Pat Conroy: 'I was raised by Scarlett O'Hara'

Author Pat Conroy

February 4, 2000
Web posted at: 2:09 PM EST (1909 GMT)

By Jonathan D. Austin
CNN.com Books Editor

ATLANTA (CNN) -- Pat Conroy's mother could have been Margaret Mitchell. Or Scarlett O'Hara. At least that's the way she acted.

"My mother saw in 'Gone With the Wind' the text of liberating herself," Conroy says. "She took 'Gone With the Wind' as the central book in her life, and made it the central book in her family."

As a result, Conroy, the best-selling author of "The Prince of Tides" and "Beach Music," says, "I'm the only person you'll meet who was raised by Scarlett O'Hara."

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In the North, those comments might raise, if not eyebrows, at least harrumphs. But Conroy is making these observations in his and Mitchell's hometown, before a packed crowd attending a recent lecture sponsored by the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum.

So he's in friendly territory, and laughter rolls as Conroy tells stories of Mitchell and her characters, Scarlett and Rhett Butler, and Conroy's father, Donald, who was the subject of his son's book, "The Great Santini."

Conroy says Mitchell's classic story of the Civil War South gave his mother a vehicle in which to escape an impoverished background. "My mother turned herself into Scarlett O'Hara" in order to reach a higher social class. "My mother transformed herself into that creature," he said.

So when the day came for Conroy to write a preface to the 60th anniversary edition of "Gone With the Wind," he could ignore neither the South nor his mother:

"To Southerners like my mother, 'Gone With the Wind' was not just a book, it was an answer, a clenched fist raised to the North, an anthem of defiance. If you could not defeat the Yankees on the battlefield, then by God, one of your women could rise from the ashes of humiliation to write more powerfully than the enemy and all the historians and novelists who sang the praises of the Union. The novel was published in 1936, and it still stands as the last great posthumous victory of the Confederacy."

With those words, the Margaret Mitchell estate discovered Conroy's love for the novel, and he was picked to write a sequel to the Mitchell book. But after many months of negotiations -- over content, money, and editorial control -- Conroy walked away from the project and the reported $4.5 million paycheck.

Regardless, he knew what he wanted to do with the book. Conroy was quick to share details of the book that wasn't. Among the tidbits:

-- His book would have been an autobiography of Rhett Butler. "I (would) get to create the secret Civil War of Rhett Butler," he said. "The kind of Civil War that would create the kind of man who would marry Scarlett."

-- He would have killed Scarlett O'Hara while she was still beautiful.

-- The novel's first line? "In Atlanta, most people remember me because of my wife."

"The genius of the (original) novel is they were the mother and father of what Atlanta was going to become," Conroy said. "Would I have written a better novel than Margaret Mitchell? Hell no."

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