BEA Show Daily: Pat Conroy Returns to BEA

Day 3

By Robert Dahlin -- Publishers Weekly, 5/5/2002

Whenever convention veterans talk about a big book taking BEA by storm, memories invariably return to 1986 and the magic moment when Pat Conroy spoke at ABA's Sunday Book & Author Breakfast. Following Walter Cronkite and preceding Carol Burnett, Conroy and his enthralling tales of past and family helped ignite the legendary launch of The Prince of Tides. In all likelihood, Conroy will captivate the audience today, when he is once again a Sunday Book & Author Breakfast speaker. The occasion this time is not a novel, but My Losing Season: A Memoir (Doubleday/ Nan A. Talese, Oct.), his first work of nonfiction since 1972's The Water Is Wide.

PW's coverage of that 1986 breakfast began: "After all the hype, events and giveaways that make the ABA the entertaining experience it is, you are left with its central purpose: to successfully launch an author's new title. And that is what Houghton Mifflin did with Pat Conroy's Prince of Tides."

Nan Talese, HM editor for Prince, recalls the electrifying occasion. "After Pat got up to speak, he had people roaring with laughter, and then he had them in tears," she says. "He simply held everybody, putting them through a roller-coaster of emotion. Afterward, when we went back to our stand, it was really astounding. It was like a tidal wave of people coming to the little Houghton Mifflin booth. Our advance orders went up like mad."

My Losing Season was sparked when a former fellow basketball player during Conroy's senior year at the Citadel approached him during a book signing for Beach Music, his 1995 novel. The man told Conroy he was sorry he had flubbed a particular layup shot that final season, and when Conroy realized that the error had burdened his chum for decades, he decided to reconstruct that team and its members. "What has come out," says Talese, "is a book about losing, a book about a young man's last year as an athlete and his first year as a writer, a book about the importance of athletics to boys and about sports helping boys define themselves. I think My Losing Season will have a long life: year after year, it will find a new audience of young men. And perhaps most importantly, it finally tells the truth about the Great Santini."

Asked if she expects Conroy to galvanize the breakfast the way he did 16 years ago, Talese says that she doesn't entertain expectations. But, she adds, you never know.