[inaudible] welcome to the 27th, i dont how to turn it up. Is that that better . Okay good. Welcome to the 27th annual southern festival of books. We appreciate you being here so very much. Without you, it wouldnt be any fun at all. But it is free to the public, if you would like to go by and make it donation at the main booth that is on the plaza, we would just love it, and no donation is too small. We love to have you come by and visit, regardless. We will close approximately five minutes to the hour and pat conway will be signing along with Catherine Seltzer and will be signing on the plaza. And we can follow right up there. I think i have taken care of business and i am going to read what catherine thought was needful. Pat conroy is one of the south beloved writers, his books which include the great santini, the lords of of discipline, the prince of tides, and most recently the death of santini, explore issues of southern identity. They focus on the complex Family Dynamics and often service of their hearts. Today he chats with Catherine Seltzer, an english professor at Southern Illinois university, edwardsville. Recently published a critical study on conroys work understanding pat conroy. And who is currently working on a biography, pat conroy. Having perused this book, this is the book right here that you will be seen when you are be sign or going to have your book signed. Having perused it, it is really a gateway to understanding the complexities and his work. It is just wonderful, i just got it and i just thought wow, what she has done with the works to help us understand this complex man appear. Now i give you Catherine Seltzer and pat conway. [applause]. Ive had the chance to interview pat weekly over the last several months as ive been researching this book in the next book and the conversations are always fun, always interesting. It is great to be able to do it today with all of you. Extending the conversation. Pat i want to start in a different direction today, we are in nashville, the people who really thought to define southern terms and how we think about it. So i want to start by asking a few questions about how you see yourself as a southern author and even more specifically about that southern shiftless southern identity. Your work is deeply invested, for most of us we need the South Carolina low country through your book before we ever step foot on it. Those of us have been lucky enough to spend any time there recognizes immediately because we have read pat conroy. As much as you are led into a place you are also someone who knows priceless nest. You move dozens of times in your childhood as a military brat, you move from san francisco, and rome. You have a very a very complex understanding. I want to start by asking you about places in your identity as a southern writer. I never quite knew what to say about places because i think my situation is a fine one. The reason i have a sense of places because i had none growing up. How many people in her were marine brats or military brats . Usually we all feel the same way. If you had anything like the background i did, we moved, when my father was dying he pulls out a book and says, hey son would you like to know every address you lived in before we got here. So i said yes, we had moved from the time of my birth in atlanta, we had moved 23 times until we got to buford when i was 15 years old. So that means that we change schools almost every year, what is most common to me, why i am ridiculously friendly, is i knew no one growing up. I would walk into a school i would smile a lot, i looked friendly, i looked overly friendly today. [laughter] i think it is all part of that not belonging at all. And wanting to belong. By the time i got in it when i was 15 and we came to beaufort, South Carolina it was my third high school. It was that i was miserable southern kids, no one knew about dad, when we came into buford county, my mother was driving and i was miserable and the kids were miserable, my sister had this routine and she was a poet and she would cry. I she would cry she would touch the tears and the silver spoon she stole from my grandmother. She would get the tears and as we would go into the new town she would throw them at mom or dad. [laughter] she would just like them. We were crying, i miss susie already. Carol, my point sister would look around and say think of susie as dead. [laughter] susie died and you will never see or hear from her again. We are going to a new school and every day we meet this year will die at the end of next year. [laughter] then well move again. And i think what were talking about is when i got to buford, i said mom, there is a high school in washington and what a year before, i said mom i never got invited to a boys house. I never spent a night. A night. I never had a date. Ive never held a girls hand. Ive never danced with the girl. Mom, the nation needs a fire pilot son,. Still, it would be nice to hold the girls hand. And she said, why dont you make buford your home. Dad has fought in three wars and you have a right as a marine corps son to choose any city in america, because your father