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The Lords of Discipline (平装)
by Pat Conroy
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Fiction |
| Market price: ¥ 108.00
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| MSL Pointer Review:
A haunting classic. Conroy’s combination of precise military cadence and southern gothic prose is just mind-boggling. |
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AllReviews |
1 Total 1 pages 8 items |
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Boston Globe (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
God preserve Pat Conroy. |
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Houston Post (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
Seldom have I encountered an author who puts words together so well - reading Conroy is like watching Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel. |
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Washington Star (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
A work of enormous power, passion, humor, and wisdom. It sweeps the reader along on a great tide of honest, throbbing emotion. It is the work of a writer with a large, brave heart. |
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Cynthia Robertson (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
Aspiring novelist and basketball player, Will McLean, finds himself a college student at the Carolina Military Institute (The Citadel - thinly disguised). Will was not interested in the military, but he promises his dying father that he will attend his alma mater. Will doesn't exactly excel in military studies, but he's a decent student, an athlete, and his professors and peers recognize him for his integrity and his sense of fairness. Still, this is not an easy time to be a student in a military academy - especially in the South. The Viet Nam War was raging, the military was unpopular and desegregation was knocking on the doors of Southern schools. The Fourth Class system is brutal at best, and most cadets will look on their freshman year and Hell Night as living nightmares. There are also rumors of a powerful and clandestine group of Institute students and alumni called The Ten. While nothing has come forward to prove their existence, the possibility of such a group casts a cloud over the Corps of Cadets.
Will and his roommates have survived the trials and tribulations of their underclassmen years. But circumstances change very rapidly. The first black student enrolls at the Institute and Will is asked to be a secret mentor to Cadet Tom Pearce. It quickly becomes apparent that a group of cadets is trying to run Pearce out of the Institute. Will steps in to intervene, and he discovers a truth so horrendous that this knowledge can bring down the Institute. It also makes Will and his roommates targets. Not only is their graduation now in jeopardy, but their lives are also in danger.
Conroy is a master wordsmith, and I find myself reading his sentences over and over again. It's comparable to taking a bite of a decadent dessert, and rolling it around on your tongue to savor every forkful. His descriptions are priceless, his characters well fleshed out, and the plot will have you marathon reading to finish this 498-page book. I especially loved his observations about Charleston and the low country. Conroy also deals with timeless and universal issues. They include the struggles of a young boy growing into manhood and how difficult it is to stand up for your beliefs. Also, how those that love you can cause the worst hurt, and how those you think are loyal friends can betray you in a heartbeat. Conroy dwells on how it is possible to love and hate something at the same time (in this case, the Institute), and how the righteous don't always prevail. And while things might turn out in the end, they might not turn out the way you envision them.
The one bad thing about Pat Conroy is that he is not one of those "serial" bestsellers who produce a book every year-whether they have anything to say or not. While we often have to wait years between books, Conroy's works are definitely worth the wait. Also, after reading The Lords of Discipline, I suggest picking up his nonfiction work, My Losing Season. Detailing his senior year playing basketball for The Citadel, Conroy will reveal how much of The Lords of Discipline is autographical. |
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Michael Bird (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
It was right after reading My Losing Season that I decided it was time to pick up this book. I had thought about reading it several times before, but I as I stated in my review of the nonfiction work My Losing Season, I was trying to space out Pat Conroy's books because I knew that I'd only get to read them once for the first time.
It was very interesting reading this book because even though it is a fictional story it is based on some true events (which are chronicled in My Losing Season) as well being based on the realities of many that went through the rigors and trials of a military academy. Conroy interviewed students that graduated as well as students that didn't make it at various military schools (Citadel, VMI, Air Force Academy, etc.) to use their shared experiences to make this work ring true even though it was a fictional story much like many of the Law and Order television episodes are based on real crimes.
I kept wondering how much of this story was totally made up and how much was based on real events. In My Losing Season Conroy tells the real story of his relationship with a girl that appears in the fictional work here. He changed a lot of the details, but the core truth of how badly she hurt him rings true in both the fictional story here and the actual account of the real events. It made me wonder what other stuff was nearly real in this fictional book...
