"In every one of . . . [novelist Pat] Conroy's big, story-driven Southern books, there has been a father, a son and a holy ghost in the form of an ineffable secret," wrote Tracy Cochran of Publishers Weekly. Conroy has made a cottage in...
Pat Conroy's writing is marked by an obsessive interest in the love/hate relationship and its ensuing tensions. Whether between Citadel cadet and "The Boo," young teacher and school superintendent, or teenage son and "Great Santini," this search for bala...
The Water Is Wide is a 1972 autobiography [1] by Pat Conroy and is based on his work as a teacher on Daufuskie Island, South Carolina, which is called Yamacraw Island in the book. A film adaptation, titled Conrack, was created in 1974, starring Jon...
Benson Bobrick, Wide as the Waters. The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired. New York; Simon & Schuster. 379 pp., $38.50 Can. Bobrick's first chapter, entitled "Morning Star" deals with John Wycliffe, a 14th-century English priest who thought that...
KEY CONCEPTS * Changes in the Practice of Cardiology * New, Emerging Technology * Adapting to Technological Advances in Health Care * The Point at which We Have to Change * The Courage to Cross the Great River ...
He's not much of a stylist and his sense of humor needs work, but Pat Conroy has a nice, wry perspective and a wholehearted commitment to his job. It's a hell of a job and "The Water Is Wide" is a hell of a good story…. Why did Pat Conroy want to go to Yamacraw [Island]? Because he was young and ambitious and he loved teaching. Even more important, he was a do-gooder, enveloped in a "roseate, dawn-like and nauseating glow" at the masochistic prospect of accep...
"They gave me a boat, told me 'Good Luck,' and that was all they told me," Conroy recalls [in "The Water Is Wide"]. Apparently, however, he had a tape recorder in hand and photographers in tow. Conroy's brief sojourn into the life of Yamacraw Island seems to have been a planned "experience," one from which he was determined to garner a book. This is not to negate the experiential value of Conroy's travels into the wilds of the Sea Islands...
Although the circumstances of [the teaching assignment portrayed in The Water Is Wide] were atypical, the lessons [Conroy] taught and the lessons he learned should be known by every novice teacher, for they have universal applicability. Of primary importance is Conroy's evaluation of his entire experience. Unlike those who have chronicled their confrontations with the establishment of urban schools, Conroy expresses the realization that he should have tried to fight the system by working through it, ...
