A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writing Life

by Pat Conroy

  Andie MacDowell, as I present this well-deserved award to you, let me present you to the town of Beaufort. From vast experience, I know how much this town can love. Please accept this award that comes from the heart of this town I love best in the world. The great actress Andie MacDowell, please allow my town to make you feel as loved as you deserve to be.

  Mina & Conroy Fitness Studio

  MARCH 21, 2015

  Hey, out there,

  I’ve just opened a place of business in downtown Port Royal, South Carolina. It is an odd thing to be doing at my age. There is nothing on my résumé that indicates I’ll be successful in this unusual endeavor. But I’m doing it because there are four or five books I’d like to write before I meet with Jesus of Nazareth—as my mother promised me—on the day of my untimely death, or reconcile myself to a long stretch of nothingness as my nonbelieving friends insist.

  Three years ago I nearly died from my own bad habits. At my lowest point I made an awkward vow to myself that if I could survive the crisis, I would try to improve my complete lack of dedication to my own health. I stopped drinking at that moment, told my splendid doctor Lucius Laffitte that I was going to do what he told me. I hired my next-door neighbor, the fetching Liz Sherbert, to be my nutritionist, and for two years I’ve tried to satisfy my great interior hunger with a diet that would satisfy a full-grown squirrel but has done little to conquer the hippopotamus that lives within me. Still, I lost a quick twenty pounds and have learned to put up with Liz’s surprise commando raids on my household to check on forbidden foods she finds in my refrigerator. When she spies me grazing on my front lawn, she shouts encouragement from her deck, “Greenery. Salads. That’s the way to weight loss, Pat.” Liz has encouraged me to shun all the foods I love and eat plentiful amounts of the things I despise. My lesson from this is never to hire a nutritionist who lives next door.

  Dr. Laffitte also ordered me to exercise. In my youth I walked around disguised as an athlete, especially to myself. When I quit playing basketball at the age of forty, my weight increased every year until I turned into a Southern fat boy, to my utter horror. Over the years, I hired personal trainers to abuse and shape up the fatted calf I’d become. From Europe to San Francisco, I hired a series of good men who were skilled practitioners of their art. But after a year or so I grew bored, and then had a back operation that affected my mobility for a long time. In 1996, I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, which I call “The Fat Boy’s Disease.” The doctors are too kind and diplomatic to call it that, but I believe it’s an accurate description in my case.

  I joined the Beaufort YMCA a few years ago. It’s a terrific place founded by the actor Tom Berenger and his ex-wife, who is a well-known Beaufort beauty. Three times a week I would meet a friend, the novelist John Warley, at the Y and we would exercise together. While exercising, I noticed a young Okinawan woman working with her clients, and had never seen a physical therapist work with such dedication and compassion. With all her clients, including some who were elderly and some in wheelchairs, she gave her full attention and never looked around when someone was in her care. I hired Mina Truong as my personal trainer and went to see her twice a week. She was both a wonder and a stern taskmaster, so I started to feel muscles in places I’d forgotten I had them. Then, on a book tour, I hurt my back getting out of a car and did not see Mina for an entire year. It was at the end of that year that I nearly died in a Charleston hospital.

  When I recovered from my illness, I signed up with Mina at the Y again. At first I went once a week, then three times, and then five times. I had marvelous fun with her, even though I could barely walk to the car after she had finished with me. But I started feeling better—much better than I had in years. Her skills in English are limited, and she’d apologize almost every time I saw her.

  “So sorry, Mr. Pat. English very bad,” she’d say.

  “No problem, Mina. My Japanese is much worse.”

  “No, no, Mr. Pat. My English should be better,” she’d say.

  “Could you stop calling me Mr. Pat? It’s driving me nuts. I feel like Marlon Brando in The Teahouse of the August Moon.”

  “No, I must call you Mr. Pat. Out of respect. When you come to me, I did not know you. I not know you are very great man. A writer.”

  “Give me a break, Mina. I write pornography.”

  “What is this word? My English not good, Mr. Pat.”

  “I write dirty books. Naked men and women doing unspeakable things to each other.”

