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Pat Conroy and the pen
Published: 9/21/2012 3:28 PM
Last Modified: 9/22/2012 8:39 AM




I possess the instrument that brought about “The Death of Santini.”

When I had the opportunity to talk with the novelist Pat Conroy last week, in advance of his Tulsa appearances as the guest of Tulsa Reads, the community-wide reading initiative of which the Tulsa World is one of the sponsors, Conroy mentioned that he was days away from finishing his latest book – a memoir about his father’s final years.

“Every time I tell people this,” Conroy said, “I always hear people gasp in disbelief – I write every word by hand.”

I replied, “You’re talking to someone who owns 200 fountain pens.”

That started Conroy on a soliloquy about the years when he always wrote “with really lovely pens. I had Montblancs and Watermans and Parkers. But now…now I have to use all these ugly pens.”

The reason is physical. Conroy has bouts of writer’s cramp – “the sort of thing Henry James had. I know people who dismiss it, but it’s a disease.”

Thursday evening, I was asked to be one of a dozen or so people to ask questions of Pat Conroy at the Tulsa Reads event presented by the Oklahoma City for Poets and Writers at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa.

When it came my turn to speak, Conroy asked me to come to the stage. He mentioned our conversation about pens, and said he had something he wanted to give me.

Conroy reached into a pocket and held out a black cylinder – a Pilot Precise V5 pen.

“This is the pen,” he said, “that I used to write the last pages of ‘The Death of Santini.’”

“Overwhelmed” is too mild a word for how I felt.

I’ve read and admired the work of Pat Conroy for more than 30 years, ever since I came upon the opening sentence of “The Lords of Discipline” – “I wear the ring,” the ring that designates its wearer as a graduate of the Citadel, the military academy Conroy attended.

I do not – nor will I ever – “wear the ring.” But I am extremely, humbly grateful to be the one to possess The Pen.



Reader Comments 1 Total
ClanJoyWalkSig (5 months ago)
This says much about the man I already admired so, James... what a wonderful moment it must have been. Thank you so much for sharing the story and the picture. You must be up in the clouds somewhere...
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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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