Pat Conroy on the Books and People That Shaped His Writing Career

Publication date:  11/2/2010

6 LINKcat copies on order

13 holds placed

Link to October 17 Charlotte Observer article, "Conroy piles praises on his literary mentors".

Excerpt:   For his fans, much of the pleasure of reading Pat Conroy is in the lush, exuberant prose he himself terms "overcaffeinated." For them, these 15 essays about the people and books that have made up the author's reading (and by extension, writing) life will be especially welcome because they lend themselves to being taken up separately, at leisure, and savored like a rich dessert.

When Conroy likes something or someone, his praise is as lavish as his prose. His most eloquent accolades go to his mother, a voracious reader who instilled in him her belief that "books contained powerful amulets that could lead to paths of certain wisdom."

Stealthily at first, she matched her small son's catches from the nearby woods with library books "oversized and swimming with photographs of creatures with their claws extended and their fangs bared."


One chapter is devoted to Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel, which as Conroy describes it, took full possession of me in a way no book has before or since.  

I experienced a similar reaction while reading this book in college.  One of my professors, however, thought I have taken leave of my senses when I shared this opinion with him.