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Stop-Time
First published in 1967, Stop-Time was immediately recognized as a masterpiece of modern American autobiography, a brilliant portrayal of one boy's passage from childhood to adolescence and beyond. Here is Frank Conroy's wry, sad, beautiful tale of life on the road; of odd jobs and lost friendships, brutal schools and first loves; of a father's early death and a son's exhilarating escape into manhood.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
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4,961 people want to read
About the author
Frank Conroy
20Ìýbooks73ÌýfollowersFrank Conroy was an American author, born in New York, New York to an American father and a Danish mother. He published five books, including the highly acclaimed memoir Stop-Time, published in 1967, which ultimately made Conroy a noted figure in the literary world. The book was nominated for the National Book Award.
Conroy graduated from Haverford College, and was director of the influential Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa for 18 years, from 1987 until 2005, where he was also F. Wendell Miller Professor. He was previously the director of the literature program at the National Endowment for the Arts from 1982�1987.
Conroy's published works included: the moving memoir Stop-Time; a collection of short stories, Midair; a novel, Body and Soul, which is regarded as one of the finest evocations of the experience of being a musician; a collection of essays and commentaries, Dogs Bark, but the Caravan Rolls On: Observations Then and Now; and a travelogue, Time and Tide: A Walk Through Nantucket. His fiction and non-fiction appeared in such journals as The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, Harper's Magazine and Partisan Review. He was named a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government.
In addition to writing, Conroy was an accomplished jazz pianist, winning a Grammy Award in 1986. His book Dogs Bark, But the Caravan Rolls On: Observations Then and Now includes articles that describe jamming with Charles Mingus and with Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman. The latter session occurred when Conroy was writing about the Rolling Stones for Esquire. Conroy had arrived at a mansion for the interview, found nobody there, and eventually sat down at a grand piano and began to play. Someone wandered in, sat down at the drums, and joined in with accomplished jazz drumming; then a fine jazz bassist joined in. They turned out to be Watts and Wyman, whom Conroy did not recognize until they introduced themselves after the session.
Conroy died of colon cancer on April 6, 2005, in Iowa City, Iowa, at the age of 69.
Source:
Conroy graduated from Haverford College, and was director of the influential Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa for 18 years, from 1987 until 2005, where he was also F. Wendell Miller Professor. He was previously the director of the literature program at the National Endowment for the Arts from 1982�1987.
Conroy's published works included: the moving memoir Stop-Time; a collection of short stories, Midair; a novel, Body and Soul, which is regarded as one of the finest evocations of the experience of being a musician; a collection of essays and commentaries, Dogs Bark, but the Caravan Rolls On: Observations Then and Now; and a travelogue, Time and Tide: A Walk Through Nantucket. His fiction and non-fiction appeared in such journals as The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, Harper's Magazine and Partisan Review. He was named a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government.
In addition to writing, Conroy was an accomplished jazz pianist, winning a Grammy Award in 1986. His book Dogs Bark, But the Caravan Rolls On: Observations Then and Now includes articles that describe jamming with Charles Mingus and with Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman. The latter session occurred when Conroy was writing about the Rolling Stones for Esquire. Conroy had arrived at a mansion for the interview, found nobody there, and eventually sat down at a grand piano and began to play. Someone wandered in, sat down at the drums, and joined in with accomplished jazz drumming; then a fine jazz bassist joined in. They turned out to be Watts and Wyman, whom Conroy did not recognize until they introduced themselves after the session.
Conroy died of colon cancer on April 6, 2005, in Iowa City, Iowa, at the age of 69.
Source:
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 269 reviews
August 8, 2007
"Stop-Time" is such a unique book. The writing is so evocative, making even the most mundane details fascinating. I think if I could make a wish and emulate the writing style of any writer, past or present, I very well might choose Frank Conroy. My favorite passage is Conroy's description of how he used books to escape as a teenager:
"I withdrew into myself and let the long months go by, spending my time reading....Night after night I'd lie in bed, with a glass of milk and a package of oatmeal cookies beside me, and read one paperback after another until two or three in the morning. I read everything, without selection, buying all the fiction on the racks of the local drugstore....I read very fast, uncritically, and without retention, seeking only to escape from my own life through the imaginative plunge into another....The real world dissolved and I was free to drift in fantasy, living a thousand lives, each one more powerful, more accessible, and more real than my own. It was around this time that I first thought of becoming a writer. In a cheap novel the hero was asked his profession at a cocktail party. 'I'm a novelist,' he said, and I remember putting the book down and thinking, my God what a beautiful thing to be able to say."
