{"product_id":"understanding-pat-conroy-9781611175462","title":"Understanding Pat Conroy","description":"\u003cp\u003ePat Conroy's work as a novelist and a memoirist has indelibly shaped the image of the American South in the cultural imagination. His writing has rendered the physical landscape of the South Carolina lowcountry familiar to legions of readers, and it has staked out a more complex geography as well, one defined by domestic trauma, racial anxiety, religious uncertainty, and cultural ambivalence. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eIn Understanding Pat Conroy, \u003c\/i\u003e Catherine Seltzer engages in a sustained consideration of Conroy and his work. The study begins with a sketch of Conroy's biography, a narrative that, while fascinating in its own right, is employed here to illuminate many of the motifs and characters that define his work and to locate him within southern literary tradition. The volume then moves on to explore each of Conroy's major works, tracing the evolution of the themes within and among each of his novels, including \u003ci\u003eThe Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, The Prince of Tides, Beach Music, \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eSouth of Broad, \u003c\/i\u003e and his memoirs, among them \u003ci\u003eThe Water Is Wide\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eMy Losing Season.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSeltzer's insightful close readings of Conroy's work are supplemented by interviews and archival material, shedding new light on the often-complex dynamics between text and context in Conroy's oeuvre. More broadly \u003ci\u003eUnderstanding Pat Conroy\u003c\/i\u003e also explores the ways that Conroy delights in troubling the boundaries that circumscribe the literary establishment. Seltzer links Conroy's work to existing debates about the contemporary American canon, and, like Conroy's work itself, \u003ci\u003eUnderstanding Pat Conroy\u003c\/i\u003e will be of interest to his readers, students of American literature, and new and veteran South watchers.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eCatherine Seltzer, \u003c\/b\u003ean associate professor of English and women's studies at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, is the author of \u003ci\u003eElizabeth Spencer's Complicated Cartographies: Reimagining Home, the South, and Southern Literary Production.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"University of South Carolina Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50359915774226,"sku":"9781611175462","price":22.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_079ca683-e5b9-41b1-abb4-f3876b924fa7.jpg?v=1728359035","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/understanding-pat-conroy-9781611175462","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}