| Researcher | Author: Title | |
| Lisa French | Conroy, Pat: The Prince of Tides | |
| Assignment 1: Bibliographic Description | ||
| 1. First Edition Publication Information | Publisher- Houghton Mifflin Company Place- Boston Date- 1986 | |
| 2. First Edition in Cloth, Paper, or Both? | Brownish-gray board cover with blue cloth spine that meets the board at approximately one inch from the spine on both the front and back of the book. Cloth spine is a dotted-line grain. The title of the book is impressed on the front of the cover board. | |
| 3. Image of Cover Art | A1319980216132204.jpg | |
| 4. Pagination | 290 leaves, pp.i-x xi-xiii, 1-567. | |
| 5. Edited and/or Introduced? | Edited by Nan Talese. | |
| 6. Illustrated? | Dust jacket illustration by Wendell Minor. Dust jacket is covered in protective mylar. | |
| 8. General Appearance | The book is well-presented. The typography is readable. The typeface is serif. The lines are well spaced. The book is well-printed. On the right side of the book, there is a faint blue line across the edges of the paper. The cover board is slightly bent on the upper right corner of the front side. | |
| 9. Image of Sample Chapter Page | A1919980216132204.jpg | |
| 10. Description of Paper | The paper is very durable and thick enough that the words on the opposite side of the page do not seem to seep through. The book is in excellent condition.But that would be expected since the copy I examined resides in Alderman Special Collections where few hands ever touch its pages. | |
| 11. Description of Binding | Muslin lining of cloth that is reinforced by an outer shell of cloth. The pages are glued to the binding. | |
| 12. Title Page Transcription | The | Prince | of | Tides | [four diamonds serve to separate the title from the author's name; the left side of the diamonds are shaded black] | PAT | CONROY | HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY/BOSTON/1986 | |
| 13. Image of Title Page | A11319980216132204.jpg | |
| 14. Manuscript Holdings | None specified. | |
| Assignment 2: Publication History | ||
| 1. Other Editions: | The original publisher issued the book in hardcover only. | |
| 4. First Edition printings or impressions? | Houghton Mifflin printed 250,000 copies of the first edition in 1986. | |
| 5. Editions from other publishers? | Bantam Doubleday Dell printed the paperback edition in 1987. Quality paperback books printed a special paper back for their book club. | |
| 6. Last date in print? | Houghton Mifflin still prints the hardcover edition. Bantam Doubleday Dell still prints paperbacks. (This information is valid as of April 1998). | |
| 7. Total copies sold? | Houghton Mifflin's Marketing Director Clay Harper said the lifetime sales for the hardcover edition is 240,000 copies (as of 2-20-98). Bantam Doubleday Dell refused to release the number of total copies sold (Publicity Staff Member Mic helle Toler: 2-20-98). | |
| 8. Sales by year? | Houghton Mifflin's Marketing Director Clay Harper said, on average, they sell between 1,800 and 3,000 copies of the hardcover edition per year (as of 2-20-98). Both Houghton Mifflin and Bantam Doubleday Dell refused to release s ales figures. But Clay Harper did give me information about the number of copies produced during each printing of the hardcover (2-20-98). 1st 250,000 2nd 50,000 3rd 45,000 4th 2,500 5th 2,500 6th 5,000 7th 3,500 8th 1,500 9th 5,000 10th 2,000 | |
| 9. Advertising copy: | The first advertisements I was able to locate appeared in The New York Times during the last week of September in 1986. Houghton Mifflin's Marketing Director Clay Harper said his company will normally begin advertising with The New York Times. Then they place advertisements in other newspapers like The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the San Francisco Chronicle. In the Wingo Family, love is truly a matter of life and death. | THE PRINCE OF TIDES| A NOVEL | PAT CONROY | AUTHOR OF THE GREAT SANTINI | Houghton Mifflin Company | IMMEDIATE BESTSELLER! | 350,000 IN PRINT PRIOR TO PUBLICATION The Wingo Family may just break your heart -- they're sure to steal it. | THE PRINCE OF TIDES | A NOVEL | PAT CONROY | AUTHOR OF THE GREAT SANTINI | Houghton Mifflin Company | At your bookstore now! | |
| 11. Other promotion? | Clay Harper said Houghton Mifflin sent Pat Conroy "on a huge author tour," during which Harper said Conroy became friends with many book sellers. He hit between 15 and 20 cities, making public appearances. Harper said he visited the Today Show and Good Morning America. | |
