Some readers would say that it's incredibly easy to label Pat Conroy as a Southern writer -- another Eudora Welty, William Faulkner or Margaret Mitchell. Yes, both "My Losing Season" and "Lords of Discipline" take place at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. Yes, "Beach Music" takes place in Waterford (Beaufort), South Carolina (and "The Prince of Tides" was even filmed on location there for the Hollywood version). And yes, "The Water is Wide" takes place on Daufuskie Island, again off the South Carolina coast. This is the Carolina Lowcountry -- salt marshes, live oaks, Spanish moss and Southern hospitality. Perhaps Conroy can be labeled as a Southern writer, one firmly entrenched in his own birthplace. Or is he?
Far from growing up in South Carolina, Conroy lived across the country (mostly the Atlantic seaboard -- Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina) as the oldest son of a Marine fighter pilot. And his novels are just as much about this relationship with his father as they are about anything else. Proclaiming his parents to be the original "Zeus and Hera," Conroy's childhood was far from picturesque,and his novels bring this across as loudly as possible. "The Prince of Tides" reverberates with the anger of a violent father, as does much of "Beach Music." "My Losing Season," in full-blown autobiographical form, has Conroy's father calling his son s-- after every game he attends. "My Great Santini" is very literally the fictionalized version of his Marine father -- this book sealed his mother's case in the divorce proceedings.
So Conroy is both of these things -- a Southern writer and one who cannot seem to leave his own childhood, regardless of the town. Known for his nearly autobiographical fiction (and his two labeled autobiographies: "The Water is Wide" and "My Losing Season"), Conroy is nothing if not a teller of his own tales. It's all there: the tendencies toward insanity in his brothers and sisters, his father's brutality and his intense and conflicted relationship with the Vietnam War and the United States.
And this -- Conroy's insistence upon his own past -- is also generally considered his greatest strength. After all, writing with passion, with an emotion unusual for most modern writers, must be easier when you know the sensation yourself.
-- Christie Harner
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