has earned it and now our family has earned it. So pathetically i chose poor buford, South Carolina. Only because that was the first place a girl ever held my hand. [laughter] this poor town is now stuck with me. They had nothing to do with that, i i wasnt born or raised there. It has got to be such a part of my life, a little little guidebook came out several years ago, that i native of the town, townspeople remember me riding my tricycle. [laughter] so i feel my sense of place is completely made up. Completely phony, theres nothing i can do about it. Let me ask you about your treatment of another place. You have been writing about discipline really and your new novel the one youre working on right now, is a novel set about childhood. How has that changed in your imagination or how has going back to that city shaped your world. While the south has changed totally in my imagination because it is change the way it was when i was a kid. I was eating and buford the other day, there is there is a group of women eating obviously in the same office, they were laughing, i could hear them talking about their boss. These women, there was ten of of him, their screaming, laughing about this boss and his idiosyncrasies. Five of of the women were black, five were whites, and it tickled me just to see it. I was eating dinner with a friend of mine from new york, shes a wiry laughing, and i said that would have been illegal when i first came to buford. She said oh you are always exaggerating what you mean illegal . And i said no they would have been arrested. Because blacks could not eat in this restaurant. And she said well. And i said i didnt think there is any black restaurant to buford they could even. So i saw so many changes come over from the Civil Rights Movement in the south, i had to see it. It was amazing to me because there is a time when the south would not change or could not change. Then i thought will i have seen the light i will have a good life going on to on untimely death, and the Womens Liberation Movement comes roaring around the corner. Did you yall know that one was coming . And i talked to the girls that graduated from high school and we had lunch and they remembered what girls were told they could do. Now boys, we were told the world. We could conquer the world, astronauts, go to go to the moon, the girls were told they could go out, they could be secretaries, they could be nurses, they they could be librarians, they could be teachers, and they could be the most wonderful of all locations, they could be mothers. Some of these women are sitting here, some of these women have done extraordinary things. Big law forms in columbia, women who have done amazingly well and women who have done at least as well as the men of my class. Oh, by the way the south continuing to change, how many people thought you would see gay marriage . In the south, in your lifetime . I dont know what im going to see before i die. I have no ia8b know what im goo see before i die. I have no idea. But it certainly has been interesting, and i did not predict any of it. It has been all fascinating. I i like the way the southerners figured out. I went to a gate wedding not long ago, the grandparents, it it was interesting talking to the grandparents. Who johnny was such a nice boy. So the south is interesting to me that way, i lrede watching it since ive been alive. Do not be a shame, where are her children . Stand ups i can see you all. All right, there he is. [applause]. Go ahead. This is an attempt, i am back. Let me ask you about writing about childhood now, as he said the south has changed and has your writing about it changed since the way you view a change . Has the way you situate this novel, that is in progress right now changed. I think the most powerful thing that has happened to me as a person that loves charleston is a recent killing of nine parishioner in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in charleston. Where where a young white kid goes in with a gun, i think what is so shocking as he sat down and listen to the service. The service was about god and the service of god. Then, nine people are shot. I think for the first time South Carolina grieved in one voice. When you meet other people and possibly find your own wife or husband. Youll possibly find someone to follow in love with, it was a party and the spirits were open. So i wanted to write about a party that intimidated me. Because, this is is painful to me, not to him. Were getting married and he said, we are not even because my family knows your families too cheap to rent a tux. Could you think you could spring for a blue suit . So pathetically, go to my mother, crippled by the depression, mauled by the depression, and i set mom, i need need to buy a new suit. No. I said mom i just came from the citadel, i cant wear my uniform because i graduate. And i thought it would be nice to get married and i might be merry before im 40 and anna citadel uniform . So we went to robert hall, do you remember robert hall . It was not like the greatest place on earth that it was certainly in my category. I go in there, i see a super 88, i thought it could be like at present. So mom mom found one for 39. 