Readers know Pat Conroy as a novelist of great reputation and success, but his first notable achievement as a writer was an autobiographical book called The Water Is Wide, published in 1972 -- the story of a year in his life as a teacher of poor African-American children on a coastal island in South Carolina. The New York Times called The Water Is Wide "a hell of a good story," and that observation points to one of Conroy's supreme gifts as a writer of fiction -- the ability to craft an irresistible narrative.
In his later novels, Conroy has used details from his own life and experience, though The Water Is Wide is vibrantly told in the first person by Conroy himself. After graduating from The Citadel, Conroy returned to Beaufort, S.C., to teach in the same high school he attended a few years earlier. The time was the late 1960s, and his idealism and his frustration with the complacent world to which he had returned soon inspired him to apply to the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps did not respond, so he impulsively decided to go after an unusual job he had heard about -- teaching virtually illiterate children in an old-fashioned school house on Yamacraw Island, reached only by boat, a sad but lushly beautiful place the 20th century had almost completely bypassed.
Whatever he expected, what Conroy found on Yamacraw was far worse. The school received little in the way of support, financially or otherwise, and the situation forced Conroy to improvise wildly as a teacher. His students never seemed to grasp his name, so he became known as "Conrack." He spent a year teaching on Yamacraw, succeeding sometimes by teasing and cajoling his demoralized students into learning and even getting excited about a world beyond their misery on the island. Inevitably, he was too successful -- his freewheeling methods and exuberant energy alarmed the school authorities, who fired him. The experience clearly transformed Conroy, as it must have transformed the children he taught, though he had few illusions in the end. "Of the Yamacraw children I can say little," he wrote in conclusion, "For them I leave a single prayer: that the river is good to them in the crossing."
The Southern School Superintendent is a kind of remote deity who breathes the purer air of Mount Parnassus. The teachers see him only on those august occasions when they need to be reminded of the nobility of their calling. The powers of a superintendent are considerable. He hires and fires, manipulates the board of education, handles a staggering amount of money, and maintains the precarious existence of the status quo. Beaufort, South Carolina's superintendent Dr. Henry Piedmont, had been in Beaufort for only a year when I went to see him. He had a reputation of being tough, capable, and honest. A friend told me that Piedmont took crap from no man.
I walked into his office, introduced myself, chatted briefly, then told him I wanted to teach on Yamacraw Island. He gave me a hard stare and said, "Son, you are a godsend." I sat in the chair rigidly analyzing my new status. "I have prayed at night," he continued, "for an answer to the problems confronting Yamacraw Island. I have worried myself almost sick. And to think you would walk right into my office and offer to teach those poor colored children on that island. It just goes to show you that God works in mysterious ways."
"I don't know if God had anything to do with it, Doctor. I applied for the Peace Corps and haven't heard. Yamacraw seemed like a viable alternative."
"Son, you can do more good at Yamacraw than you could ever do in the Peace Corps. And you would be helping Americans, Pat. And I, for one, think it's very important to help Americans."
"So do I, Doctor."
We chatted on about the problems of the island. Then he said, "You mentioned that God had nothing to do with your decision to go to Yamacraw, Pat. You remind me of myself when I was your age. Of course, I came up the hard way. My folks worked in a mill. Good people, both of them. Simple people, but God-fearing. My mother was a saint. A saint on earth. I worked in the mill, too. Even after I graduated from college, I went back to the mill in a supervisory capacity. But I wasn't happy, Pat. Something was missing. One night I was working late at the mill. I stepped outside the mill and looked up at the stars. I went toward the edge of the forest and fell to my knees. I prayed to Jesus and asked him what he wanted me to do in my life. And do you know what?"
"No, sir, what?"
Then Dr. Piedmont leaned forward in his seat, his eyes transformed with spiritual intensity.
"He told me what to do that very night. He told me, 'Henry, leave the mill. Go into education and help boys to go to college. Help them to be something. Go back to school, Henry, and get an advanced degree.' So I went to Columbia University, one of the great universities of the world. I emerged with a doctorate. I was the first boy from my town who was ever called Doctor."
I added wittily, "That's nice, Doctor."
"You remind me of that boy I was, Pat. Do you know why you came to me today?"
"Yes, sir, I want to teach at Yamacraw."
"No, son. Do you know the real reason?'
"No, sir, I guess I don't."
"Jesus,' he said, as if .......
Synopsis
A young schoolteacher struggles to bring literacy and self-respect to a black backwoods South Carolina school in this affecting work. An early, semi-autobiographical novel by the author of THE LORDS OF DISCIPLINE and THE PRINCE OF TIDES Filmed, as CONRACK in 1974 by Martin Ritt with Jon Voight and Paul Winfield.
About the Author
The novelist Pat Conroy's life and personal experience are so inextricably bound up with his writing that, at first glance, it might seem that he is merely retelling the story of his life, again and again. The truth is, as usual, far more complicated and interesting. Significant elements and characters in his novels are obviously drawn from his life, a choice that apparently has created tremendous tension in his family. But these facts are merely points of departure for the author, who has a gift that is perhaps the most desirable and elusive of all for any novelist -- the ability to spin an unforgettable story.
Conroy was born in 1945 in Atlanta, the eldest of seven children and the son of Col. Donald Conroy, a man not unlike the hero of "The Great Santini." He attended The Citadel, the South Carolina military academy that inspired the setting for The Lords of Discipline, and briefly taught school on an island off the South Carolina coast, an experience recounted in The Water Is Wide. The fallout from his life with his family seems to have inspired Conroy to create deeply compelling stories of vivid characters searching for love and fulfillment. These tales are invariably rooted in the infernal complexities and often dark realities of Southern tradition, notably in The Lords of Discipline and The Prince of Tides. The death of his mother -- a crafty Southern woman who chose to be called Peggy, after the author of "Gone With the Wind" -- led him to write his most recent novel "Beach Music." Though Conroy's books have created publicized rifts within his own family, they stand on their own with the public and most critics, having been embraced by a faithful and ever-growing readership and inspiring popular film adaptations. "Misfortune," Garry Abrams wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "has been good to novelist Pat Conroy."