When I read that passage for the first time, I realized that I did the same thing growing up. I would stuff a towel under the edge of my bedroom door so my mom couldn't see the light coming out, and I'd stay up all night reading. I would just consume the pages, "uncritically and without retention", as Conroy wrote, often starting a new book within only a few minutes of finishing the last one. I'm happy to say that, approaching middle age, I now read much more critically, as I've realized that I won't live forever, and I need to make what I read as meaningful as possible.
"I withdrew into myself and let the long months go by, spending my time reading....Night after night I'd lie in bed, with a glass of milk and a package of oatmeal cookies beside me, and read one paperback after another until two or three in the morning. I read everything, without selection, buying all the fiction on the racks of the local drugstore....I read very fast, uncritically, and without retention, seeking only to escape from my own life through the imaginative plunge into another....The real world dissolved and I was free to drift in fantasy, living a thousand lives, each one more powerful, more accessible, and more real than my own. It was around this time that I first thought of becoming a writer. In a cheap novel the hero was asked his profession at a cocktail party. 'I'm a novelist,' he said, and I remember putting the book down and thinking, my God what a beautiful thing to be able to say."
When I read that passage for the first time, I realized that I did the same thing growing up. I would stuff a towel under the edge of my bedroom door so my mom couldn't see the light coming out, and I'd stay up all night reading. I would just consume the pages, "uncritically and without retention", as Conroy wrote, often starting a new book within only a few minutes of finishing the last one. I'm happy to say that, approaching middle age, I now read much more critically, as I've realized that I won't live forever, and I need to make what I read as meaningful as possible.
August 27, 2008
First and then I decide to read two in a row. I've been trying for a month now to figure out how to describe the very specific emotional state that Stop-Time put me in every time I read a chapter and I guess I'm not going to come up with it.
I first heard about this book and--as advertised--he's a fantastic writer. I would read a passage and think, "Wow, what incredible writing" and then would go back through it and realize that there were no rhetorical flourishes--nothing about the passage that was drawing attention to itself. And yet the words moved me.
Because the book is about a childhood, I'm tempted to say that the emotional state the book put me in was either nostalgic or something akin to feeling like an adolescent, but I don't think either of those is right, partly because Conroy's upbringing doesn't seem to have hardly anything in common with my own.
So there you go: a nebulous, if not downright worthless review. Read this book if you like books that transport you emotionally or that are incredibly well written without being at all flashy.
I first heard about this book and--as advertised--he's a fantastic writer. I would read a passage and think, "Wow, what incredible writing" and then would go back through it and realize that there were no rhetorical flourishes--nothing about the passage that was drawing attention to itself. And yet the words moved me.
Because the book is about a childhood, I'm tempted to say that the emotional state the book put me in was either nostalgic or something akin to feeling like an adolescent, but I don't think either of those is right, partly because Conroy's upbringing doesn't seem to have hardly anything in common with my own.
So there you go: a nebulous, if not downright worthless review. Read this book if you like books that transport you emotionally or that are incredibly well written without being at all flashy.
October 6, 2015
I'm always interested in how we learn about a new book or author. What's the best way to get a good book recommendation? Is it through Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ suggestion algorithm? I would say not. From friends? Sure, sometimes, occasionally, but we all know the pressure that comes from a friend suggestion and seeing that book stare at you in the face on your bookshelf for months.
My personal favorite way is when a beloved author points you towards something that was meaningful to them. In the case of Frank Conroy, I was completely ignorant of his existence until I read David Foster Wallace's essay "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," which is about his experiences on a cruise liner. In the essay, Wallace takes Conroy to task for writing a puff piece (in exchange for a free vacation) about the same cruise liner in which DFW is writing a piece on (albeit not while on the payroll of said cruise liner). The criticism of Conroy is tinged by what the reader can see is Wallace's enormous respect for the writer, and when he calls Stop-Time "arguably the best literary memoir of the twentieth century and is one of the books that first made poor old yours truly want to try to be a writer," I immediately added it to my to-read list.
Well, Wallace wasn't lying. I can truly say that I've never quite read a book like Stop-Time, and even after letting it digest for a few days I still can't quite put my finger on it. One thing I'm certain of is that, as far as prose is concerned, the book is a masterpiece. Conroy was the Chairperson of the legendary Iowa Writers Workshop for some two odd decades, and after reading Stop-Time I cannot imagine a person more well qualified to have been guiding the young talented writers of America. His prose is precise without being cold, it is enthralling without being cheap or flashy.
