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Fast Facts
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Pat's books (especially The Prince of Tides) have inspired a number of hit songs by Jimmy Buffet, Barbara Streisand, and The Drifters.
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Most people are familiar with the film adaptation of The Prince of Tides, but The Lords of Discipline, The Great Santini, and The Water is Wide were also made into movies.
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Pat's mother allegedly showed The Great Santini (an autobiographical look at growing up with an abusive father) to the judge during the divorce proceedings with her husband.
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Pat attended The Citadel Military Academy; growing up in a military environment had a large effect on him.
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Bio
Pat Conroy was born on October 26, 1945, in Atlanta, Georgia, to a young career military officer from Chicago and a Southern beauty from Alabama, whom Pat often credits for his love of language. He was the first of seven children.
Since the family had to move many times to different military bases around the South, Pat changed schools frequently, finally attending the Citadel Military Academy in Charleston, South Carolina, upon his father's insistence. While still a student, he wrote and then published his first book, The Boo, a tribute to a beloved teacher.
After graduation, Conroy taught English in Beaufort, where he met and married a young woman with two children, a widow of the Vietnam War. He then accepted a job teaching underprivileged children in a one-room schoolhouse on Daufuskie Island, a remote island off the South Carolina shore. After a year, Pat was fired for his unconventional teaching practices--such as his unwillingness to allow corporal punishment of his students--and for his general lack of respect for the school's administration. Conroy evened the score when he exposed the racism and appalling conditions his students endured with publication of The Water is Wide in 1972. The book won Conroy a humanitarian award from the National Education Association and was made into the feature film Conrack, starring Jon Voight.
Pat Conroy moved to Atlanta, where he wrote The Great Santini, published in 1976. This autobiographical work, later made into a powerful film starring Robert Duvall, explored the conflicts of his childhood, particularly his confusion over his love and loyalty to an abusive and often dangerous father.
The Citadel became the subject of his next novel, The Lords of Discipline, published in 1980. The novel exposed the school's harsh military discipline, racism, and sexism. This book, too, was made into a film.
Pat moved from Atlanta to Rome where he began The Prince of Tides, which, when published in 1986, became his most successful book. Reviewers immediately acknowledged Conroy as a master storyteller and a poetic and gifted prose stylist. This novel has become one of the most beloved novels of modern time. With over five million copies in print, it has earned Conroy an international reputation. The Prince of Tides was made into a highly successful feature film directed by Barbra Streisand, who also starred in the film opposite Nick Nolte, whose performance won him an Oscar nomination.
Beach Music, Conroy's sixth book and his first novel since The Prince of Tides, tells the story of Jack McCall, an American who moves to Rome to escape the trauma and painful memory of his young wife's suicidal leap off a bridge in South Carolina. The story takes place in South Carolina and Rome, and then reaches back in time to the Vietnam War and the horrors of the Holocaust.
Pat Conroy divides his time between San Francisco and South Carolina.
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