  “What is this unspeakable?” she said.

  “You’re not supposed to say it out loud.”

  “Dirty books? Bad books?”

  “Yes, that’s what I write. Now hurt me some more. Our time is not up.”

  “Mr. Pat, I never hurt you.”

  “You hurt me every time I see you,” I said.

  “No, I help you. I make you strong.”

  So, without my quite knowing it, I became Mina’s unpaid English teacher over the past year, making certain that I brought in a few new words for her to learn each day. Because I lived in Italy for three years and never came close to grasping the language, I know that humor in a foreign tongue is a difficult, if not impossible, thing to master. If a single Italian ever told me a joke, I can assure you I didn’t get it. At some point, I realized that poor Mina often had no idea I was kidding her. I know better than anyone that a Conroy sense of humor is not everyone’s cup of green tea.

  In the middle of doing leg lifts, Mina would ask me, “How do you feel, Mr. Pat?”

  “I feel terrible,” I’d say, gasping.

  “Terrible. That is bad to feel? Terrible?”

  “It’s awful to feel terrible,” I said.

  “How can I make you feel better, Mr. Pat?”

  “Call 9-1-1.”

  “Why 9-1-1, Mr. Pat?”

  “I need an ambulance.”

  “Why you need this ambulance?”

  “Because I’m dying. You’re killing me, Mina.”

  “No, Mr. Pat. I help you.”

  “Tell the crew I need a wheelchair.”

  “Crew?”

  “The men and women in the ambulance. They need a wheelchair because I can’t walk.”

  “Why can’t you walk, Mr. Pat?”

  “Because you hurt me.”

  “Ah! It’s a joke. I hear you are a funny man, Mr. Pat. How you feel?”

  “Terrible.”

  Each week I could feel my body changing, hardening, growing stronger. Finally, I came to the wonderful conclusion that I was feeling much better than I had for years. My friends and family and long-suffering wife all told me I was looking better, but to be truthful, I still look like a linebacker who has gone painfully to seed. But I give all credit to Mina Truong, who has inspired me to work harder than I ever have before.

  This past January, my beloved brother Mike went into surgery for a quadruple bypass that terrified the entire Conroy family, because Mike is the only one of us who knows how to get things done. He’s the anchor to our whole family, so I can’t imagine how complicated life would be if he was not around. But Mike is also tough as a walnut, and he came through the operation and never complained to a single person about the pain he endured. The operation was a complete success and Mike came home several days before his release date. I was as joyous as I was relieved when I went to the Y and sweet Mina was there with a worried look in her eyes.

  “How is your brother, Mike, Mr. Pat?”

  “Mike…” I said (and this next part of my personality is irritating and inexplicable even to me, but it is my personality and this is how I answered poor Mina of Okinawa): “The operation didn’t go very well, Mina.”

  “What do you mean, Mr. Pat?” she asked.

  “Mike’s dead. But we can’t let that interfere with my workout.”

  “Your brother? He is dead? You must be very sad, Mr. Pat. You must go to his wife. To comfort her.”

  “Naw, I never liked her much.”

  �
�When is brother Mike’s funeral?”

  “It’s going on right now, Mina. I knew I couldn’t miss my workout. And there’s a sale on tulip bulbs at Lowe’s,” I said, and by the look on Mina’s face I knew I would have some trouble bringing this subject to a close.

  Mina helped me by starting to cry. Large, heartfelt tears fell from her eyes as she wept at the death of my unmourned brother. I tried to figure out a graceful means of exit from a joke that offered few avenues of escape.

  Finally, I said, “Mina, I forgot. I got a call on my cell phone before I got to the Y. Mike didn’t die. They made a mistake.”

  “Mistake?” she asked in tears.

  “Yeah, they got him confused with the guy in the next room. He looked a lot like Mike. But my brother’s fine.”

  “You told me lie. About your brother’s death, Mr. Pat,” Mina said.

  “It was a joke. But it must not translate well into Japanese,” I said.

  “Joke? You make joke about your poor brother. He die. That is a terrible, terrible joke, Mr. Pat.”