When I picked up Stop-Time, I was completely ignorant of it's contents and was actually looking to get away from memoirs as I had read a string of ho-hum autobiographies(looking at you Hitch-22). Luckily for me, I was grabbed around the throat by Conroy's prose within the first chapter before I had the chance to realize that Stop-Time was also a memoir, of sorts. It's not written like any memoir I've read. Many people would probably pick up this book, breeze through it and ask "Why bother?" There are no celebrity sightings in Conroy's book, no grand escapades, barely enough to qualify as an exciting life. However, the text itself is fully alive, and Conroy has managed to capture the essence of growing up, of being alive, and goddamn can the man write a sentence.
My personal favorite way is when a beloved author points you towards something that was meaningful to them. In the case of Frank Conroy, I was completely ignorant of his existence until I read David Foster Wallace's essay "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," which is about his experiences on a cruise liner. In the essay, Wallace takes Conroy to task for writing a puff piece (in exchange for a free vacation) about the same cruise liner in which DFW is writing a piece on (albeit not while on the payroll of said cruise liner). The criticism of Conroy is tinged by what the reader can see is Wallace's enormous respect for the writer, and when he calls Stop-Time "arguably the best literary memoir of the twentieth century and is one of the books that first made poor old yours truly want to try to be a writer," I immediately added it to my to-read list.
Well, Wallace wasn't lying. I can truly say that I've never quite read a book like Stop-Time, and even after letting it digest for a few days I still can't quite put my finger on it. One thing I'm certain of is that, as far as prose is concerned, the book is a masterpiece. Conroy was the Chairperson of the legendary Iowa Writers Workshop for some two odd decades, and after reading Stop-Time I cannot imagine a person more well qualified to have been guiding the young talented writers of America. His prose is precise without being cold, it is enthralling without being cheap or flashy.
When I picked up Stop-Time, I was completely ignorant of it's contents and was actually looking to get away from memoirs as I had read a string of ho-hum autobiographies(looking at you Hitch-22). Luckily for me, I was grabbed around the throat by Conroy's prose within the first chapter before I had the chance to realize that Stop-Time was also a memoir, of sorts. It's not written like any memoir I've read. Many people would probably pick up this book, breeze through it and ask "Why bother?" There are no celebrity sightings in Conroy's book, no grand escapades, barely enough to qualify as an exciting life. However, the text itself is fully alive, and Conroy has managed to capture the essence of growing up, of being alive, and goddamn can the man write a sentence.
August 7, 2017
Conroy writes well. In fact, he writes too well. So technically proficient, that he became a teacher of writing for many years at the Iowa Writers Workshop. Yet this was his first and only (so it is said) highly successful book. There is something Mannerist about it, in its proficiency.
The book is a memoir that reads like a novel, broken into a series of short-stories. It has honesty and depth. I found the later sections, as Frank turned 15, more compelling than the earlier sections. He was, however, even as a child, remarkably precocious.
Worth familiarizing yourself with this book if, like me, you've never heard of it.
The book is a memoir that reads like a novel, broken into a series of short-stories. It has honesty and depth. I found the later sections, as Frank turned 15, more compelling than the earlier sections. He was, however, even as a child, remarkably precocious.
Worth familiarizing yourself with this book if, like me, you've never heard of it.
August 2, 2018
3,7.
Vaig gaudir bastant més amb la lectura de del Finnegan. Sembla que Stop-Time és pioner a Estats Units en aquest gènere (narrativa memorÃstica d'es riptors "anònims"), però no m'ha cautivat massa.
Vaig gaudir bastant més amb la lectura de del Finnegan. Sembla que Stop-Time és pioner a Estats Units en aquest gènere (narrativa memorÃstica d'es riptors "anònims"), però no m'ha cautivat massa.
May 12, 2017
I tried hard to like this coming-of-age memoir that has generated so many fans over the years. It does have some beautiful, vivid writing; however, some of it was self-absorbedly (apologies for inventing a word) bizarre and bogged me down.
October 6, 2016
My library copy of this almost fifty-year-old book has been taped together, and the pages are pliable from many turnings. The blurbs on the back of the old Penguin paperback call Stop-Time an “American autobiography,� a phrase which gave me pause. When did we start using the word memoir? When did memoirs become our chronicles of modern life? Frank Conroy must surely have been a pioneer, but I have no authoritative assurance of that.