| 12. Performances in other media? | Movie, 1991, The Prince of Tides by United Artists. | |
| 13. Translations? | Yes. I am waiting to hear back from the Houghton Mifflin's Subsidiary Rights department for the names of the foreign publishers. | |
| 14. Serialization? | N/A. | |
| 15. Sequels or Prequels? | N/A. | |
| Assignment 3: Brief Biography | ||
| Peg Conroy gave birth to her white son on October 26, 1945 in Atlanta, Georgia. His father Don Conroy was a military officer from Chicago. His father job forced the family to move around quite a bit. Conroy attended 11 different schools in 12 years. He is the oldest of seven children. In 1967, he graduated from Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina with a B.A. He married Barbara Bolling in 1969 with whom he had a daughter, Megan. Barbara had two other daughters, Jessica and Melissa, by a previous marriage. Pat and Barbara divorced in 1977. On March 21, 1981, he remarried. Lenore Gurewitz is his second wife, and Conroy says she "hung the moon" on the dedication page of The Prince of Tides. Lenore gave Conroy two stepchildren: Gregory and Emily. They also parented a daughter together, Susannah. Conway currently has two residencies -- one in Rome and one in San Fransisco. He published his first book, The Boo,in 1970 at the age of 25. Other works include The Water is Wide (1972), The Great Santini (1976), The Lords of Discipline (1980), The Prince of Tides (1986), and Beach Music (1997). His editor is Nan Talese whom he refers to as "a splendid editor and a woman of uncommon beauty" in The Prince of Tides. I was unable to find the location of his papers. | ||
| Assignment 4 | ||
| Contemporary Reception: | ||
| When Houghton Mifflin first published Pat Conroy's The Prince of Tides, critics, for the most part, were impressed, but a little overwhelmed by the "heavy-handed, inflated plot" (NY Times 1986)driving the Wingo family saga. Kyle Kulish of UPI referred to The Prince as a "massive work" that is "slow to build but ... a story that is hard to put down." Judy Bass of the Chicago Tribune credited The Prince as a "brilliant novel that ultimately affirms life, hope and the belief that one's future need not be contaminated by a monstrous past." Critic after critic praises the detailed picture Conroy paints not just of Southern landscapes, but of "the Southern Way" as well. But The Prince did not please all its critics. Richard Eder of The Los Angeles Times said The Prince was overdone: "Inflation is the order of the day. The characters do too much, feel too much, suffer too much, eat too much, signify too much and above all, talk too much." And while Brigitte Weeks generally enjoyed the novel, she felt "at times Conroy's intensity and gift for the nightmarishly grotesque become almost overpowering." But she regards Conroy as the creator of "a world full of passion, taking the reader into the soft inner souls of his characters." Perhaps one of the main reasons critics (even those who were unnerved by the violence and exaggeration of The Prince) were drawn to Conroy's tale of rape, abuse and secrets is because it is semi-autobiographical. People, by nature, wonder about the lives of those around them. In The Prince, Conroy opens the door to his past. Anyone is welcome to look in. "Powerful" -- UPI "A masterpiece that can compare with Steinback's East of Eden ... Some books make you laugh; some make you cry; some make you think. The Prince of Tides is a rarity: It does all three." -- Detroit Free Press "A big sprawling saga of a novel, the kind Steinback used to write, the kind John Irving keeps writing, the kind you can hole up with and spend some days with and put down feeling that you've emerged from a terrible, wonderful spell." -- San Francisco Chronicle "Compulsively readable" -- Glamour "A seductive narrative, told with bravado, flourishes, portentous foreshadowing, sardonic humor and eloquent turns of phrase ... For sheer storytelling finesse, Conroy will have few rivals." -- Publishers Weekly. Schickel, Richard. "The prince of tides." Time v.138. 30 Dec 1991. Rozen, Leah. "The prince of tides." People Weekly v.36. 23 Dec 1991. p.18-9. Sanz, Cynthia. "Ring out the belles." People Weekly v.36. 16 Sept 1991. p.101-2. Toolan, David. "The unfinished boy and his pain." Commonweal v.118. 22 Feb 1991 p.127-31. Sweeting, Paul. "A view from a bridge." Publishers' Weekly v.233. 