The Great Santini

As anyone who knows me would know, growing up the movie and the book The Great Santini were hugely influential in my life and in my family. I have literally seen the movie and read the book dozens of times.  In shop class, in the seventh grade, I made a wooden plaque with The Great Santini written on it that still hangs in my dad's kitchen.  All of this is a long way of saying that there is a great article about the book's author Pat Conroy on espn.com.  Read it.  Also, read the book and see the movie.  That is all.

things i didn't know about something i thought i knew all about*

Burroughs and Kerouac wrote a book together in 1945.  I am a huge fan of the Beat writers so I am surprised I had not heard of this book.  Apparently it was not very good.

None of these one-dimensional slackers are remotely interesting as individuals, but together they give the reader a sense of the seedy, artsy world Kerouac and Burroughs inhabited in New York during the war years. And so these, really, are the only reasons to read this undistinguished book: for the period picture it provides of the city — think of Billy Wilder’s “Lost Weekend” crossed with Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks” — and for the semi-autobiographical glimpses it offers of the two writers before they found their voices and became bohemian brand names.

*alternate title: I should read the NYT more or I will lose my cultural-elistist-amerikkkahating card.