Stop-Time is a compelling collection of memories, non-linear and incomplete, recalling Conroy’s years until he entered college. I’d see it as a bildungsroman, except that term so clearly means fiction. I could not put the book down. One memory urged me on to another, and I reflected about how rarely I allow this feeling to take hold, such that daily tasks are allowed to fade away in the face of a good book. (My pleasure was reminiscent of the summer afternoons of my childhood, when I read constantly on the front porch, engrossed in a well-spun tale and unbothered by any other claims on my time.)
Conroy had what one might see as a miserable childhood, without security or decent adults, and he has an astonishing ability to call up his feelings. He expresses awareness for the helplessness of children, while giving us glimpses of the first-rate intellect which grew during these years, even in the absence of any human support. He refers to “the stoicism of the helpless.� Responding to an unfair request by his distant and careless mother, he mused, “Children are in the curious position of having to do what people tell them, whether they want to or not.� It matters little whether a command is just or unjust since the child has no confidence in his ability to distinguish the difference.�
In a wonderful chapter, he described how he mastered a great many yo-yo tricks, and won a competition. When he stopped by the home of an older cousin he admired, the cousin could only talk in prurient tones about two new neighborhood girls. A kid with a yo-yo trophy garnered no attention.
Conroy’s childhood world was nearly amoral, and the fact that he learned and grew is a testament to that great equalizer: books. “I read everything, without selection, buying all the fiction on the racks of the local drugstore....I read very fast, uncritically, and without retention, seeking only to escape from my own life through the imaginative plunge into another.�
Conroy warns us in the first chapter:
Stop-Time is a compelling collection of memories, non-linear and incomplete, recalling Conroy’s years until he entered college. I’d see it as a bildungsroman, except that term so clearly means fiction. I could not put the book down. One memory urged me on to another, and I reflected about how rarely I allow this feeling to take hold, such that daily tasks are allowed to fade away in the face of a good book. (My pleasure was reminiscent of the summer afternoons of my childhood, when I read constantly on the front porch, engrossed in a well-spun tale and unbothered by any other claims on my time.)
Conroy had what one might see as a miserable childhood, without security or decent adults, and he has an astonishing ability to call up his feelings. He expresses awareness for the helplessness of children, while giving us glimpses of the first-rate intellect which grew during these years, even in the absence of any human support. He refers to “the stoicism of the helpless.� Responding to an unfair request by his distant and careless mother, he mused, “Children are in the curious position of having to do what people tell them, whether they want to or not.� It matters little whether a command is just or unjust since the child has no confidence in his ability to distinguish the difference.�
In a wonderful chapter, he described how he mastered a great many yo-yo tricks, and won a competition. When he stopped by the home of an older cousin he admired, the cousin could only talk in prurient tones about two new neighborhood girls. A kid with a yo-yo trophy garnered no attention.
Conroy’s childhood world was nearly amoral, and the fact that he learned and grew is a testament to that great equalizer: books. “I read everything, without selection, buying all the fiction on the racks of the local drugstore....I read very fast, uncritically, and without retention, seeking only to escape from my own life through the imaginative plunge into another.�
Conroy warns us in the first chapter:
My faith in the firmness of time slips away gradually. I begin to believe that chronological time is an illusion and that some other principle organizes existence. My memories flash like clips of film from unrelated movies. I wonder, suddenly, if I am alive. I know I’m not dead, but am I alive? I look into the memories for reassurance, searching for signs of life. I find someone moving. Is it me? My chest tightens.And so we are treated to the stories from those nooks and crannies � wild games of children, advances of bullies, family trips in hot automobiles, after-school jobs, bumper cars at the fair, first loves, and lost friends.
I get so uncomfortable floating around like this that I almost gratefully accept the delusion that I’ve lived another life, remote from me now, and completely forgotten about it. Somewhere in the nooks and crannies of memory there are clues.
December 27, 2008
I like this memoir for its meandering qualities, the lack of plot, and the simplest stories told in a highly detailed style. Even the chapter about how he obsessed over yo-yo tricks was engaging and fun. This is a quiet book about growing up in the 40s and 50s and it doesn't need weighty subplots (child abuse, drugs, etc.) like the memoirs were used to seeing the past couple of decades. Even though it was first published in '67, it still feels fresh.
June 8, 2020
Relato autobiográfico de la niñez y juventud de Frank Conroy. Recuerdos novelados provistos de honestidad e inteligencia envidiables para un joven escritor en sus 20, edad que tenÃa Conroy cuando escribió Stop-Time.
Libro de gran influencia para escritores como Norman Mailer, Truman Capote y David Foster Wallace, quien señaló que Stop-Time es el mejor libro de memorias literarias del siglo XX.
