'Prince of Tides' author Pat Conroy dies at 70

'Prince of Tides' author Pat Conroy dies at 70, Pat Conroy, the admired columnist of "The Abundant Santini" and "The Prince of Tides" and added best-sellers who drew aloft his able-bodied adolescence and the vistas of South Carolina and became one of the country's a lot of acute and accepted storytellers, died Friday evening. He was 70.

Conroy, who appear endure ages that he had pancreatic cancer, died at home a part of ancestors and admired ones in Beaufort, South Carolina, according to his publisher. The heavy-set columnist had battled added bloom problems in contempo years, including diabetes, top claret burden and a declining liver.

"The baptize is advanced and he has now anesthetized over," his wife, biographer Cassandra Conroy, said in a account from administrator Doubleday.

Funeral arrange were still getting made.

Few abreast authors seemed added apprehensible to their readers over than Conroy. An aboveboard claimed writer, he candidly and abundantly aggregate data of growing up as a "military brat" and his afflicted accord with his calumniating father, Marine aviator and aggressive hero Donald Conroy. He aswell wrote of his time in aggressive academy and his struggles with his bloom and depression.

"The acumen I address is to explain my activity to myself," Conroy said in a 1986 interview. "I've aswell apparent that if I do, I'm answer added people's lives to them."

His books awash added than 20 amateur copies worldwide, but for abundant of his adolescence he below in the adumbration of Donald Conroy, who "thundered out of the sky in black-winged fighter planes, every inch of him a god of war," as Pat Conroy would remember. The columnist was the earlier of seven accouchement in a ancestors consistently affective from abject to base, a activity readers and admirers would apprentice able-bodied from "The Abundant Santini" as a atypical and film, which starred Robert Duvall as the adamant and agitated patriarch.

The 1976 atypical initially affronted Conroy's family, but the cine three years afterwards fabricated such an consequence on his ancestor that he claimed acclaim for advocacy Duvall's career (The amateur had already appeared in two "Godfather" films), saying, "The poor guy got a role with some meat on it."

But the book aswell helped accomplish accord amid ancestor and son.

"I grew up antisocial my father," Conroy said afterwards his ancestor died in 1998. "It was the abundant abruptness of my life, afterwards the book came out, what an amazing man had aloft me." The columnist would reflect at breadth on his accord with his ancestor in the 2013 account "The Death of Santini."

"The Prince of Tides," appear in 1986, anchored Conroy a advanced audience, affairs added than 5 amateur copies admitting asperous reviews for its adventure of a aloft football amateur from South Carolina with a alarming accomplished and the New York analyst who attempts to admonition him.

"Inflation is the adjustment of the day. The characters do too much, feel too much, ache too much, eat too much, announce too abundant and, aloft all, allocution too much," said The Los Angeles Times Book Review.

But Conroy focused on the admonition he already got from "the finest biographer I anytime encountered," biographer James Dickey, who accomplished him at the University of South Carolina.

"He told me to address aggregate I did with all the affection and all the ability you could muster," Conroy recalled. "Don't anguish about how continued it takes or how continued it is if you're done. You know, he was right."

"The Prince of Tides" was fabricated into a hit 1991 blur starring Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand, who aswell produced and directed it. Conroy formed on the cine and aggregate an Oscar nomination, one of seven Oscar nominations it earned, including best picture.

Conroy's much-anticipated "Beach Music," appear in 1995, was a best-seller that took nine years to complete. Conroy had been alive on "The Prince of Tides" screenplay, but he aswell endured a divorce, depression, aback anaplasty and the suicide of his youngest brother.

Conroy had added demons. Afterwards accessory (at his father's insistence) The Citadel, South Carolina's accompaniment aggressive college, he abhorred the abstract and went into teaching. In 2013, he wrote on his blog www.patconroy.com/wp that he had amorphous his activity as "a abstract dodger and anti-war activist" while his classmates "walked off that date and stepped anon into the Vietnam War."

"When I allocution to Ivy Leaguers or war resisters of that era, I consistently acquaint them that Vietnam was not abstract to me, but acutely and agonizingly painful. Eight of my Citadel classmates died in that war," he wrote.

For years, he was alienated from The Citadel, which he renamed the Carolina Aggressive Institute in his 1980 atypical "The Lords of Discipline." A acrid account of the affiliation of a Southern aggressive school, the book was acclimatized into a blur in 1983, but had to be fabricated abroad because The Citadel's administering lath banned to acquiesce any crews on campus.

While "The Lords of Discipline" had fabricated him abhorred with Citadel officials, adaptation came in 2000 if he was awarded an honorary degree. In 2002, he visited during accession weekend and admirers lined up to get him to autograph copies of his books.

"I never anticipation this would happen," Conroy said. "This is my aboriginal signing at the Citadel. That's amazing." He had afresh appear "My Losing Season," about his final year of academy basketball at The Citadel.

The acceptable animosity deepened if Conroy's accessory Ed Conroy, a 1989 Citadel grad, became the Citadel's basketball drillmaster in 2006 — and aural a brace of years brought about a arresting advance in the team's fortunes.

Pat Conroy's added books included "South of Broad," set in Charleston's celebrated district, and "My Reading Life", a accumulating of essays that actual his constant affection for literature.

He was built-in Donald Patrick Conroy on Oct. 26, 1945. The Conroy accouchement abounding 11 schools in 12 years afore the ancestors eventually acclimatized in Beaufort, about an hour from Charleston. He apprehend obsessively as a adolescent and alleged adolescent Southerner Thomas Wolfe his afflatus to become a writer.

"Thomas Wolfe was the aboriginal biographer I acquainted was autograph for me," Conroy said. "He was articulating a eyes of the apple that seemed accessible for me."

Following graduation in 1967, he formed as a top academy abecedary in Beaufort. While there, he adopted $1,500 to accept a vanity columnist broadcast "The Boo," an affectionate account of Col. Thomas Courvoisie, an abettor administrator at The Citadel.

For a year he accomplished poor accouchement on abandoned Daufuskie Island, not far from the resort of Hilton Head. The acquaintance was the base for his 1972 book, "The Baptize Is Wide," which brought him a National Endowment for the Arts accolade and was fabricated into the cine "Conrack."

Conroy was affiliated three times and had two daughters. Although he lived about the world, he consistently advised South Carolina his home and lived back the backward 1990s on Fripp Island, a gated association abreast Beaufort.

"Make this university, this state, yourself and your ancestors proud," Conroy told University of South Carolina graduates in a 1997 admission speech.

"If you accept a little luck, any luck at all, if you do it right, there's a abundant achievability you can advise the accomplished apple how to dance."
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