http://www.wvgazette.com/section/News/2007102326

I subscribe to a listserve of independent booksellers in the Southeast. This morning, they put out a note that author Pat Conroy is being censored by a high school in West Virginia. Apparently, one of the student contacted Conroy, who then wrote his own letter to the editor re: the proposed censorship.

Now I read the Bible. And I happen to know Pat and his lovely bride Sandra. And I can tell you that they are two of the finest Christian people I know. They love people -- all kinds of people. And they treat people with respect -- even those who deserve it least.

I don't know a dadblasted thing about the folks at the school who are attempting to censor Pat's books, but I do know that if Pat's books offend them, then I can only imagine that the only books of the Bible these people have read is the Book of John, because anything else would be considered to sexual, or too violent.

Personally, I think God is a Conroy fan. I think when God goes to pull a book off the shelves to read, he reaches for Prince of Tides or Beach Music, the very books that these parents want to ban.

If I was at that school, I'd be asking God for mercy and Conroy for forgiveness, lickety-split, because I'm pretty sure God has his favorite authors and Pat is one of 'em.

October 24, 2007

Pat Conroy’s letter about Nitro High's book suspensions

Author scolds censors, praises teachers and students

A Letter to the Editor of the Charleston Gazette:

I received an urgent e-mail from a high school student named Makenzie Hatfield of Charleston, West Virginia. She informed me of a group of parents who were attempting to suppress the teaching of two of my novels, “The Prince of Tides” and “Beach Music.” I heard rumors of this controversy as I was completing my latest filthy, vomit-inducing work. These controversies are so commonplace in my life that I no longer get involved. But my knowledge of mountain lore is strong enough to know the dangers of refusing to help a Hatfield of West Virginia. I also do not mess with McCoys.

I’ve enjoyed a lifetime love affair with English teachers, just like the ones who are being abused in Charleston, West Virginia, today. My English teachers pushed me to be smart and inquisitive, and they taught me the great books of the world with passion and cunning and love. Like your English teachers, they didn’t have any money, either, but they lived in the bright fires of their imaginations, and they taught because they were born to teach the prettiest language in the world. I have yet to meet an English teacher who assigned a book to damage a kid. They take an unutterable joy in opening up the known world to their students, but they are dishonored and unpraised because of the scandalous paychecks they receive. In my travels around this country, I have discovered that America hates its teachers, and I could not tell you why. Charleston, West Virginia, is showing clear signs of really hurting theirs, and I would be cautious about the word getting out.

In 1961, I entered the classroom of the great Eugene Norris, who set about in a thousand ways to change my life. It was the year I read “Catcher in the Rye,” under Gene’s careful tutelage, and I adore that book to this very day. Later, a parent complained to the school board, and Gene Norris was called before the board to defend his teaching of this book. He asked me to write an essay describing the book’s galvanic effect on me, which I did. But Gene’s defense of “Catcher in the Rye” was so brilliant and convincing in its sheer power that it carried the day. I stayed close to Gene Norris till the day he died. I delivered a eulogy at his memorial service and was one of the executors of his will. Few in the world have ever loved English teachers as I have, and I loathe it when they are bullied by know-nothing parents or cowardly school boards.

About the novels your county just censored: “The Prince of Tides” and “Beach Music” are two of my darlings, which I would place before the altar of God and say, “Lord, this is how I found the world you made.” They contain scenes of violence, but I was the son of a Marine Corps fighter pilot who killed hundreds of men in Korea, beat my mother and his seven kids whenever he felt like it, and fought in three wars. My youngest brother, Tom, committed suicide by jumping off a fourteen-story building; my French teacher ended her life with a pistol; my aunt was brutally raped in Atlanta; eight of my classmates at The Citadel were killed in Vietnam; and my best friend was killed in a car wreck in Mississippi last summer. Violence has always been a part of my world. I write about it in my books and make no apology to anyone. In “Beach Music,” I wrote about the Holocaust and lack the literary powers to make that historical event anything other than grotesque.

People cuss in my books. People cuss in my real life. I cuss, especially at Citadel basketball games. I’m perfectly sure that Steve Shamblin and other teachers prepared their students well for any encounters with violence or profanity in my books just as Gene Norris prepared me for the profane language in “Catcher in the Rye” forty-eight years ago.