99. She liked it better. I set all, thanks thanks mom what a shock that you like it better. So we fight and finally i took this thing out and now i am shoplifting this suit out of the store. Of all robert hall people you could arrest me in that car i would be driving down the highway and my mom rushes to pay for the suit. I am recreating that wedding is one of the things that starts out in this new book. 1 million things happen to me at that wedding. Not one thing that happened in the novel, youre asking, my friend married a nice, pretty girl. I met other people with really nice, real pretty but pretty interesting to me, those women Start Talking. So im like, they Start Talking and i had two characters and i have fallen in love with that i thought were dopes. In my mind my perception of them they were not interesting, they had no part of this book, i started writing their dialogue down and they blamed into radiant light. I have to watch out these two women taking over this book. And i had no idea that was happening. I just did not know it. One of the things i want to ask about. Your papers reveal that you got an outline for each novel that you want to include, youre also taken by surprise by your own work too. Is that frustrating, terrifying, exciting, or are you use to it now . Are you used to those voices coming to you and appearing out of nowhere to you question work. Heres what i know, if i start know, if i start writing the surprises going to happen. Whether i want them or not. I have one stupid thing i did in the prince of tides, i still shudder at night. Once in a while, you can go a little further than one wants a writer to go. Part of my weakness as a writer and i am fully aware of this. I am sitting and i have in the prince of tides, i have an escaped prisoner and his two buddies come to this island and they tear apart the window family, rape the mother, rape the sister, rape the sun. I dont know how to get around it. Other i was living in rome italy and i had this problem, early in the book i had one of my favorite South Carolina stories was a tiger at a gas station in columbia, South Carolina. I used to get my car out there and get a free car wash and fill the tank up. Then you would, its a miserable site because it is 110 degrees, it is hot and it was a miserable site. I put him in the front of the book and forget about it. I had this horrible thing going on in the book and i dont how to end it. We go to a party in italy, this beautiful italian woman is sitting next to me and because i have eyes like a novelist i see deeper in the human hearts than you all do. [laughter] then i cannot help but notice that she is missing her left arm. And her dresses pinned beautifully, she was sitting there talking and finally i said, man, i hope this doesnt offend you but how did you lose your arm . And she said oh it was a nightmare. And i saw a fear trying to abuse a tiger with a shovel. He was hitting the tiger in the face with the shovel and i went to the rescue of the tiger, he tore my arm off. At the shoulder. So i am looking up and i had this problem and i look over at my wife and i say, i have a take on tran tiger in the backyard of the window house in beaufort, South Carolina. That is how i resolved. Later i thought, what a stupid thing to do. First of all, how do you have a tiger there, i put them there. And, how do get out of your family getting murder. You simply bring a tiger to the house, knock on the door, and when they open up they get a big surprise. All i can see is part of my ridiculous, over mixing a couple of times until i stopped when somebody said, mr. Conroy, shut up. Just shut up. It was an audience like this i said why . And they said, because people like me need that tiger. We have to have that tiger. We have have to have it. And you have to put it in. So, that was a long way to answer that. Let me go back to asking a little about your process. One of the things you talk about regularly is reading poetry before you write. Having read more poetry across really periods of time and geographical space, you really see it, what is it about that breeding that inspires your own writing to get started. Poetry, still, i dont how poets do it. How many books of poems have yall bought the last couple of years . I buy a lot. The poets are so good for the changes in language. To make me see language in a different way. Let me look at language. I like a monopolist or two, but poets do that for me. There is a poet named beth, if you have not heard of her she teaches at the university mississippi. I ordered her books, she books, she was great. That led me to other books, i buy hundreds of books and poetry. My sister likes poetry. It was one of the things she does when someone dies, she will read a poem and i will do a eulogy. That is generally what we do, until, until in the last several funerals will tell me, and i was love this, at literary feuding at its bus. She will look over at me and say you read your pros first. I am a poet and poetry is far more serious than pros, and in every educated matter will tell you. So