  “Yeah, it is awful, Mina. I apologize,” I said.

  “You are a very, very bad man, Mr. Pat.”

  “Yes, I knew you would find that out one day. Now hurt me,” I said.

  Mina then put me through the toughest regimen of exercise His Fatness had experienced in a long time. I knew that there was some kind of subliminal punishment involved, but I felt I deserved it. The next day when I walked into the Y, Mina said, “How is your poor brother, Mike, Mr. Pat?”

  “Very bad, Mina. Mike died last night. I’m very sad.”

  Mina burst out laughing and a fellow employee at the Y walked by at the time and asked her what was so funny.

  “I told her my brother died last night,” I said.

  “It is a lie. Nothing he says is true. No word is true. Ever,” Mina said.

  I said, “Mina, you’ve got a great sense of humor.”

  “No, Mr. Pat. You turn me into a terrible person. Today, we do aerobics. Fun, yes?”

  “I hate aerobics,” I said.

  “It help you not be sad, Mr. Pat,” Mina said. “Over poor Mike dying.”

  But there was trouble in paradise. The YMCA was one of the happiest places I’ve ever been in Beaufort. I fell in love with the women at the front desk and took great pleasure in getting to know various people who worked out at the same time I did. But one Friday, Mina told me she had been suspended for ten days. When I asked why, she told me she could not discuss it with me because of YMCA rules. I went down to discuss it with the director and he told me he could not talk about it because it was “a personnel issue.” So I’d hit upon the bureaucratic world I despise and knew it was a lost battle even to enter that strange, octopus-armed territory. My friend Aaron Schein, who had also fallen in love with Mina, resigned from the Y in disgust.

  Mina returned, but I could feel her tension every time she worked me out. Finally, two weeks ago, I asked Mina to lunch and she brought her two best friends, Lin Pope and her husband, Bruce. It seemed as though Mina was to be fired that Saturday. I suggested she resign, and she did so that very moment in the restaurant Moondoggies. Within seconds, not minutes, she received a reply: “Accepted.”

  “Now, Mina, what are you going to do?” I said. “I need you to keep me alive. So I’m real interested.”

  The following day, we rented a small office at 832 Paris Avenue in Port Royal, a town that includes Parris Island in its district. Ten days later we opened shop at Mina & Conroy Fitness Studio. I warned Mina that if my photograph ever appeared on any advertising, she would not have a single client.

  “I’m not a good walking advertisement for a fitness studio,” I explained. Mina & Conroy is small, intimate, and a perfect place for me to spend part of the day for the rest of my natural life. We are having an open house on April 3, from four to seven in the evening, and I’m inviting anyone who’d like to come to be Mina’s and my guest. Cassandra King and I will be signing books, and I might invite some of my other writer pals to come as well. There will be wine and cheese and we’ll try to have a ball. Mina calls it her “castle,” and I like the sound of her voice when she says it. I’m trying to get my brother Mike to come down. Mina’s dying to meet him.

  Great love…

  A Few Things I Wish I Had Told Ann Patchett…

  JUNE 16, 2015

  Hey, out there,

  I first became aware of the immensely gifted writer Ann Patchett when she published her first novel with my old publisher Houghton Mifflin. It was an old Boston firm located in a classical brick office building that seemed indigenous to the Boston Common and Back Bay. Houghton Mifflin satisfied every dream I’d ever had as an American boy who grew up wanting to be a writer. It was a palace of Boston WASP and its masthead sang out with distinguished New England names. I thought I’d be a Houghton Mifflin boy forever.

  But the world of publishing was about to undergo a sea change in the creative lifetime of all writers. I thought my first editor, Shannon Ravenel, would be my editor forever. But she moved to Saint Louis before my first book even came out. Then I believed that the lovely, stately Anne Barrett would direct my career, but Anne retired, then died. I was given the young, dazzling Jonathan Galassi and I thought I’d stumbled into the lifetime of the greatest editor of his generation, and I had. But Jonathan was New York–bound, and New York–destined, and the mighty Random House recruited Jonathan for its own impressive stable of editors. I would have gone to Random House with Jonathan, because I recognized his genius and wanted to be part of it always, but the editors of Random House, in their infinite wisdom and ineptitude, insulted Jonathan and me when I went to sign up for my new novel, The Prince of Tides. Both Jonathan and I wince when we recall that dispiriting day whenever we get together in New York. Houghton Mifflin assigned me a new editor, Nan Talese, and she and I have been partners in whatever crimes against literature I’ve created in the last thirty years. Nan became my destiny and I left Houghton Mifflin, heartbroken, to join her at Doubleday. I plan to be with Nan for the rest of my life.

