Pat Conroy's Charleston
South Carolina's most celebrated modern writer Pat Conroy passed away in 2016, but his prose about the Lowcountry will live on for generations. He described Charleston in his 2009 novel, South of Broad: "I carry the delicate porcelain beauty of Charleston like the hinged-shell of some soft-tissued mollusk. . . . In its shadows you can find metal work as delicate as lace . . . it's not a high-kicking, glossy lipstick city."
"I know of no more magical place in America than Charleston's South of Broad," Conroy told Fodor's. "I remember seeing this area near the Battery when I was a kid and I was stunned as to how beautiful it was. In meeting with my Doubleday publisher about writing [South of Broad], which is set there, she wanted to understand the big draw of this neighborhood. I said, ‘It is the most beautiful area of this gorgeous city. It is what the Upper East Side is to Manhattan, what Pacific Heights is to San Francisco, or what Beverly Hills is to Los Angeles.' SOB is mysterious. It keeps drawing you back like a magnetic force. I am fortunate that my writer friend Anne Rivers Siddons lets me stay in her carriage house there when I come to town. As a cadet at The Citadel, I would walk along the Battery and watch the ships come in and out of port. They looked so close you thought you could touch them."
Conroy's other Charleston favorites: "When my children come to town, I go to the aquarium with my grandchildren. It is small enough to take in. Aquariums always make me believe in God. Why? You see the incredible shapes of things and the myriad capacity for different forms of animals. And there is that wonderful outdoor area where you can look at the fish tanks and then look out to the river and see porpoises playing.
"Thanks to Mayor Riley [the city's mayor from 1975 to 2016], who [was] like Pericles for Charleston, there are so many parks and open spaces. Waterfront Park is a great example.
"And one of the true joys of Charleston in these last decades is its restaurant renaissance."