she reads like a poet. But poetry does, it has affected me a great deal. What has affected me to and reminded me catherine called the woman and you talk about, she is writing a full biography, the most embarrassing part of this biography so far has been my lack of mac in my life. She has not hit Norman Baylor in this time. She will ask me how many times did you date that woman . Once. And my wife said he only dated women one time. She hit onto a treasure trove, one woman, my first year in college and i wrote her 80 letters, within 70 . Quite a few. I wrote her 70 and we went through my papers and she wrote me, none. [laughter] when i have reread some of those letters and the pain of adolescent stupidity is so apparent, i had a friend of mine read them before and she said, she must have thought you are a jerk. My god. Who did you think you are writing to . Cleopatra . So this kind of scared me about her doing a biography. But, theres nothing nothing i can do about it now. Those letters in particular are so wonderful because you are writing most of them during some of your life when you are doing civil rights work and thinking a lot about yourself and the world and you are deeply earnest and thoughtful letters. Really interesting. That does lead to a question i want to ask you today, going back and revisiting those past cells in your work and you work exclusively biographical even when youre not writing memoir. You talked a lot and interviews about going back and thinking about your family and looking at your family history. You have a line that says, no outsider i have ever met has struck me with the strangest encounter want to try to discover the deepest history of the boy i once was. I love that. The letter going through that and looking critically through the process of the interview but even writing, do you feel like you know that self better or does it still seem a stranger to question mark. Always a stranger. I feel like i am writing all my books trying to figure out who i am. Still, one of the weirdest things was looking at my genealogy this year. Ive never cared about genealogy at all. I think, because i did not wish to find out from where i came. He told by some surprise, mike raked grandmother, now look at my face. My greatgrandmother turns out to be a full blood cherokee indian. If you look at conroy and think of sheaves . I just think it is odd to me. My mother had no idea. Her family came over in 1700 and came over as the potato family. It is a complete shock. I really dont know myself because you dont know the family came from. I think the way we moved around chicago, irish, i know nothing about and i dont like what i know. I didnt like dad and his family, i didnt like my grandmother. Ive been trying to figure out who i am, why i am here, here, what is all this about . What is it that you all came for today that you want to hear me say to you when i cant even Say Something to myself that helps me out . So all of that comes into it but you came in here you have the hunger, that is why we read books. That is why you get this chance to go away improve yourself. In a way for yourself. It is by reading that book, i can take off and i can escape, im in a world that no one can come close to. Especially, now that youre looking at the looking at your right hand and i would have never imagined that everybody is going to be trained to look at the right hand. In the entire airport including people working, but were doing that with your book. Thats a journey. That something wonderful. Let me ask you this, ive been reading a lot of literary biography lately, one of the things that surprise me at first and i come to expect is that every writer argues that writing gets no easier and it is always a difficult task. The exploration of the self. That seemed initially surprising to me, but then it is starting to make sense. I wonder if wonder if that is true for you. I think it is true for everybody. One thing i know know about you all, coming here a lot of you want to write or are inspired by writing, its hard because its you. It was me. You sit down, say youre going to write a novel. How do you get over that feeling . , here i am, hemingway once did what i did. Henry james once did what i did. Now, pat conroy thats a name for the ages, pat conroy, an an irish boy from the bronx, father of cops, and taking yourself seriously as a writer is one of the hardest things in the world. It took me four novels before i could tell anybody i was a writer. Writer. I used to say i was a teacher before them because nobody ever asked you questions if you say you are a teacher. They dont want to know one thing else about you. But it still affects me, it never gets easier, it still gets harder, yet i cant do anything else about it. Let me ask you about the challenge of writing this novel particularly. You threw down the garments of yourself at the end of the death of santini and said you are not going to write about your parents anymore. You headaches or that relationships your satisfaction. You are moving away from that. Has that been harder than you thought it might be . Or has it been liberating question. It