Mr. Conroy talks about how his alma mater wouldn't let him back on campus for many years after this book was published. It hit a cord which reverberated for a long time and I'll take that as a clue that this work, much like The Prince of Tides and Beach Music were thinly veiled truths, pieces of art that are much to mirror like for comfort.
One downside to reading Conroy in general is the depression that always seems to hit me. I must fight my own demons that get stirred up as I turn the pages reading about his. But despite the scabs that get picked and the wounds that hurt over again, I like reading what he has to say because it's real. Real and true are funny ways to describe fiction but when must of us go day to day hiding and playing games perhaps it is enlightening to go ahead and pretend that what is real, is not, and what is not; is.
If you have not yet read Pat Conroy, this is as good a place to start as any. This work is not as heavy duty as The Prince of Tides and Beach Music and I'd imagine would probably appeal to a wider audience. Once you've read this I'd wager that you'll be anxious to get your hands on My Losing Season. Enjoy!
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Will Culp (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
In the American south, Pat Conroy is something of a literary hero. Born and raised in coastal South Carolina, Conroy's novels focus on the good and the bad parts about being a southerner, and his works have become legendary in the south. Nonetheless, his novels are bestsellers world over, and his books frequent the top of the charts for weeks at a time. After releasing the hit The Great Santini, Pat Conroy took a long break to write The Lords of Discipline, an almost autobiographical account of Conroy's stay at The Citadel. The book went on to spawn a movie and achieve moderate success, but it's not one of his best known. Since this was my first book by Conroy that I read, I was expecting a good book. So, was I pleased or disappointed with the book? Read on to find out!
Story: Will McLean has always felt different from everyone around him at The Citadel. His liberal views, his dislike of the traditions of the school, and his bitterness towards his school has always set him apart. Although, because of the fact of his good sense of humor and he's the captain of the basketball team, Will has always been well liked. At the beginning of his senior year, Will is told by the Bear (the disciplinary dean) to watch after a black freshman who is entering the Citadel. The Bear also tells Will to be wary of a secret society known as “The Ten,” which tortures students until they agree to leave the school. As the year passes, Will slowly relaxes into the college life, doing schoolwork, preparing for exams, but suddenly he is forced into a confrontation that could destroy his friends and cause him to not graduate from college. Will must use all of his courage and cleverness to outsmart his enemies who are trying to run him out of college...
Writing: Pat Conroy is a masterful storyteller, and The Lords of Discipline really proved this to me. This book, from start to finish, was a breeze. I read it every chance I had... in the car, at night, during class... I just found the book to be, quite frankly, one of the best books I'd ever read. Conroy's story is so believable and seemingly real because he actually experienced many of the things he chronicled in this novel in the first place. I don't have much more to say... this book was great.
Overall, The Lords of Discipline really surprised me. It was a superb novel, and kept me reading all day just to find out the end. I really think this book is a good choice for anyone trying to get into Pat Conroy or someone looking for a good drama/suspense/military novel. It's great... nothing more to say! Highly recommended!
