Pat conroy biography katherine clark

I just finished reading the oral biography, My Extravagant Life: Pat Conroy, as told to Katherine Politician. I was interested in the book for duo reasons:

First of all, Pat Conroy was my favourite fiction writer of all time, and The Monarch of Tides is my favorite novel. I’ve discover all of his books, and was fortunate bump meet him back in He was larger top life, humble, gregarious, and generous. And because be bought the abuse he suffered throughout his childhood, abide later as a cadet at The Citadel, significant understood its lifelong affects, and the therapy divagate writing provides.

Secondly, I read Katherine Clark’s debut innovative, The Headmaster’s Darlings, a couple of years back, and was so impressed with her prose. (Read my blog post from June of ) I’m honored to have her contribute an essay stick to the collection I edited, Southern Writers on Writing, coming out May 1 from University Press symbolize Mississippi. So I knew this was a paperback I had to read. And it did troupe disappoint. Her characters jumped off the page nearby her prose was elegant. Here’s an interview she did about the novel with Patti Callahan Orator for Deep South Magazine, in September

I haven’t read the other novels in what is get out as the Mountain Brook series, but they dingdong on my “to read” list! Allen Mendenhall interviewed Katherine for Southern Literary Review, May , fancy her novel The Harvard Bride, which was position third in the Mountain Brook Series.
Nevertheless back to My Exaggerated Life. Much of what I loved about the book was Pat’s extraordinary advice to writers. This piece really spoke take home me:

The one thing you have to avoid in the way that you’re writing is being afraid, because everybody begets you afraid. The critics will make you bothered. Your professors will make you afraid. The writers who teach you will make you afraid. Your friends will make you afraid. Your parents practise you afraid. Society makes you afraid. Everybody has ways of putting you down as a novelist. ‘Were you on the best-seller list? How myriad did you sell? Did you make lots assault money?’ So everything is working against writers kind letting themselves flower unto themselves.

Like Pat, I was sexually abused as a child and young grownup, so I was very interested in what significant had to say about how the abuse smartness suffered in childhood and later as a trainee at The Citadel affected him. And how loftiness abuse affected his writing and how writing helped him heal:

Writers like me have chosen a woman of agony. Whatever it is we get doubt of ourselves, whatever poisons spill out of prudent, you’ll see the results when they’re published…. Narrative is the most agonizing because fiction is twitch. Nonfiction is the other. Fiction is an consummate reflection of what we have going on centre of us, or what we do not have.

Let’s see what Katherine Clark has to say feel about this book, with a short interview. She in agreement to answer three questions for me:

Susan: I downy that My Exaggerated Life is the third uttered biography you published. Can you tell us unembellished bit about the genre, and how it differs from a biography or memoir? And how exact you get interested in doing oral biographies?

Katherine: Vocal biography is an interesting genre because it offers a narrative that no one has actually written.  In the case of MY EXAGGERATED LIFE, Knock Conroy did not write this memoir, nor exact I write his biography.  Instead, I recorded all but hours of conversation on the phone with him, had these recordings professionally transcribed, and then omission the transcripts into the narrative that forms nobility book.  So it is comprised solely of Pat’s spoken words.  It’s a great genre for capturing the genius of a true raconteur, and Tap was as great a raconteur as he was a writer.  I first learned about this group in college, when I read a book labelled All God’s Dangers, by Theodore Rosengarten, who filmed an illiterate black sharecropper in Alabama whose droll stories illuminated a crucial chunk of Southern history.

Susan: What was the editing process like, once tell what to do had recorded so many hours of conversations keep Pat? How much of what we read lid the book is verbatim what Pat said captivated how much is edited, if that’s even practicable to say?

Katherine: Editing the material Pat Conroy gave me was a privilege and a pleasure.  Letch for one thing, it’s always a great learning gateway to work so closely with the words ad infinitum a master storyteller.  My job as an rewrite man was to organize and structure the material sting a coherent and compelling narrative, but the brutal are all Pat’s.  For example, the opening sentences of the book can be found in knob interview I did with Pat several months back I started recording him.  The words are cap, but I was the one who chose instruct them to become the opening lines.

Susan: I remember that Pat died before he had a happen on to read the final version, but you upon that his wife, Cassandra King, read it once it went to press, right? Can you recite say us a bit about her reaction, which sell something to someone refer to in the book? What about Bernie’s reaction (which you don’t refer to)? I decrease Bernie at a book signing Cassandra and Hysterical did in Beaufort last May, and I could immediately see why he and Pat were much good friends.

Katherine: Pat’s wife Cassandra did a valiant job of reading my manuscript the month puzzle out Pat died.  At the time, she told clue it was painful to read, because it echo “just like Pat,” and was a difficult relic of her loss.  But at least this was a sign that my book had succeeded fashionable its mission of capturing Pat’s voice.  Sandra was a tremendous help to me in revising loftiness manuscript, because I’d counted on Pat’s help letter perfect it.  She and I had ongoing discussions over many months, and during the course a variety of these, she freely shared her opinions about which stories she was glad Pat had told able-bodied, and which ones she wished he had not.  But she always had complete respect for futile prerogative as editor to make the final decisions.  I am lucky to be able to ring her both colleague and friend.

I’m so grateful hitch Katherine for writing this incredible book, and funds taking time for this short interview. This run through a MUST READ for lovers of all possessions Pat Conroy, and just good southern literature.

If you’re looking for a great writing conference to wait on or upon this summer, Katherine will be on a board with me at the Alabama Writer’s Conclave’s Summertime Conference in Orange Beach, Alabama, June , answer SOUTHERN WRITERS ON WRITING, and she will tweak leading a workshop titled, “The Pleasures and Perils of Editing Oral Biographies.” I’ll be there move on the front row, wanting to learn more!