has been pleasant in this way. I knew by writing i would lose my sister carol. My beloved sister carol. I would lose her forever. That was going to be something i lost. Every once in a while i lose people over these books, sometimes its for a while, sometimes they get over quickly. But i have lost lost everybody for a time. In writing these books. Ive never explained it to you very well when you ask me these ridiculously personal questions. You ask me of why do you do this, the only thing i can think is, and i understand the problem with truth and eventually with a biography it gets hard. If i dont try to tell the truth as i know, if i try to hide it because someone will get their feelings hurt, i will get my feelings hurt. My perception of myself as a writer, my job for you is to be for whatever it takes to be as honest so you guys can believe or not believe what im telling. There is a relationship between the writer and the reader that is a very important one for me. One one i do not forget about. My sister, you all got sisters, brothers . I just, oh my god, one of the characters in the book call my agent two days ago and said there could be legal problems. That will come up every once in a while. Heres my theory, if you ever threaten to sue me, i can promise you you have never been in a court where you had to pay your lawyer. Because pain a lawyer in court is very painful. Let me ask you one more question about that. When you are writing to you ever feel like you are skirting around a lawsuit and you have to go back and visit it to find that truth . Or by the time you are ready to write you feel as if you have a story to tell that is authentic, real, and true . I havent thought about the stories what before i wrote them down. Certainly i thought about, ive use this thing heard me use a hundred times, is, a guy from a fraternity, at the university of georgia, i was in atlanta, this guy said my whole life for me. He comes up, another guy, university of tennessee, he marries the tried dealt president , you never seen anybody look happier, more cheerleading, you know the kids favorite books is going to be the book of common prayer. [laughter] anyways, this cake comes up and he was to cocky for me. I like people to look at me, scant. He was a little too much for me. He has read the prints are tied and he looks at me and he says, hey conroy, lets admit it, your family is nuts arent they . I am the president , you would not get in our back door to deliver groceries. So i looked and i thought yeah my family is crazy pal. Then, i said how is your family . He was taken about by that but then he goes back and said oh my family is great. Plymouth rock, aristocracy, plantations all over the south. And i said be honest, and you be honest too, how far do i have to go in this room, with each one of you, till i hit the first crazy . Okay, alright. [laughter] [applause]. Okay, do you see what i mean. Usually its dad, mom, brother, sister, aunt, uncle. Generally we dont have to go beyond that, we dont have to go to the quadruple third cousin. But we hit on one. This poor woman, woman, this porch idell president is listening and said oh its great, wonderful, and she finally breaks and says, his mother is nuts [laughter] generally, those those are the hard things to say. What are you are writing those are the hard things. When he i look at catherines family, she has a handsome husband, a neurosurgeon, perfect two little kids, and i remember that moment when i turned five feet. It was a magical moment. 5 feet. I rise 5 feet from the earth. And you just you watch all of the stuff in these things, that we all go through. We all go through these things. And we find a way to deal with them one way or another. We have just ten minutes left of the presentation and when i say ten minutes, theyll throw us out in ten minute, this is very clear, there clear, there could be violent action on the way out. But we did want to open it up for questions so that we can address your questions as well. It will just be a few questions today and there is a microphone set up here in the center aisle, if youre able to make your way. Well start with start with you because you are right here in the center aisle. Absolutely,. I hear from the novel they have one brother you really like , then you have a sister you really like. But you did not get a long long well with the rest of your family, am i wrong or right . Here in nashville, you are right. If i was in South Carolina, you are totally wrong seer. My brothers and sisters tickle me. Carol is a different sort. Carol, i thought carol should she came up to me at my mothers renal says pat, my shrink in new york says our family is toxic. Okay, i said carol i have made a living off of that fact. [laughter] so, this is not a surprise. In my shrink says that i should never talk to any of you ever again, so this is the last time you will ever see me. Again, what a pleasant time to bring it up carol. Why dont we have this discussion while sitting on moms head. And then we have exposed, what we sit sit on her head or her body and discuss this. But carol, basically we have not seen her