This is a photo of Fripp Island, South Carolina, taken from a pier that runs out from one of the visitor centers at Hunting Island State Park. This is about as close as a "visitor" can get to Fripp. It's a private island, owned by the residents of the million dollar homes and condoes that make up Fripp Island real estate.
Pat Conroy is one of my favorite writers and a resident of the island. My favorite Conroy book is THE LORDS OF DISCIPLINE. In it Conroy explores the insulated world of the Charleston elite, wealthy old families, who have ways that prevent those who don't belong from becoming part of their society or caste or whatever term of that sort works for you. LORDS OF DISCIPLINE is an intense, insightful, sometimes heartbreaking story, seen through the eyes of Will McLean, a Savannah-born Irish-Catholic cadet at a thinly disguised version of the Citadel. Pat Conroy had graduated from the Citadel, so in my imagination he was, in spirit at least, that brave cadet, who dared defy the entrenched way of things in the novel. Will was the kind of young man that Pat Conroy, who was a true champion of his needy students on the barrier islands where he taught when he was a young man, would have been, if placed in the fictional situation of his own creation. What a great book! I love it!
Where is the South Carolina Irony of my title? It lies in the fact that the author of this wonderful indictment of elitism now makes his home in a most elite community. I am almost certainly being unfair to him. Like everyone, Pat Conroy deserves his privacy, and I'm sure it's a commodity that is often hard for him to come by. I asked myself, if I were financially able, would I own an ocean house on Fripp Island. Believe me, I would love to own a waterfront vacation house somewhere. One of the seaside mansions of places like Fripp Island doesn't appeal to me, though. Give me a little two or three bedroom cottage somewhere on the shore. I wouldn't buy on Fripp Island, if I could! Or would I?
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