The Great Santini is an affecting coming-of-age story that does not blink in its depiction of a tight and loving family on the edge of disaster. Set in the rich, sleepy atmosphere of coastal South Carolina in the early 1960s, the novel echoes the timeless tension that emerges between vigorous fathers and their maturing sons, the inevitable clash of personal pride and selfless love, the jealous frustration that comes with maturity. Bull Meecham, known to all as "The Great Santini," can't push his son Ben hard enough; to show affection or proud pleasure in Ben's accomplishment would never occur to him. For Ben, his father's relentless bullying has become more than a frustration, and he is no longer able to suffer his father's abuse. The binding force in the Meecham family is Lillian, Bull's wife and Ben's mother, a beautiful Southern woman of seemingly limitless patience and deference, but indomitable will. She holds her family together, a firewall for her husband's worst authoritarian excesses. Yet she is also sympathetic to the impossible position in which Ben finds himself, at a pivotal moment in his maturity -- the man-child of a father who is defiantly unwilling to yield. Bull Meecham is a vivid and explosive character with whom the reader comes to terms, as Ben does. Conroy, admirably, does not sentimentalize Bull. The clear-eyed, often funny progress of his story reminds us how close to home it is; the characters and the conflict are founded on the author's own difficult relationship with his father, a Marine Corps colonel who was a pilot like Bull Meecham. (Conroy, perhaps tellingly, imagines a dire fate for Bull that his own father was spared.) The publication of The Great Santini seems to have wrought a powerful effect on Conroy's family -- his paternal grandparents were so offended that they shunned him, and his mother used the novel as evidence when she divorced Conroy's father. It also established Conroy as a great teller of stories and an interesting new voice in American fiction, unabashed in its expressive power and hard-won sensitivity.

In the Cordova Hotel, near the docks of Barcelona, fourteen Marine Corps fighter pilots from the aircraft carrier Forrestal were throwing an obstreperously spirited going away party for Lieutenant Colonel Bull Meecham, the executive officer of their carrier based squadron. The pilots had been drinking most of the day and the party was taking a swift descent toward mayhem. It was a sign to Bull Meecham that he was about to have a fine and memorable turbulent time. The commanding officer of the squadron, Ty Mullinax, had passed out in the early part of the afternoon and was resting in a beatific position on the table in the center of the room, his hands folded across his chest and a bouquet of lilies carefully placed in his zipper, rising out of his groin. The noise from the party had risen in geometrically spiraling quantities in irregular intervals since the affair had begun shortly after noon. In the beginning it had been a sensible, often moving affair, a coming together of soldiers and gentlemen to toast and praise a warrior departing their ranks. But slowly, the alcohol established its primacy over the last half of the party and as darkness approached and the outline of warships along the harbor became accented with light, the maitre d' of the Cordova Hotel walked into the room to put an end to the going away party that had begun to have the sound effects of a small war. He would like to have had the Marines thrown out by calling the Guardia Civil but too much of his business depended on the American officers who had made his hotel and restaurant their headquarters whenever the fleet came to Barcelona. The guests in his restaurant had begun to complain vigorously about the noise and obscenity coming from the room that was directly off the restaurant. Even the music of a flamenco band did not overpower or even cancel out the clamor and tumult that spilled out of the room. The maitre d' was waiting for Captain Weber, a naval captain who commanded a cruiser attached to the fleet, to bring his lady in for dinner, but his reservation was not until 9 o'clock. He took a deep breath, opened the door, and walked toward the man who looked as if he was in charge. "Hey, Pedro, what can I do for you?" Bull Meecham asked. The maitre d' was a small, elegant man who looked up toward a massive, red-faced man who stood six feet four inches tall and weighed over two hundred and twenty pounds. Before the maitre d' could speak he noticed the prone body of Colonel Mullinax lying on the long dining table in the center of the room. "What is wrong with this man?" the maitre d' demanded. "He's dead, Pedro," Bull answered. "You joke with me, no." "No, Pedro." "He still breathe." "Muscle spasms. Involuntary," Bull said as the other pilots whooped and laughed behind him. "He's dead all right and we got to leave him here, Pedro. The fleet's pulling out any time now and we won't have time for a funeral. But well be back to pick him up in about six months. And that's a promise. I just don't want you to move him from this table." "No, señor," the maitre d' said, staring with rising discomfort at the unconscious aviator, "you joke with me. I no mind the joke. I come to ask you to keep down the noise and please not break up any more furniture or throw your glasses. Some naval officers have complained very much." "Oh, dearie me," said Bull. "You mean the naval officers don't like to hear us throwing glasses?" "No, señor." Bull turned toward the far wall and, giving a signal to the other pilots in the room, all thirteen of them hurled their glasses into the fireplace already littered with bright shards of glass.

 

A tyrannical father, a military "ace" brutalize his family and particularly his oldest son, interpreting humanity as weakness in this unsparing novel. Tragedy is the outcome. Robert Duvall's performance of the title character in the film adaptation is perhaps his finest role.

The novelist Pat Conroy's life and personal experience are so inextricably bound up with his writing that, at first glance, it might seem that he is merely retelling the story of his life, again and again. The truth is, as usual, far more complicated and interesting. Significant elements and characters in his novels are obviously drawn from his life, a choice that apparently has created tremendous tension in his family. But these facts are merely points of departure for the author, who has a gift that is perhaps the most desirable and elusive of all for any novelist -- the ability to spin an unforgettable story.

Conroy was born in 1945 in Atlanta, the eldest of seven children and the son of Col. Donald Conroy, a man not unlike the hero of "The Great Santini." He attended The Citadel, the South Carolina military academy that inspired the setting for The Lords of Discipline, and briefly taught school on an island off the South Carolina coast, an experience recounted in The Water Is Wide. The fallout from his life with his family seems to have inspired Conroy to create deeply compelling stories of vivid characters searching for love and fulfillment. These tales are invariably rooted in the infernal complexities and often dark realities of Southern tradition, notably in The Lords of Discipline and The Prince of Tides. The death of his mother -- a crafty Southern woman who chose to be called Peggy, after the author of "Gone With the Wind" -- led him to write his most recent novel "Beach Music."

Though Conroy's books have created publicized rifts within his own family, they stand on their own with the public and most critics, having been embraced by a faithful and ever-growing readership and inspiring popular film adaptations. "Misfortune," Garry Abrams wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "has been good to novelist Pat Conroy."

 

 

The Great Santini by Pat Conroy
Continue Browsing		View Wish List