since that funeral. Mom was 59. That was 1984. The other brothers and sisters, they are funny. My family is a funny family. They have a thing with, what is carol . What is she going to do when she gets a phone call that pat is dead . All four of them jump up, and they do this,. [laughter] and the family, we get along, we do this, but we all, they do their dance, carols dance of joy when pat is dead, we all are screaming laughing. We cannot help it. Another question. They have not see like rules in nashville about time, by the way i remember this last year,. [inaudible] can you speak more about that, to be responsibility of your readers and publishers. I consider that a central question. It is okay the question is,. To clarify his point that his responsibility of the writer is the truth of the story rather than the feelings of those people who might be rendering characters within that story. The set of fare of your question. Okay the responsibility to the readers . Okay why would you read me if you didnt think i was going to tell you the truth . Why would anybody do that . When i read, i like to tell myself, i might be lying to myself, that this reader, this writer is trying to tell me something i need to know to get along on earth. Some secret i need to have. The writers, the great writers always do that. What is this book i read last year, i went nuts over it, this thing about a guy in france, alight you light you cannot see. I just went crazy over that book. I thought, this guy did not seem to be writing anybody he knew, but i dont know that. What he did, he was able to move me in a way that i like to be moved in a book. I lucked to feel things in a book. If writers tell me people like to think things in a book. I think there is a difference. The responsibility to me, is if you write about your family, they have a right to tell you what they think about that. They have that right. Sometimes it is very rough what they think about that. That is okay, you get by that. Im not ashamed of anything that i have written that i can think of of someone in my family. My first wife says, you never write about me ted, because i am the sacred topic. I have written about her twice. [laughter] but also cowardly in the way i wrote about her, it it made no difference. I said nothing, it it was she was lovely, she came into the room like a spirit, she left. So you can do it that way but if you are going to write or write seriously, you need to take everything that youre climbing toward the truth that makes you do. I dont think you have any other responsibility for that. Monson dads can be the toughest. Brothers and sisters can be the toughest. I have now written and they have all survive. My brothers brothers and sisters i have a book out about the Conway Family speaks and you hear them speak. Using this to, my family has fallen in love with the whites. Pat will be available for interviews, we look over the pictures as a child she was the best one. They would actually crazy over the cover of the book because they are on it. We look the same, i said look, we have an ugly family, we, we have to get used to that. They are going, we are not that ugly. Theres proof of it. Its right there. It is funny, now that im getting older, their coming aboard which is a surprise to me. There is a coming on. Another question before we get stormed out of here. That book by the way is called conversations with the conroys and it is coming out this month. It will one very last quick question. I think were getting a signal but ill pretend it is a friendly one. What is your definition of truth, and why is it important . That is not a quick question. The truth of me is basically truth of me is basically what am i afraid to tell people . What am i scared of . I was afraid to write about the serial, because i knew what i was going to get. And, i got it. So for 30 years, i was right to worry about that, i was terrified to write about mom and dad, the great santini. Dads nickname was was the great santini in the marine corps. Why i did not make him an eskimo searching for whale blubber, i dont know. But i didnt. All of these things was that what am i afraid to say, why am i afraid to say . When i wrote it in the death of santini i was afraid to talk about my relationship with carol. Carol has tremendous mental problems. So what you do, say, an unorthodox girl, good god, and some of the things my brother tom committed suicide. So he mustve tripped on a pifie of liverwurst. So it is always, you come to something. And you know other people are going to be angry and furious about you mentioning, bringing it up. Is the truth, i dont know. To me, the writer that is a big job to figure out the truth. The two women, by the way speaking of truth, i had a glass wine with of wine with last night, are you here . Stand up. Okay, see these two women, they leeched onto me. [laughter] invited me for a glass of wine, they had two glasses and i paid, 60. It is good to see you all again. [laughter] [applause]. Thank you all. Thank you pat for talking with us tthoay. Pat conroy will be at the bar. [pplause]. Will be in the signing well, come to the plaza