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The Lords of Discipline Pat Conroy 9780553271362 Books

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The Lords of Discipline Pat Conroy 9780553271362 Books

I’ve apparently gone about reading Pat Conroy all backward, having started with The Death of Santini and now filling in with his earlier work.

In Death of Santini, Conroy provides an autobiographical recap to his earlier work through the prism of dealing with his father’s (The Great Santini) death. Having read this recap, I can now read his earlier “fiction” stories in a different light, recognizing them for their autobiographical underpinnings.

I must confess to a strong dislike for the dialog of the author’s character, Will McClean. In fact, it has the same, relentless, never ending, over the top, smarmy sarcasm as displayed by the author himself in The Death of Santini. A little goes a very long way, and 500 pages of it goes way too far. If this is in fact the way the author actually converses, I can come to two conclusions; he doesn’t have any friends, and he must be pretty tough, otherwise he would have taken innumerable butt whippings over the years (apparently he did, at the hands of his father. Now I know why). It is distracting and counterproductive to enjoyment of what would otherwise be an enjoyable and beautifully written expose of 1960s The Citadel.

The underlying story is fascinating, especially given its quasi-autobiographical nature. The plot twists are well conceived and executed. This would be a five star reading experience were it not for the irritating dialog.


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The Lords of Discipline Pat Conroy 9780553271362 Books Reviews

Pat Conroy's The Lords of Discipline is a book I snagged on sale years ago and forgot. I honestly don't even know what drew me to buy the book in the first place, military school coming-of-age doesn't really speak to me, but I'm really glad that I did buy it because I loved it.

Will McLean is about to start his senior year at the Institute, a military academy in Charleston (based on the Citadel, Conroy's own alma mater). He didn't really want to go, but promised his father he would before his father died and gets a basketball scholarship anyways. He's not distinguished himself as a military man during his time there and doesn't plan to enlist and ship out to Vietnam as so many of his classmates intend, but he's almost made it through and is closely bonded with his three roommates, especially native blue-blooded Charlestonian Tradd St. Croix. Will is a quasi-outsider...while he's Southern and from an Institute family, he's also Catholic and an athlete, and probably the closest thing to a liberal on campus. Which is why he's assigned to look after incoming student Tom Pearce, the first black student to ever enroll, and protect him from the threat of a mysterious group called The Ten, who are deadset against integration. As Will's final year unfolds, he relives his own traumatic freshman year and we see how he's been shaped (sometimes against his own will) by the experiences he's had at the Institute as he tries to look out for Pearce, investigates The Ten, and falls in love with a troubled young socialite.

First of all, Conroy is an incredible writer. His plotting and pacing are masterful. He covers a lot of territory (freshman hazing, two suicides, a love affair, an investigation into a shadowy group, the experience of participating in organized athletics), but it never drags, nor does it feel overcrowded. Drama drives not from the mystery plot (which really only picks up in the last 20% or so of the book), but from experiences and relationships. The prose is strong and sure, lyrical without verging into purple territory, poignant and resonant. I have to imagine that Conroy loves Charleston as much as his protagonist does, because much of his most sweeping and sentimental prose is dedicated to the city and made me want to take a visit there myself.

The characters Conroy creates feel real...we obviously spend the most time with and are asked to identify the most with Will, but he's not perfect or beyond reproach. Even the person who's ultimately revealed as the "bad guy" has motivations that make sense. He places those characters in high-stakes situations without turning it into the lurid melodrama it could spill over into with less control. It's just a fantastic novel and I'm adding everything Conroy wrote to my TBR and I recommend this book highly to anyone, even if you don't think you'd like it.
Pat Conroy has been my favorite author since I read and re-read "The Prince of Tides," followed by "Beach Music," "South of Broad," and all of his others. What I've come to realize is Conroy has been the master of voice since the inception of his literary career. His is language mastered in fluid, conversational prose sprung from his command of vocabulary. He's the kind of descriptive writer that weaves in what he's thinking and feeling throughout the story, and in so doing, gives you permission to identify and embrace your own humanity. His books are commentaries on life and the way we wade through it, and he constructs them relentlessly through the nuances of case and point. Typically, Conroy's narrators are outsiders going through the isolated motions of trying to fit into the unbalanced premise of the story. The Lords of Discipline is such an example, when Will McLean walks into his fourth year as a cadet of a South Carolina military academy called The Institute. By this time, Will McLean is a confirmed nonconformist, in it but not of the regiments of this insular college dedicated to beating into its attendees the soul-crushing, disciplinary rules of The Institute, where the cadets subsume their own identity in favor of fitting into the system, which tears them apart before it puts them back together. In flashback, Conroy takes the reader through every step of The Institutes plebe system, where bewildered novices are captive in what is a brutal but sanctioned game of survival. And all around are well-drawn, malicious characters running the show; they are the cadets who have survived the plebe system and are now hell-bent on inflicting the same misery upon freshmen who are inductees into a type of consciousness aimed at making men out of boys. In the midst of this paradigm, Will McLean becomes a member of a brotherhood comprised of himself and his three roommates. They create a cooperative world within a world in a bond that will forever sustain them. In a wider sense, The Lords of Discipline is both metaphoric and axiomatic of the larger truths of life, wherein the inflexible demands of society threatens individuality, or else. Will McLean enters the process with innocence that scratches its way to a wisdom that knows how to game the system. His is a triumphant coming of age in a jeopardous environment that lends a frame of reference for the rest of his life. And just as in life, it's not what you say, but how you say it, and Conroy is the master of this. There is not a weak sentence in this spell-binding book; it handles craft and language and story so seamlessly as to be, yet again, another Conroy classic.
I’ve apparently gone about reading Pat Conroy all backward, having started with The Death of Santini and now filling in with his earlier work.

In Death of Santini, Conroy provides an autobiographical recap to his earlier work through the prism of dealing with his father’s (The Great Santini) death. Having read this recap, I can now read his earlier “fiction” stories in a different light, recognizing them for their autobiographical underpinnings.

I must confess to a strong dislike for the dialog of the author’s character, Will McClean. In fact, it has the same, relentless, never ending, over the top, smarmy sarcasm as displayed by the author himself in The Death of Santini. A little goes a very long way, and 500 pages of it goes way too far. If this is in fact the way the author actually converses, I can come to two conclusions; he doesn’t have any friends, and he must be pretty tough, otherwise he would have taken innumerable butt whippings over the years (apparently he did, at the hands of his father. Now I know why). It is distracting and counterproductive to enjoyment of what would otherwise be an enjoyable and beautifully written expose of 1960s The Citadel.

The underlying story is fascinating, especially given its quasi-autobiographical nature. The plot twists are well conceived and executed. This would be a five star reading experience were it not for the irritating dialog.