22 Apr 1988 p.53-4. "The Prince of Tides." Ladies' Home Journal v.104. Jan 1987 p.109-13. Koenig, Rhoda. "The Prince of Tides." New York v.19. 27 Oct 1985 p.135-6. Godwin, Gail. "The Prince of Tides." The New York Times Book Review v.91. 12 Oct 1986 p.14. PW Interviews. Publishers Weekly v.230. 5 Sept 1986 p.85-6. Ryan, Walter and William, G. "The Prince of Tides." The American Journal of Psychiatry v.144. Dec 1987 p.1609-10. Weeks, Brigitte. "Pat Conroy: Into the Heart of a Family." The Washington Post 12 Oct. 1996: X1. Godwin, Gail. "Romancing the Shrink." The New York Times 12 Oct. 1986: Section 7, Page 14, Column 1. Eder, Richard. "Richard Eder: The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy. Los Angeles Times 19 Oct. 1986: Book Review, Page 3. Bass, Judy. "A Prince of Pain." Chicago Tribune 19 Oct. 1986: Page 3, Zone C. "Book Reviews." United Press International 21 Oct. 1986: BC Cycle. | ||
| Subsequent Reception: | ||
| Eight years after the original publication of Pat Conroy's The Prince of Tides, the book's name keeps popping up in reviews. It is "often considered his finest work" (Boardwalk Bookstore 1997). With the release of Conroy's most recent book Beach Music (1995), many critics are using The Prince as the standard of measurement for Conroy's new work. The general consensus among critics is that it would be difficult to surpass the quality and success of The Prince. But these same critics recognize that there is a common theme in these two novels: "picking away at life's wounds with a sharp wit" (Marlowe July). And The Prince is not only used as a comparison for his own novels, but for other Southern writers as well. In a 1996 interview about her book Bastard out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison responded to a question about Pat Conroy with "Ahhh! He's the real thing" (Strong 1996). The Prince also has been referred to in several speeches in which the speaker quoted a passage about teachers or education. Even Bill Clinton remembers The Prince fondly enough to list it among his five favorite books of all time along with such books as Lloyd C. Douglas' The Robe and James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans (Who Reads What? 1994). But if you're looking for someone who felt Beach Music surpassed its predecessor The Prince, read Michael Harris' review in The Los Angeles Times from June 25, 1995 at http://www.west.net/~phantm/beach1.html. Regardless of which Conroy novel critics find most appealing, as an author, critics regard him as "one of America's foremost storytellers" (On-Line Bookshlf 1995).Print Articles Lane, Robert C. "Incomplete mourning, betrayal, and revenge in the Prince of Tides: Erotic countertransference in the Cinema." Journal of contemporary psychotherapy v.25 no.2 p.123. 1995. Harris, Mark. "Books." Entertainment Weekly. 1995 Jun 30 p.92. White, Robert A. "Pat Conroy's 'gutter language:' Prince of Tides in a lowcountry high school." English Journal v.81. Apr 1992 p.18-22. Shapiro, Susan. The Washington Times 5 Jan 1922: Part B Page 8. Fry, Donn. "A Novel Season -- Fall Book List Includes Joseph Heller, Danielle Steel, But Not Pat Conroy." The Seattle Times 4 Sept 1994: M1. Smith, Stephen. "Flawless hero finds happiness, of course." Toronto Star Newspapers 5 Aug 1995: H13. Spafford, Roz. "Land, Water and Memory." The San Francisco Chronicle 25 Jun 1995: 1. Caldwell, Gail. "Flood Tide." The Boston Globe 25 Jun 1995: 48. Abeel, Erica. "You can go home again." Newsday 9 Jul 1995: 34. Marlowe, Kimberly. "Southern Saga -- Conroy's 'Beach Music' Another Dark Journey Home." The Seattle Times 16 Jul 1995: M2. Dunford, Judith. "The Ties that Bind." Chicago Tribune 16 Jul 1995: Page 3 Zone C. Smith, Stephen. "Flawless hero finds happiness, of course." The Toronto Star 5 Aug 1995: H13. Horn, Gill. "Southern fried spaghetti." The Times 3 Feb 1996: Features. Thornburn, Adam. "Dark secrets in 'The Prince of Tides'." The Humanist v.17. May/Jun 1992. p.50-1. Wolf, Schneider. "Pat Conroy draws on his own life." American Film v.17. Jan/Feb 1992 pp. 50-1. "Pat Conroy." Bon Appetit v.40. Dec 1995 p.186. Berendt, John. "The Conroy Saga." Vanity Fair v.58. July 1995 p.108-13. Castro, Peter. "Pat Conroy." People Weekly v.44. 14 Aug 1995 p.55. McCormick, Patrick T. "Shame: to thine own self be cruel." U.S. Catholic v.57. Sept 1992 p.34-5. Simon, John. "The prince of tides." National Review v.44. 