1995 novel by Pat Conroy
Beach Music is Pat Conroy's novel about Jack McCall, a South Carolina native who flees the South with his daughter Leah after his wife commits suicide. This novel explores the Vietnam War-era, the Holocaust, and coming of age in the 20th century. It was published in 1995.
Plot introduction
Jack McCall, an American living in Rome with his daughter, is trying to find peace after the recent trauma of his wife's suicide, but his search for solitude is disturbed when a telegram from a family member summons Jack back to South Carolina to be with his ailing mother. He begins to explore his past and all its demons, as well as a new mystery: His sister-in-law and two school friends invite Jack to help them track down another classmate who went underground as a Vietnam protester and never resurfaced. As Jack begins a journey that encompasses the past and the present in both Europe and the American South, he also begins a quest that will lead him to shocking truths—and ultimately to catharsis, acceptance and maturity.
Writing and publication
Conroy began writing Beach Music as a way of coping with his own mother's death in 1984. Ten years later, he submitted 2,100 typed pages to Doubleday editor Nan A. Talese. With Conroy's consent and help, she trimmed it into a much shorter version. The book reached the top position on the New York Times Best Seller list.[1] Paramount Pictures purchased the rights for $5.1 million, but as of 2015[update], still hasn't made it into a movie.[2] Scripts were written (and rewritten several times), and Brad Pitt was at one point offered the part.[3] Interviewed in 2009, Conroy said the film plans are "still hanging out there."[4]
Themes
Like The Prince of Tides, Conroy's earlier novel, Beach Music deals with "picking away at life's wounds with a sharp wit".[5]
Some other (potentially controversial) themes in the novel include:
Setting
Setting holds as much importance in Beach Music as its themes, or even the main character, Jack McCall. Pat Conroy acknowledged in an interview that the perception that he is "the product of a single landscape is actually false".[6] As a military kid, Conroy moved often and lived in Rome, Italy for three years before finding his longest lasting home in Beaufort, South Carolina. Both of these locales hold great significance for Jack McCall in Beach Music. He runs from the traditions and his past in the southern atmosphere of South Carolina, and seeks refuge in the food and travel of Rome, Italy.
Waterford, South Carolina represents all that Jack wishes to forget, namely his wife, Shyla's, suicidal jump off Silas Pearman Bridge.
Rome, Italy represents the shield Jack uses to protect his daughter Leah from their family's tumultuous past, as well as his own discomfort with dealing with that past.