The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave anything out. I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the genius of English teachers touched me with the dazzling beauty of language. Because of them I rode with Don Quixote and danced with Anna Karenina at a ball in St. Petersburg and lassoed a steer in “Lonesome Dove” and had nightmares about slavery in “Beloved” and walked the streets of Dublin in “Ulysses” and made up a hundred stories in the Arabian nights and saw my mother killed by a baseball in “A Prayer for Owen Meany.” I’ve been in ten thousand cities and have introduced myself to a hundred thousand strangers in my exuberant reading career, all because I listened to my fabulous English teachers and soaked up every single thing those magnificent men and women had to give. I cherish and praise them and thank them for finding me when I was a boy and presenting me with the precious gift of the English language.

The school board of Charleston, West Virginia, has sullied that gift and shamed themselves and their community. You’ve now entered the ranks of censors, book-banners, and teacher-haters, and the word will spread. Good teachers will avoid you as though you had cholera. But here is my favorite thing: Because you banned my books, every kid in that county will read them, every single one of them. Because book banners are invariably idiots, they don’t know how the world works — but writers and English teachers do.

I salute the English teachers of Charleston, West Virginia, and send my affection to their students. West Virginians, you’ve just done what history warned you against — you’ve riled a Hatfield.

Sincerely,

Pat Conroy

 

I was stopped on the street last week by a gal whose son is a Marine, waiting for deployment to Iraq. "Tell me your thoughts about this upcoming election," this mom said. "Do you think Hilary is going to be our next president?"

"I'm afraid so," I said. "The Republicans have dug themselves a hole and they don't have a personality strong enough to pull them out. I'm no fan of Hilary's but it appears she's going to be the shoe-in."

My problem with Hilary is two-fold. First, while I'm a huge proponent that a woman can lead this country as well as a man, I don't think Hilary is the right woman to lead it. She's too angry. Got a chip on her shoulder. And I don't know about you, but I am tired of having an angry, arrogant person in charge. I've had eight years of it. I don't want another eight years of it.

Secondly, somebody please tell me what legislation Senator Clinton has sponsored or initiated during her time in office that has really been groundbreaking in any form or fashion. What pray tell has she done since taking office?

I met Senator Clinton in May of this year. I'll give her this -- she is a lot prettier in person than she comes across on television. That TV box is not her friend. But she stood before the crowd I was with and bragged that she had been helpful in pushing through legislation that allows war widows to remarry at age 57 without being penalized by losing their benefits.

Well, whoop-tee-doo. A helluva a lot of good that does today's war widow who is 18, 25, or 33. These women, most with small children, are penalized if they remarry. The average widow will lose anywhere between $1,500 to $3,500 a month in benefits if they remarry. And why? Because legislation is based upon an archaic system that says when women remarry it is the job of their new husbands to provide for them and their children. Well, baloney. That $$ was granted to these families when their loved ones were slain fighting for a war dictated by Congress (*Clinton voted Yes for war). Remarrying ought not affect those benefits, which were granted as a result of a war death. It is hardly something Clinton ought to be bragging about. Widows don't want to wait until they are 57 to remarry. Most of them aren't raising kids at 57. If they ever needed that money, it's now, not later.

Eight years of the Clinton administration would just be like putting a video on rewind for 8 more years. We would not be moving forward as a nation. And if we need to do anything as a nation, anything, it's move forward.

So I was delighted in my dentist-drug-induced haze to hear that Hilary took a trouncing at the latest debate. Hooray for John Edwards! I appreciate him taking the bull by the horns and calling Hilary for what she is -- a person of doublespeak.

But, ohmygosh, did the Hilary base find a way to turn this around -- complaining that their girlfriend was getting picked on by all the schoolyard bullies. Did you happen to catch that clip of the Washington State Cheerleader who got trounced while attempting to tear away the Homecoming sign for the charging football team? If you believe Hilary's defenders, she got a similar smack-down in the same fashion as that homecoming queen.

Unfair! they cry. Dog pile! they whine. She's a girl! they holler.

Yeah. So.

So are the majority of war survivors under 57 who are having to care for small children and are being told by Clinton and her likes that they can't remarry until they are age 57 without losing their benefits.
These are girls. Most of them much younger than Clinton.

Listen, I've no tolerance for Clinton and her whiny galpals. I spend my life listening to the problems of real women. Women who shoulder the burden of caring for grieving children. War widows. Widows who deserve the benefits promised to them, no matter what their ages.

I'm all for putting a woman in office to run this nation. I'm just convinced that Hilary Clinton is not that woman. To put Hilary into office is to take a step backward, an eight-year step backward.

Now if only Elisabeth Edwards were running. There's a woman who knows what it means to be a survivor.

******************

Quote of the day: Heather Mills on Paul McCartney: "I fell in love with a man, not a Beatle."

Well, I'm glad we cleared that up.