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Benjamin Dewolfe (MSL quote) , USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
I have read most of Conroy's books, and I have highly enjoyed his style of writing in each of his works. The Lords of Discipline is simply a masterpiece. The story takes place at the Citadel in Charleston, SC. Will McLean, is a basketball player who, despite having mixed feelings about the institute, has established three extremely close friends and has found a niche as the Captain of the basketball team his senior year. Things start going astray when he is asked by "The Bear", the disciplinary Dean, to watch out for the first Black cadet to be allowed to enroll in the school (in the mid 1960s). In trying to protect the young man from unjust hazing and torture, Will comes upon a secret organization known as "The Ten". His knowledge of the organization puts him and his roomates in great danger, as Will faces challenges that nearly break him. This book is not only beautifully written, but is Conroy's most intense. It is certainly one of the best books I have ever read! |
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Carl Redman (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
There are times when I consider Pat Conroy to be the Faulkner of today - he brings a similar southern accent to the niche of 20th century American literature which has "Papa" Hemingway as its patriarch. And there's always a bit of Conroy's ongoing crusade for social justice in every book. The autobiographical The Water Is Wide stands as his credentials that he puts his money where his mouth is - buy a Conroy book and you get his alter ego "Conrack" as a bonus contributor. But I have no choice but to conclude that polemic somewhat overwhelms storytelling in this book. What you have here is a first-person "memoir" of cadet Will McLean's experiences at the ficticious Carolina Military Institute. Despite the military character of the school, Will's only real talents are those of basketball player and social commentator. He is by his own admission a do-gooder, to the extent that the school's fatherly dean of students appoints him as an unofficial student guidance counselor/ guardian angel for the school's first African-American cadet. Even when Will falls in love, it's with a girl who's alternately in need of a shoulder to cry on and a convenient target to take her rage out on. He doesn't quite come out and say that's what he's there for, but you can tell he feels that way. His three best friends are his roommates; a scion of Charleston aristocracy targeted by excessive hazing because of his effeteness and two streetwise New York Little Italy types who their more bourgeois fellow cadets consider riffraff but are too tough for them to kick around. The proper Three Musketeers sidekicks to a kid who acquantances call sanctimonious and actually understands why they say that about him. This book has a lot of self-analytical soliloquies like that, almost to the detriment of narrative. It's easy to see what bothers Pat Conroy the most - prejudice and elitism. So he creates a like-minded protagonist who - would yew buh-lieve? - goes and joins a military school! And that bit about the sinister, mysterious "Ten", an elite corps who goes about cleansing the school of nerds, wimps and minorities! My own alma mater had an adminstration ban when I attended on any Greek system on the grounds that it "encouraged elitism". There's no such rule at my old school today, though. I guess you have to understand the times in which this story is both written and set. The late 1960s/ early 1970s were a titanic near-civil-war in which the whole country was caught up in left versus right, when one side called anyone who dared to disagree a "commie" and the other side used "fascist" as its generic negative. Small wonder that, a generation later, American politics are so partisan that whichever side is elected, the other side starts quoting Jefferson - you know, the part about "overthrowing"? The generation who attends the "Institute" in this story are today's Pat Buchanans and Al Gores - you can't say there isn't diversity among my fellow 'Boomers! The thing that stands out in this story - and almost obscures it as a Pat Conroy story - is a glorification of liberalism. There's just one problem I have with it. Back in the time of this story, I was a liberal myself. Then I started to become less and less capable over the years of answering this question even to my own satisfaction - just how much of liberalism involves bona fide goodness and how much is mere sanctimony? I think most of us have learned over the years that there's a lot of diversity of opinion out there of how much of a menace to mankind "mean people" are. And I hope most of us have come to realize that the universe underwrites no insurance against hurt feelings. That's why this book only gets a 4 from me - its philosophical naiivete. I mean, could Will McLean have ever envisioned 9/11? (R. Miller, USA)
Although the cover looks like a romance novel, this book is fascinating and a work of enormous power. Conroy opens with this:
I have need to bear witness what I saw [at the Institute.] ...I want a murderous, stunning truthfulness. I want to find my own singular voice for the first time. I want you to understand why I hate the school with all my power and passion. Then I want you to forgive me for loving the school. Some of the boys of the Institute and the men who are her sons will hate me for the rest of their lives. But that will be all right. You see, I wear the ring.
The book is murderous and stunning truthfulness. In fact, this reader is left wondering if the story really did happen, as Conroy attended the Citadel during the same years described in the book. In the "Author's Note," Conroy notes that the work is fiction and he is trying to write a story about the idea of a military school. After interviewing many from schools all over the country, he presents the idea in amazing fashion. There is certainly a mystique to the work that leaves the reader wondering if it is true.
Without giving too much away, Conroy brings us into the life of rebel Will McLean and his struggles through the Institute. Vivid descriptions of Charleston invade the text, with the beautiful plantation style houses described in several passages. The plebe year is presented in a terrifying manner, as the hazing is discussed in wretched detail after another. Out of 700 entering freshmen, 100 would leave the first week and 300 by the end of the year.
In the end, this novel of heartbreak, politics (Vietnam), pride, betrayal, and intrigue is a true winner. I recommend this one to all. |
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1 Total 1 pages 8 items |
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