Lillian Secrest Buie's Weblog

Pat Conroy Describes His Mother on Her Deathbed

Novelist Pat Conroy tells this story on himself. As his mother was dying of leukemia (really of the chemotherapy that had taken all her lovely hair and reduced her to 80 pounds of bones), she asked: “Are you writing about me in your new book?” When he denied it, she said: “I can always tell when my children are lying. Promise me one thing. Don’t write about me like this. Make me beautiful.”

His answer: “Oh Mama, I’ll make you so beautiful. Because you made me a writer and presented me with a gift of tongues and a passion for language, I can lift you off that bed, banish the cancer from your cells forever, restore your shimmering hair and lovely figure and set you singing and dancing along the margins of my books forever. When they speak of beauty in the South, my mother, they’ll invoke your name and praise the immense high passions of the men who desired you and the children who were never a match for you.”

Ironically, although he dedicated this book to her and to his dad and siblings, none of them appreciated it and I read that his sister, in whose arms their mama died as her daughter read poetry to her, doesn’t even speak to Pat. I hope that isn’t still true.

A Southerner Looks At Southern Life and Literature

By Lillian Secrest Buie
January, 1984

Southern literature, like southern life, is a mixture of harsh reality and magical illusion. We Southerners extol the virtues of close family ties, look down on those unlucky enough not to share our special brand of genes, yet have our private civil wars often precipitated by the tragedies of all those proud genes. Southern women sit on the pedestals built by our eccentric southern gentlemen, but the inabilities of those same gentlemen have made it often necessary for the little lady to work like a field hand. And thus the Southern woman has earned the title of the "steel magnolia" (more illustrations of this: Lady Bird Johnson, Amazon.com books and plays).

Southern women are often destined for a pedestal, and an inevitable fall, yet they never really seek that seat at all.

We hide our heartbreak under cosmetics and charm, and, to the outsider, we proclaim the rightness of our world: "We're doin' just fine -- I hope ya'll are." Within, storms shake and sometimes shatter. Our peeling paint and tottery columns, to us, are still white and stately, and, in our dreams at least, made real. We are the ladies of the house, the belles of the ball, and God's chosen people.

Our billboards declare the glory of God (sometimes simultaneously with the KKK), and pronounce His coming, coming of course to the Bible Belt which has never denied Him, even midst our most drunken orgies of violent quarrels. As the Billboards pronounce the Second Coming, so do our ornate tombstones and fading mansions declare the glory of his handiwork. In our lush garden, azelias bloom virginal white or sinful scarlet, and dogwoods speak of sacrifice supreme.

Our poets and our politicians speak the same language with the same fervor of ancient prophets. The South is our promised land, filled with milk and honey, promised to us by our ancestors, and spoken of by us with reverence, whether that place be Scarlett's Tara, Blanche's Belle Reve, or my own Broadacre.

We have known defeat and called it victory; our tragedies are our triumphs. Family ties are so tight that incest, homosexuality, family idiots are inevitable. Just so, are family sacrifice, unfailing courage, loyalty, the literal laying down one's life for a brother. The retarded Benjie is just as important to family unity as is the scholar Quentin (allusion to William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury). The arduous journey of old Black Phoebe is the same pilgrimage made by Christian to the Celestial City in Pilgrim's Progress, but inspired by far more personal love and devotion. Phoebe made the journey out of love for her grandson with no thought of the reward in heaven.

Southern literature is a composite of legends from the past, the power and glory of the land, the blessings of the Holy Book, the strength of family ties, a sense of the human personality that knows where it's been and therefore knows who it is and where it's going, and refuses to yield its special uniqueness to a bland blend of urban Americana. We Southerners know the meaning of sin, sorrow, and defeat; therefore we also know the joy of forgiveness, redemption and grace.

Born again, we see with fresh eyes, hear with listening ears, feel with a special empathy the stories we have to tell and paint with colors of the past and hues of the present the poems we have to sing. And a southerner knows that the critic who said that the best literature comes out of the South was right; for the best stories are those that grow from the experiences of the human heart.