Friday, February 22, 2013

Pat Conroy's book My Reading Life

On February 15th this year, I posted this note intended for Pat at his website.
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Pat, during the past five years, as I studied personal remarks by a variety of authors talking about their childhood and reading and development toward writing, I loved comments by Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, and others. I especially enjoyed the little book of notes from John Steinbeck to his editor, with John writing them each morning in 1953 (during the creation of East of Eden) not as a journal but as his daily jumpstart into writing. I dearly loved reading every “conversation” with Wendell Berry. But I’ve never enjoyed any of this more than I have this weekend in reading My Reading Life, by you. “I grew up as a word-haunted boy,” you said. And so did I, although nowhere nearly as word-gifted as you. Write forever. David Cornwell, in England, recently turned 81 and yet writes prolifically each and every year. Makes you look like a youngster at 67. Keep at it.

J.P. Cunningham

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