Pat Conroy: Our Lifelong Friendship

by Bernie Schein

Overview

“Bernie Schein is the funniest man alive, or so he has dogmatically maintained during the burdensome decades I have known him. . . . [He is] by turns hysterically funny, wildly neurotic, uniquely sensitive, and heartbreakingly honest.”—Pat Conroy

Pat Conroy, the bestselling author of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini among many other books, was beloved by millions of readers. Bernie Schein was his best friend from the time they met in a high-school pickup basketball game in Beaufort, South Carolina, until Conroy’s death in 2016.

Both were popular but also outsiders as a Jew and a Catholic military brat in the small-town Bible-Belt South, and they bonded. Wiseass and smart aleck, loudmouths both, they shared an ebullient sense of humor and romanticism, were mesmerized by the highbrow and reveled in the low, and would sacrifice entire evenings and afternoons to endless conversation. As young teachers in the Beaufort area and later in Atlanta, they were activists in the civil rights struggle and against institutional racism and bigotry. Bernie knew intimately the private family story of the Conroys and his friend’s difficult relationship with his Marine Corps colonel father that Pat would draw on repeatedly in his fiction.

A love letter and homage, and a way to share the Pat he knew, this book collects Bernie’s cherished memories about the gregarious, welcoming, larger-than-life man who remained his best friend, even during the years they didn’t speak. It offers a trove of insights and anecdotes that will be treasured by Pat Conroy’s many devoted fans.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781948924139
Publisher:	Arcade
Publication date:	09/10/2019
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	540,020
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Bernie Schein was born, bred, and Bar Mitzvahed in Beaufort, South Carolina. He was an educator for forty-five years, for many of them in Atlanta. He is the author of three books, including If Holden Caulfield Were in My Classroom and the novel Famous All Over Town. He has been published and featured in numerous newspapers and magazines, including Newsweek, the Jewish Advocate, Atlanta magazine, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and interviewed on NPR and radio stations across the country. He is now an educational consultant as well as a humorist and raconteur. He and his wife live in Beaufort, South Carolina.

Table of Contents

I Famous Always, Wherever He Was 1

II The War at Home, the War Abroad 16

III Pat Becomes a Famous Writer Because There's No Indoor Plumbing on Daufuskie Island 46

IV What Pat Left Out of The Great Santini 64

V The Greater Pat's Literary Fame and Success, the More Tragic and Unhappy His Personal Life 75

VI A Jew in the Bible Belt, a Rebel without a Pause at the Citadel 111

VII Pat Marries Lenore 121

VIII Pat Writes, Pat Teaches 128

IX Fame Frightens Pat 133

X Rome 144

XI The Slings and Arrows of Fame 148

XII A Moment of Clarity 155

XIII The Rift 164

XIV Rapprochement and Retirement 175

XV Beaufort, Once Again 181

XVI Pat Loses Confidence in His Writing 204

XVII The Griffin Market Lunch Group 215

XVIII The Intervention 221

XIX Once More into the Wreckage 227

XX Pat Rallies Again 231

XXI A Reconciliation 241

XXII Conroy@70, His Last Hurrah 248

XXIII Pat's Last Night on Earth 254

XXIV My Farewell Letter to Pat 256

XXV The Afterlife: The Conversation Continues 262

XXVI Pat's Legacy 265

Acknowledgments 273

Permissions Acknowledgments 275

Editorial Reviews

Bernie Schein is the funniest man alive, or so he has dogmatically maintained during the burdensome decades I have known him. . . . [He is] by turns hysterically funny, wildly neurotic, uniquely sensitive, and heartbreakingly honest.”—Pat Conroy

“Bernie Schein is a fire-carrier and a bliss-follower. He has altered almost every life he has touched with his light.”—Anne Rivers Siddon, author of Off Season

Quotes for Famous All Over Town:
"Bernie Schein is the funniest man alive, or so he has dogmatically maintained during the burdensome decades I have known him. Like its author, this ambitious novel is by turns hysterically funny, wildly neurotic, uniquely sensitive, and heartbreakingly honest. Bernie has staked his claim on the literary landscape of the South with his unforgettable small town of equally unforgettable Jews, whites, blacks, marines, politicians, prostitutes, cops, killers, sell-outs, aristocrats, journalists, and rebels. He shies away from neither the best nor worse in us and, with compassion and authority, tells a story that is at once his own and that of everyone you will ever meet, each made famous all over town."—Pat Conroy