17 Feb 1992 p.55-7. Travers, Peter. "The prince of tides." Rolling Stones 9 Jan 1992. p.55.Online Articles Budman, Matthew. "Pat Conroy's 'Beach Music' is powerful but ponderous." Jewish Bulletin of Northern California Online 16 Nov 1997. http://www.shamash.org/jb/bk950811/etbeach.htm "Pat Conroy negotiating to write next sequel to 'Gone with the Wind.'" Atlanta Journal Constitution and Associated Press 5 Feb 1998. http://www.accessatlanta.com/news/1998/01/23/gwtw.html Sheppard, R.Z. "First-person portentous: Pat Conroy weighs in on crab dinners and the Holocaust." Time Domestic 26 Feb 1998. http://www.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/archive/1995/950626/950626.books.conroy.html Shone, Tom. "Beach Music by Pat Conroy." Books Unbound 23 Nov 1997. http://www.fusiondesign.com/books_unbound/bchmusic.htm Boardwalk Store. 16 Jul 1997. http://www.jerseyboardwalk.com/book2.htm Tuttle, Kate. "Beach Music by Pat Conroy." The Boston Book Review 1 Aug 1995. http://www.bookwire.com/bbr/BookInfo.Author$425 Dreifus, Erika. "Quill bests: Novel reading while the shrink's away. The Boston Book Review 1 Aug 1995. http://www.bookwire.com/bbr/BookInfo.Author$425 E! Online News. "Conroy sequelizing 'GWTW'?" 5 Feb 1998. http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,2426,00.html Shain, Michael. "Old Tara-Tory for 'Tides' Author." New York Post 20 Jan 1998. http://www.nypostonline.com/business/2895.htm The Great Santini. 25 Apr 1997. http://www.videoflicks.com/VF/09/009058.htm Joy Me On-Line Bookshlf - Fiction - General. 8 Jul 1995. http://www.joyme.com/bookshlf/audio/m0057.htm Real Audio: NPR's Sept 6 1996. All Things Considered excerpt. http://www.brinkley.prognet.com/contemp/npr/nc6506.html Emy's Book List. 26 Sept 1997. http://www.pilot.infi.net/~emy/books.html AP The Boston Globe Online 23 Jan 1998. http://www.boston.com/dailynews/wirehtml/023_Ir/Names_in_the_news.htm The Jimmy Buffet Literary Ref. Resource. 20 Jan 1998. http://www.homecom/cobo/litrefs.html Roesch, Scott. "Berendt goes Hollywood: John Berendt views Hollywood's adaptation of his bestselling novel with 'huge' trepidation." The Mr. Showbiz Interview 29 Oct 1997. http://www.mrshowbiz.com/interviews/135_1.html Charleston Bookstore. http://www.ego.net/us/sc/chs/qtour/book.htm Ashton, Richard. "Streisand: A star with many faces." Nando News Network: Video Retro 16 Dec 1996. http://www.nando.net/nnn/retro.htm Steffan, Janine Dallas. "Seen, Heard, Said." The Seattle Times 26 Jan 1998. http://www.seattletimes.com/news/entertainment/html98/peop_012698.html Who's reading what? 1994 http://www.gpl.lib.me.us/wrw94.htm Zimmerman, Paul. "Billy Bob Thornton's Sling Blade Tain't Just Another Dumb Guy Movie." 9 Dec 1996. http://www.filmzone.com/december96/dec9slingblade.html Caen, Herb. "On the road again." The San Francisco Chronicle 30 Nov 1995. http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/caen1130.html Riley, Richard W. "National Forum: Attracting and preparing teachers for the 21st Century." 17 Apr 1997. http://www.ed.gov/speeches/04-1197/970417.html Bandler, Michael J. "Voices from the regions." USIA, U.S. Society and Values 6 Aug 1996. http://www.usia.gov/journals/itsv/0896/ijse/voices/htm Chase, Bob. "The New NEA: Reinventing teacher unions for a new era." National Press Club 5 Feb 1997. http://www.nea.org/nr/sp970205.html Strong, Marilee. "Talking Trash." 1 Nov 1996. http://www.deablopubs.com/focus/ARCHIVES/INTERVIEWS/dallison.html | ||
| Assignment 5 | ||
| Critical Essay: | ||
| When Houghton Mifflin first published The Prince of Tides in the fall of 1986, the hardcover book hit the bestseller list and held its ground for almost a year. Pat Conroy’s agent Nan Talese left Houghton Mifflin for Doubleday the following year, and Conroy wasn’t far behind. The publishing company that Conroy once referred to as “family” on the dedication page of The Prince would never have the opportunity to print the paperback version of his most successful book. Doubleday’s paperback edition rivaled the performance of the hardcover on the bestseller list, boasting of almost a year on the charts in its own right. The Prince of Tides met with mixed reactions from critics. Many criticized Pat Conroy’s use of exaggerated plot but still admitted to enjoying the book overall. As Kyle Kulish of United Press International said, the novel “becomes a story that is hard to put down.” And that is true. Even though the tales seem unbelievable -- escaped