more immense. He makes my family seem more normal and I wonder if he does this for everyone who reads his books. There is comfort in their strife because he makes it abundantly clear that all the rivers and marshes and fountains and oceans are really rivers of love uniting tragedies of the worst sort.

His novels fill me up with their sweetness. They give me nightmares with their reality. I only began reading him a few months ago, but I think he may be the best contemporary writer of our generation.