Libro de gran influencia para escritores como Norman Mailer, Truman Capote y David Foster Wallace, quien señaló que Stop-Time es el mejor libro de memorias literarias del siglo XX.
December 8, 2018
AutobiografÃa imprescindible para los que les gusten este tipo de libros. Muy interesante el prólogo con el que se inicia el libro en el que Rodrigo Fresan pone en su lugar temporal este libro para que veamos el valor real de esta biografÃa sobre todo para darnos cuenta como este libro fue el precedente de muchos otros que llegaron después para seguir la senda que abrió este. Conroy nos cuenta la historia de su infancia y juventud sin maquillar lo que le tocó vivir en su particular familia y sorprende ver como consiguió salir de ello para convertirse en un hombre con una vida académica y profesional brillante a pesar de todo. No le doy 5 estrellas porque por desgracia cuando lo he leÃdo mi memoria lectora ya estaba "infestada" por otros de los libros que Fresan nombra en el prologo y eso ha echo que el libro no me haya provocado esa sorpresa de algo nunca leÃdo antes.
May 21, 2013
A uniquely American coming-of-age novel: road travel and fatherlessness feature prominently. The memoir focuses on creating an identity for oneself without having a role model. In a way, it's almost an existentialist bildungsroman.
It's well-written and doesn't spare detail to court sympathy. The narrator isn't always likeable and he doesn't attempt to justify or apologize for his actions. Growing up is awkward and full of things we'd rather sweep under the rug, but what matters is more what one takes away from mistakes. Over the course of the memoir, the narrator--the author--emerges as a deeply broken man, unapologetic for past transgressions and callous in his relations with women. That the reader is given such a view into the author's motivations and responses is a testament to the writing itself.
Overall, the book is well-written but doesn't particularly stand out. It's good, but won't likely change your life.
It's well-written and doesn't spare detail to court sympathy. The narrator isn't always likeable and he doesn't attempt to justify or apologize for his actions. Growing up is awkward and full of things we'd rather sweep under the rug, but what matters is more what one takes away from mistakes. Over the course of the memoir, the narrator--the author--emerges as a deeply broken man, unapologetic for past transgressions and callous in his relations with women. That the reader is given such a view into the author's motivations and responses is a testament to the writing itself.
Overall, the book is well-written but doesn't particularly stand out. It's good, but won't likely change your life.
September 24, 2011
Here's one where I struggle with stars. Instead of "I liked it" I wish I had an option to say "I know I was supposed to like it but really I spent 2 of the 6 hours wishing I could read something else." Conroy had me, then he didn't. He had me, then he didn't. The prose was fine, but I was annoyed by structure and voice, and perhaps this is because I'm spoiled by the highly revised and stylized narratives of modern memoirs. If I had read this in 67 I might have been more forgiving.
October 7, 2016
I've owned my copy of "Stop-Time" for over 20 years, leaving it unread until just four days ago. Every time I took it down from its shelf I put it back, suspicious, as I tend to be of the memoir genre, that anyone who would write several hundred pages about him or herself must be self important and therefore boring.
This time, before I put it back on the shelf, I read the Prologue. Half way through ( It is only one page) I sat down and before I went to bed that night, I'd consumed two thirds of the book. I can not tell what is in the Prologue without ruining it for new readers of the book, but I can say that I understood, however subliminally at that early point, that what was going to drive this narrative was risk, the pull of Desire toward Danger that drives so much great story telling. This is much more subtle, of course, than in thrillers, or "adventure" stories -until one reads the Epilogue, which is actually the second half of the story told in the Prologue, and realizes the need for risk frames this whole extraordinarily compelling story of Frank Conroy's almost always lonely journey from boyhood to young adulthood. It is what makes "Stop-Time" universal.
This time, before I put it back on the shelf, I read the Prologue. Half way through ( It is only one page) I sat down and before I went to bed that night, I'd consumed two thirds of the book. I can not tell what is in the Prologue without ruining it for new readers of the book, but I can say that I understood, however subliminally at that early point, that what was going to drive this narrative was risk, the pull of Desire toward Danger that drives so much great story telling. This is much more subtle, of course, than in thrillers, or "adventure" stories -until one reads the Epilogue, which is actually the second half of the story told in the Prologue, and realizes the need for risk frames this whole extraordinarily compelling story of Frank Conroy's almost always lonely journey from boyhood to young adulthood. It is what makes "Stop-Time" universal.