convicts rape a family, an idealist steals an albino porpoise from an aquarium, and vengeful children put a loggerhead turtle in the bed of their mother’s arch nemesis – the book captivates its readers. No doubt, the shenanigans are definitely endless. But what makes the average reader plow through page after page of melodrama? In part, it is due to The Prince being semi-autobiographical. Conroy created Lila, the mother at the heart of the Wingo family saga, in the image of his own mother. In The Prince, the beautiful Lila allows her superficial desire to belong to society dictate her life. She leads a selfish existence, placing her love for her children second to her love for society. It’s as if the audience is looking through a window into Conroy’s life. The voyeur in us cannot resist. In an interview, Conroy said all his characters begin with something from his past: ‘I was raised by one of the most beautiful, Machiavellian and craftiest women ever to come out of the South, a woman who had a family history she continuously lied about. My mother was the first fiction writer in the family. She made up her history as she went along and it was always very difficult to tell with mom what was real and what was not real (http://www.bdd.com/)In an article for the United Press International on October 20, 1986, Jim Lewis relayed a conversation Conroy had with his mother who was dying of cancer: “‘Son, am I in your new book?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘You’re lyin’,’ she said. ‘Okay, Mom, you’re in the new book.’” At this admission, she asked one favor from her son: “Make me beautiful.’And Conroy paints such a detailed picture of the South that the reader can’t help but feel there is much truth to this fiction. He offers insight about surviving childhood and realizations about the meaning of life as if he is writing in a journal, making The Prince more personal than commercial. Conroy narrates his novel in the first person from the perspective of the main character, Tom Wingo. It is this technique that R.Z. Shepherd of TIME calls “first person portentous.” The narrator tells the story with the benefit of hindsight, but there are times when he takes the reader back to the actual moments of his childhood. The narrator interjects during some of these memories with such comments as “I have tried to understand women, and this obsession has left me both enraged and ridiculous” (94). It seems a little strange that Tom Wingo’s recollection of his memories is interrupted with insight. There are no quotes around this statement in the text, as there should be if he is saying this to his sister’s psychiatrist Susan Lowenstein. Conroy takes the reader on a journey through a tortured soul. And he “ultimately affirms life, hope, and the belief that one’s future need not be contaminated by a monstrous past” (Chicago Tribune 19 Oct. 1986). While most people can’t relate to Tom Wingo’s account of family brutality, they can still benefit from The Prince’s general message: “In families there are no crimes beyond forgiveness.” As one would expect the book evoked different reactions from reviewers. Judy Bass of The Chicago Tribune said at first, “the Wingos’ biography sounds deceptively benign.” But what seemed to redeem the book for her was its coverage of “the most prostrating crises in human experience – death of a loved one, parental brutality, injustice, insanity – without lapsing into pedantry or oppressive gloom.” She was most impressed with the humor she claimed underscored the text. Upon reading the novel, however, I found much of what she must have interpreted as humor to be bitter sarcasm. Perhaps, this is just a difference of perspective. Bass said Conroy wrote with a “compassion and integrity every reader will savor.” For a moment, she sounded like Conroy whose writing sometimes seems like a restaurant review with its descriptions of food and eating experiences in The Prince.Richard Eder of The Los Angeles Times could barely reach a conclusion about his feelings toward the book. He confidently remarked that “inside this fat book, a thin book is struggling to get out. It never does…” But he followed this harsh statement with praise for the same quality Bass appreciated in The Prince – compassion. Eder would agree with Conroy’s admission that The Prince is overdone: “Inflation is the order of the day. The characters do too much, feel too much, suffer too much, eat too much, signify too much