On NPR the other day, I heard an interview with Pat Conroy, a novelist whose entire career has essentially been spent repeating one theme over and over again: “My dad was an asshole.” The interview seemed a little too pat. As he told stories about how mean his dad was, he seemed a little too pleased with himself. Really, he didn’t seem very likeable.
Now he’s written a non-fiction memoir about (surprise!) how mean his dad was. A central scene involves his dad beating him up during the annual athletic banquet at his D.C. high school, Gonzaga. In the book, Dad punches his son on the jaw; when his classmates see him get socked, “a free-for-all began” as all the other fathers come to his defense.
“They had no idea who my father was and did not care,” Conroy writes. “They saw a stranger knock a Gonzaga boy to his knees and came roaring to my defense.”
(As one Gonzaga official said about the book: “Everything he writes, his dad beats him up