"Another time, another place—yet Somerset, South Carolina, is every small town anywhere in anytime. Its characters represent each of us in all of our flawed, tragicomic humanity. I know these people and you will, too. They're friends, relatives, neighbors, the people we go to church or synagogue with, the ones we wed and bed, love and hate, mourn and bury. Leaning on their backyard fences, they're already spreading the word: YOU are in this book!"—Cassandra King

"Bernie Schein's Famous All over Town achieves what engaging storytelling is supposed to achieve—expressive characters revealing spirited stories. Covering the 60s into the 90s of conflict and change in the lowcountry of South Carolina, Schein's cast of activists rise up in triumph. . . Splendidly written, it is a reader's delight."—Terry Kay, author of To Dance with the White Dog and The Book of Marie

"Every South Carolina schoolboy in the '60s knew the story of the shaved-head, steely-eyed recruits who were maliciously marched into the pluff mud at Parris Island, a place we all feared, for good reason. Within these pages, Bernie Schein transports us deep into that psychologically loaded place and time where religion and racism serve as barometric bookends to a tragedy that touched the lives of an entire town and resonated with the whole nation."—Ken Burger, author of Swallow Savannah, Sister Santee, and Salkehatchie Soup

"Famous All over Town captures the heart and essence of imperfect, lovable, infuriating, and admirable southern characters in a story full of vivid images and intersecting story lines from the '60s through the '90s. With a soft heart and a calloused hand, Bernie Schein introduces us to a South we might not ever know without him, and it's a place I'd like to settle in for good."—Patti Callahan Henry, author of The Stories We Tell, And Then I Found You, and others

"Since you can't sing "Dixie," "We Shall Overcome," and "My Yiddishe Momme" all at once, you must read this splendid novel, a vision of the small-town South, past and present, that will rattle your funny bone and rend your heart."—Peter Golden, author of Comeback Love

From the Publisher

2019-06-30
An educational consultant and writer recalls his friendship with the late novelist.

Schein (Famous All Over Town, 2014, etc.) first met Pat Conroy (1945-2016) in early 1961 when both were students in Beaufort, South Carolina. Schein was a self-professed cheater who hated school while Conroy was the social and athletic star everyone adored. Yet both were also outsiders. Though a South Carolina native, Schein was a Jew in a majority Christian South, and Conroy was a "military brat" who, until arriving in Beaufort, had moved every year he had been in school. The pair bonded in high school and then deepened their attachment after college when they returned to Beaufort "to dodge the draft and to teach, in that order." They soon discovered that their anti-racist beliefs and civil rights activism put them at odds with the conservative white power structure in Beaufort, including the board of education. In 1970, the year Schein went to graduate school at Harvard, Conroy lost his job as a teacher at an all-black school for daring to change a curriculum that emphasized obedience to authority rather than learning. While Schein continued his professional pursuits in education, Conroy left teaching to write. His autobiographical first novel, The Great Santini (1976), about the relationship between a son and his abusive military father, made Conroy a household name. But fame and the repressed rage he harbored against his father transformed the mild-mannered Conroy into an alcoholic "word-sniper" and "verbal hitman" who took cruel shots at everyone, including Schein. In 1990, Schein refused to publish a story in a school magazine by Conroy's stepdaughter that discussed the sexual abuse she had endured from her birth father. Their friendship ended, but the two continued to talk "about each other all the time." The men reconciled 15 years later and remained close until Conroy died. Honest in its portrayal of both Conroy and Schein's own conflicted feelings toward the novelist, the lucid narrative deftly explores the complexities of a lifelong friendship.

A thoughtful, poignant, and candid memoir perfect for Conroy fans.

Kirkus Reviews

From their unexpected meeting at a high school pickup basketball game, through the ups and downs of life, to Pat Conroy’s death in 2016, he and Bernie Schein had a unique, culture-crossing friendship. Sadly, Brian Troxell’s delivery doesn’t bring this heartfelt memoir to life. His tempo never varies, whether he is recounting high school escapades, early civil rights activities, anti-war activities, or friendship’s changes over a lifetime. The memoir is filled with humor, heart, history, and salty language, but the life-giving elements of the story are buried in a delivery that sounds detached. Read the print book to feel the heart. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

SEPTEMBER 2019 - AudioFile