Meeting Old Friends

Last week we spent some time with two of our young grandchildren.  While in the car we talked with them about how much reading has meant to their grandfather and me. Sometimes we would run into a character that we have met in a previous book and recognize them as an old friend or someone we didn’t like.  But they somehow feel real to us though they are still fictitious.  Soap opera watchers sometimes think the actors are really the characters they portray.

I got caught up in such a situation many years ago. My mother and I were both avid readers and enjoyed some of the same authors, Pat Conroy being one of them.  We both had read “The Great Santini” and were familiar with Conroy’s background.  He had tremendous issues with both his parents as well as mental illness in his family.  Knowing this you feel his epic novels are really truthful events that are woven into his fiction writing.

My mother loved to play bingo at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Atlanta and I went with her one evening.  She pointed to a tall older gentleman who was working there and said “that’s the Great Santini”.  I said that’s not possible because he’s dead.  I was totally taken aback to realize that Conroy had portrayed his own personal anger and killed him off, yet his father took great pride in telling people he was “The Great Santini.” In the book he is portrayed as a totally mean bastard.  You’re really glad when he dies at the end.

Next week our vacation includes a tour of Historic Beaufort in South Carolina.  Many years ago when my husband had business in Beaufort, I went along for the ride.  The bank manager he was meeting with took us on a tour of the small beautiful city and pointed out the house where the movie “The Great Santini” was filmed.  I expect our tour guide on Tuesday will tell us the same thing.