and above all, talk too much. And, as with the classical American tomato, quantity is at the expense of quality … Repeatedly, Conroy will bring off a well-told episode and then smother it.” Oddly enough, the tone of Eder’s review suggested that he fought a strong inclination to just enjoy The Prince despite its overwhelming plot.Gail Godwin of The New York Times admired the book for its “ambition, invention, and sheer energy.” But she warned readers that some may be turned off by the “turgid, high-flown rhetoric” of The Prince. While she doesn’t deny Conroy’s possession of “anguished ambivalence and excessiveness,” she concludes that he is a “smart man.” She assumes his worst tendencies overpowered him, calling The Prince “embroidered, sentimental, inexact.” There are also those critics who approached The Prince of Tides with skepticism for no other reason than Conroy’s affinity for similar elements in his books. Brigitte Weeks of The Washington Post said she knew from the very first page of The Prince that she was in “Conroy country” from the description of the violent father. She seemed to feel that Conroy simply reworked the entire slew of characters in The Prince from his previous novels. But she asserted that the pleasure of reading the novel far outweighed the flaws it presented its audience: “one can brush aside its lapses like troublesome flies.” Perhaps Weeks best defines Conroy when she labels him a storyteller, for therein lies much of his attraction to readers. Many of Tom Wingo’s childhood memories seem more like campfire material meant to shock and incite reaction rather than constitute part of a literary masterpiece. When Conroy’s most recent novel Beach Music hit the shelves in 1995, critics everywhere used The Prince of Tides as the standard by which to judge it. The Boston Globe’s Gail Caldwell declared “Beach Music is not as good a novel as its predecessor, The Prince of Tides” (25 Jun 1995). But others like Judith Dunford of The Chicago Tribune felt Conroy returned to his success-making trademark in Beach Music by showing his audience “exactly what it feels, smells, tastes, and , above all, smarts like” (16 Jun 1995). After the publication of The Prince, the public became enthralled by Pat Conroy. He said he sometimes regrets having said his works were based on truth because most writers stick to what they know. He said people will meet his father on the street and tell him they thought he was dead, for he died in The Great Santini. With the rise in popularity of sensational talk shows and journalists struggling to outdo the outrageousness of their competitors, it’s no wonder that The Prince, a book that even Conroy describes as “overdone,” enjoyed such lasting popularity. It has sold five million copies.In 1991, Nick Nolte and Barbara Streisand starred in the movie version of The Prince. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards. The release of the movie made both hardcover and paperback sales of the book surge once again. In Landon C. Burns’ Pat Conroy: A Critical Companion, he said that moviegoers were recommending the book to their neighbors as the credits for the movie glided across the screen.Hopper Leigh reported for The Houston Post in November of 1992 that The Prince of Tides was one of President Bill Clinton’s favorite books, along with One Hundred Years of Solitude. His novel even inspired songwriter Jimmy Buffet to write a song based on the The Prince and carrying the same name. Landon C. Burns groups The Prince with such works as William Styron’s Lie Down in Darkness, Reynolds Price’s The Surface of Earth, Carson McCuller’s The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. For Burns, Conroy writes in the tradition of William Faulkner, “Flannery O’Connor, Tennessee Williams, and Robert Penn Warren.”Following publication on The Prince, Conroy became involved in a case between a Charleston high school teacher and Reverend R. Elton Johnson, Jr. Johnson disagreed with Fitzgerald’s assignment of The Prince as optional reading for her Advanced Placement English class of eleventh graders. He demanded that the Charleston School Board require Fitzgerald to take The Prince off her reading list. Conroy wanted to show his support for Fitzgerald. He visited her classroom to talk about fiction writing. In the end, the Board said teachers could assign “suitable” texts for their students (Burns 10). | ||
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