Soixante-neuf…Sixty-nine. As much as I flirt with
alternatives, I end up wearing a navy blazer sixty-nine percent of the time.
Rain or shine, summer or winter, it’s a navy damn blazer for me. And I’ve just
added yet another one to the fold.
Ok, I’m now off the hook for positing something about
clothes so let’s move on to my open letter to Pat.
Dear Pat,
My buddy Lou owns a house on Fripp around the corner from
you and says that he sees you from time to time at CVS. He says that you look
ok but my selfish ass wants to admonish you to get crackin’ on another novel.
Fast like. Enough already with these interim books.
Don’t get me wrong, Pat. I’m digging all these little
placeholder books that you’ve published and I’m sure the cash flow from them is
stronger than wolf nookie and really, who doesn’t fancy cash and a steady flow
of it? And wolf nookie? I don’t know. But I’ll stand by the metaphor.
And these interim Conroy books aren’t where you want your
home-stretch legacy to live. In your heart of hearts you too know that another
Beach Music or Prince of Tides is what we need. Come on Pat, we need another
novel.
I loved My Reading Life. I really did. It opened my eyes
once again to the tortured genius of Thomas Wolfe. And My Losing Season was ok,
too. Truth? I’ve read every f_cking word you’ve published. I even gave My
Reading Life to one of my surrogate dad’s—the guy who hired me on at a Swiss
Pharma company when I was a kid.
Photo borrowed from my buddy Reggie Darling |
He’s the guy who first gave me Mrs. Whaley and Her
Charleston Garden and told me that there were as many line management lessons
to be learned therein as there were gardening tips. Most people wouldn’t a got
it. But I did and you’d a gotten it too. Like me, he made his way into an industry that
provided well for him but his true passions were elsewhere. He has an English degree
from Carolina and I’m convinced that he hired me because he saw in me the same
right-brained energy that he loved about himself. And like me, he never had a
dad.
And Pat, Flo just made me aware of The Death of Santini. I
could order it from Amazon but it won’t get to me till Tuesday. And I can’t
wait that long. I’m gonna pay more for it and pick it up at Barnes and Noble so
that I can read it tonight. I’ll sponge it up because for some reason these
books….with their pathos confessed, violations reported, unrequited whatevers,
and the frail treaties that at least some of you assholes were able to cobble with your dads still draws me
in like a moth to flame. You’d think I’d get enough of this formulaic caca but
the half-life of any insights gained is for me a nanosecond. And the
close-that-hole-in-my-heart unguent schmear offered therein wears off before I
finish these kinda shitty books. Don’t be angry, Pat. It’s me, not you.
Photo Source |
You might think that my pithiness is uncalled for and my
bitterness should be better managed by now. On the other hand, I bet not.
Because it’s obvious that like me with my dad, you are still trying to work out
your shit with Colonel Conroy, even after the guy co-signed books with you
amidst your tentative peace.
Photo Source |
And the record shows a few photos of you and your dad, post
Great Santini where he looks smug and self-satisfied and you look like you
always do. In every photograph…frail and tentative. You’ve never lost that look
you know. Neither have I. The frail tentativeness of your gangly adolescence is
simply replaced fifty years later with an edematous version of the same. And
I’m right behind you old sport. Genetics keep me from being as Humpty Dumpty
gelatinous as you but my nose is getting bigger and purple-er by the month. So I’ll
read your damn book but what I want to read is one of those big-ass novels of
yours with imagery that blasts off the page and wraps around my head in ways
that make me forget the rest of the world for at least an hour or two.
Just so you’re confident that it’s me, not you...and just so
you know that you aren't alone in your working shit out with daddy pathos, here
are a pile of other books that I’ve read and re-read on the subject. You and I
aren’t special, buddy. After the death of my friend’s dad and my listening to
Dickey read his Buckhead Boys poem over and over, I re-read Summer of
Deliverance in one sitting week before last. Dickey at fils et al is a bell
ringer and the pathos, while not as physical as the ass whippings that Colonel
Conroy put on you, are just as strong. My dad was more Dickey than your dad Conroy but
was probably more of a physical coward than either.
Flusser led me to Merkin and then to Frazier. I’ve read
Another Man’s Poison countless times and for some reason I tend to keep this
little book in my reference pile. The sartorial pearls are intriguing but the
examples of Frazier’s writing are what's so damn stellar. But then there’s his
broken marriage and his protracted house of cards financial ruinous state while
still deeply loving his two cast here and there amidst divorce drama sons. It’s
this spore in the story that mighta fuelled the four hour dinner I had with one
of his sons a couple of years ago. Of all the failed dads in this load of ADG drivel, I think Frazier showed that he loved his boys better than the rest of 'em. And that's a low-ass bar I'm setting. Let me tell you.
And God knows that the Wolff brothers might’ve had the
wildest story to tell about dads. Narcissistic sociopaths rarely make for good
fathers. But damn…my goodness, the adventures they can take you on.
Pat, I really wish that Blake Bailey’s Cheever had been
three hundred pages shorter. Of all these dad pathos books, this is the one
that had me saying every other page… “this is my dad, this was my life”. And
Federico Cheever…Fred Cheever seemed to be me. After I finished the book, I
even tracked down Fred Cheever and was going to send him an email telling him
that I’d lived his same journey. But then I thought better of it. He seems to
have put all this junk to rest better than most of us.
So Pat, thanks for the new book. I’m sure I’ll hoover it up
in a sitting or two. But please, no more of this shit till we get another
novel. Now let me slip on a navy blazer and head over to Barnes and Noble.
Onward. Sixty-nine percent of the damn time.
ADG II
And what the hell? How 'bout some Color Him Father by the Winstons.