“Wholeness. It all comes back. It’s all a circle.”–Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides
Pat Conroy’s 1986 masterwork The Prince of Tides is the quintessential lowcountry novel, beloved by millions as their point of entrance into the lush southern geography, lyrical voice, and complex interweaving of fact and fiction which define the author’s literary legacy.
Join Pat Conroy Literary Center executive director Jonathan Haupt and USC Beaufort English professor and Writer in Residence Ellen Malphrus for a book club discussion of the novel, its major themes, its 1991 Academy Award-nominated film adaptation, its place in the Conroy literary canon, and its lasting impact on lowcountry literature and lore.
This event will be held at the Port Royal Sound Foundation Maritime Center (310 Okatie Hwy) on Tuesday, September 9, at 3:00-4:30 p.m. Attendees are encourage to read or re-read the novel prior to the event to better facilitate the book club discussion. $10/person. To register, visit portroyalsoundfoundation.org and click the orange "Book A Program" button.
About Our Presenters
Jonathan Haupt is the executive director of the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center, the past director of the University of South Carolina Press, and co-editor of the anthology Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy, winner of 17 book awards. He is a frequent guest book reviewer for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Charleston Post and Courier. Under Jonathan's leadership, the Conroy Center has been recognized as an American Library Association Literary Landmark, an affiliate of the American Writers Museum, and winner of the Civitas Award for Tourism Leadership.
Dr. Ellen Malphrus is a professor of English and the Writer in Residence at the University of South Carolina Beaufort, where she was honored as the 2022 Professor of the Year. Malphrus is the author of the novel Untying the Moon, a contributing writer to Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy, and the author of poetry, creative prose, and scholarly work published in Poetry South, Haight Ashbury Review, Natural Bridge, James Dickey Review, Southern Literary Journal, William & Mary Review, Blue Mountain Review, Fall Lines, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Weber—the Contemporary West, and Literature: Reading and Writing with Critical Strategies.
About The Prince of Tides (from the publisher):
Set in New York City and the low country of South Carolina, The Prince of Tides opens when Tom, a high school football coach whose marriage and career are crumbling, flies from South Carolina to New York after learning of his twin sister’s suicide attempt. Savannah is one of the most gifted poets of her generation, and both the cadenced beauty of her art and the jumbled cries of her illness are clues to the too-long-hidden story of her wounded family. In the paneled offices and luxurious restaurants of New York City, Tom and Susan Lowenstein, Savannah’s psychiatrist, unravel a history of violence, abandonment, commitment, and love. And Tom realizes that trying to save his sister is perhaps his last chance to save himself.
With passion and a rare gift of language, Pat Conroy moves from present to past, tracing the amazing history of the Wingos from World War II through the final days of the war in Vietnam and into the 1980s, drawing a rich range of characters: the lovable, crazy Mr. Fruit, who for decades has wordlessly directed traffic at the same intersection in the southern town of Colleton; Reese Newbury, the ruthless, patrician land speculator who threatens the Wingos’ only secure worldly possession, Melrose Island; Herbert Woodruff, Susan Lowenstein’s husband, a world-famous violinist; Tolitha Wingo, Savannah’s mentor and eccentric grandmother, the first real feminist in the Wingo family.
Pat Conroy reveals the lives of his characters with surpassing depth and power, capturing the vanishing beauty of the South Carolina low country and a lost way of life.
You may also like the following events from Pat Conroy Literary Center:
- Next Thursday, 14th August, 06:00 pm, Open Mic Night--Featuring Novelist Michael Spake, Author of Life Close to the Bone in Beaufort
- This month, 23rd August, 04:30 pm, Silent Book Club Beaufort in Beaufort
- This month, 25th August, 06:00 pm, Pat Conroy: An Introduction to a Lowcountry Legend in Beaufort
Also check out other
Arts events in Port Royal,
Literary Art events in Port Royal,
Sports events in Port Royal.
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