  But Houghton Mifflin is still a cry within my writing heart. It seemed so right for me, an instrument perfectly tuned to the writer I was hoping to become. The firm was literary, low-keyed, and calm in its aristocratic singularity. The editors pushed books on me by their new novelists and writers. It thrilled me to read the first and second books of brand-new voices on the American scene. My teacher James Dickey had published his first novel, Deliverance, with them two years before I’d arrived on the scene. Philip Roth had begun his career with Houghton, then had lit out for New York. But I read the first books of Don DeLillo and Paul Theroux and Sylvia Wilkinson and Madison Smartt Bell. Anne Sexton was publishing her incendiary poetry at that time, and the Houghton Mifflin backlist was a writers’ field of wonder.

  Over my time there, I took special pleasure in reading the first works by young novelists, those fearless navigators who slipped into that perilous world with something new to say. Like all publishing houses, Houghton Mifflin was male-dominated, possibly a tad misogynist, and women writers seemed poorly represented when I first arrived. But like all great publishing houses, Houghton was itself a mirror of American society, and the great surge of women writers was already on the march. Late in my time at Houghton Mifflin, two young women arrived on the scene who were the talk of the company—Susan Minot with a novel called Monkeys, and Ann Patchett with one called The Patron Saint of Liars. Both were talented, all agreed, but both were also drop-dead beautiful.

  Physical attractiveness does not make frequent visitations to the writers’ world. When I attended a party celebrating the writer Jennifer Egan’s first novel, Gay Talese came up to me in the middle of the gathering and said, “This isn’t a writers’ party. These people are way too good-looking to be writers. Writers are ugly people. This group is way too gorgeous to call themselves writers.”

  The talented Jennifer Egan is also a beauty and her husband is in theater and they had att
racted a comely group among their New York friends. But Gay had a point and a great eye for detail, which has made him one of the greatest nonfiction writers this country has ever produced. Generally, writers descend from a lesser tribe, and whatever claim to beauty we have shows up on the printed page far more often than it does in our mirrors. Even as I write these words I think of dozens of writers, both male and female, who make a mockery of this generalization. But comeliness among writers is rare enough to be noteworthy.

  Though I’m no longer part of the Houghton Mifflin family, I still keep up with their new young writers and I always wish for them success as a publishing company. One of the sales reps sent me a reading copy of Ann Patchett’s first novel, The Patron Saint of Liars, and from the beginning she seemed like the real thing to me. Her voice was clear and original and I marked her down as a writer to watch. I attended a writers’ conference at the University of Mississippi sometime in the blur that was the nineties for me; I stood in line to get a copy of her second novel, Taft, signed by her. We introduced ourselves to each other and I found her to be one of the most attractive women I’d ever met. She looked like one of those women you wish you could’ve met and married as a young man. She was poised, self-contained, delightful, and I thought Taft was a fulfillment of the great promise she showed in The Patron Saint of Liars. I thought she was still shaking free of those invisible handcuffs and chains of bondage that the writing schools of America impose on their grads. She was a survivor of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where they train the rogue elephants and the big cats of the writing world. It’s both a cutting-edge and thought-cutting matrix that has produced some great writers and an endless regiment of failed ones. It is a savage gathering of wolves on the middle plains of Iowa, and I can’t think of a more honorable or deadly arena in which an American writer can test his or her talent in the vast meanness of the writing world. I applied for admission to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, was turned down, and still consider it one of the great blessings of my writing career. But it didn’t lay a hand on the strength of Ann Patchett’s talent. It always makes the great ones better and the bad ones better, too.