February 26, 2016
I read this book after "Mid-Air." I've never checked to see if "Stop-Time" is listed as a memoir, autobiography, or fiction. The label might matter a lot to the writer--in terms of how he or she's telling a story that comes from their memory. But memory is so difficult to separate from imagination for me--even when I recall something with intense precision, someone else who was there recalls it differently--that I read life stories the same way I read all stories: do they ring true?
"Stop-Time" is a classic and the man's coming-of-age goes through so many permutations of place, stability and instability (financial and otherwise), it struck me as both unique and universal. The prose and finely wrought scenes are unforgettable. If you haven't read Frank Conroy, you should.
"Stop-Time" is a classic and the man's coming-of-age goes through so many permutations of place, stability and instability (financial and otherwise), it struck me as both unique and universal. The prose and finely wrought scenes are unforgettable. If you haven't read Frank Conroy, you should.
July 12, 2018
A memoir that reads like a novel, written with enviable clarity and candour. Perhaps the most harrowing chapter deals with a boys' school and makes Lord of the Flies read like Enid Blyton. If I could nominate six memoirs as contemporary classics, this book would be on it. If you're wondering, the others would be as follows:
Unreliable Memoirs, Clive James
This Boy's Life, Tobias Wolff
Memoir, John McGahern
The Unexpected Professor, John Carey
Once in a House on Fire, Andrea Ashworth
Unreliable Memoirs, Clive James
This Boy's Life, Tobias Wolff
Memoir, John McGahern
The Unexpected Professor, John Carey
Once in a House on Fire, Andrea Ashworth
December 10, 2019
Memoirs get a bad name, mostly from me. But Frank Conroy is the exception that proves the rule. STOP-TIME charts his childhood to early adulthood in evocative episodes that have no agenda other than to capture that boring, frightening, exciting period we all go through (if we’re lucky). Your experiences might be different, but everyone will recognize the feelings he conjures.
Want to read
May 20, 2012David Foster Wallace said this book made him want to be a writer, so I'm in.
May 5, 2018
I came to this because they were talking about it on the Literary Disco podcast a while back. It's a remarkable book that works as a memoir but also a coming of age novel. By the end I was seeing it as a direct forerunner of Knausgaard's epic collection which is as high praise as I can imagine. Wonderful reading.
February 3, 2008
A strong, stoical memoir, Stop-Time, published in 1967, recounts Conroy’s childhood and adolescence placed inside two narrow contemporary frames: accounts of reckless to the point of suicide/homicide driving from London to the countryside. The prologue and epilogue are both very brief but reveal an adult who should be responsible and perhaps even happy, but clearly is otherwise disturbed. Madness runs, to borrow from “Arsenic and Old Lace,� in Conroy’s family. His dad was in and out of institutions. Conroy was restless and uncertain, a smart ass without direction, but a lover of books and under the circumstances, normal. His sister was the responsible one, trying to make a path for herself out of the ruins of her father’s madness and her mother’s messy life; but near the end of his narrative of growing up she is sent home from Europe, the victim of a sudden, substantial breakdown. There is no clinical insight here—bi-polar? Schizophrenia?—just a showcasing of events. The manic London driving suggests that the narrative’s near happy ending—young Conroy, righting his life, arrives at Haverford College—is, if anything, irrelevant. So is the seeming happiness at working well and having his own family. Madness lurks like an unkillable horror movie villain. Somewhere Conroy must have found a way through this mess. He became the long-time director of the very successful Iowa Writer’s Workshop and published two respected novels. But this memoir is nothing but disturbing.
September 20, 2009
Definitely a fun, easy read. Frank Conroy's autobiography reads like a novel..no wait, it reads more like a collection of short stories, each little vignette very well self contained, but more interesting for all the other stories that have gone before it. And he does AMAZING work when describing people. Characters will show up for no more than two or three pages and are never seen again, but in that time he describes the most interesting thing about them in casual detail, and you end up feeling like you know them better than some author's characters that were described in half a book. Very neat, very fun.
April 6, 2021
Still my favourite ever book; I've lost count of the number of times I've re-read it now. It's one of those memoirs of youth that, if you first encounter it at just the right time in your own life, becomes inextricably linked with your own experiences of growing up, no matter how remote from Florida or New York in the 1940s and '50s those experiences might be.
December 6, 2019
This is one of the first memoirs I have read - about growing up and early adulthood. It is recognized as a classic and for good reason. Mr. Conroy wrote this when he was 29 years old. On back of book jacket is high praise from Norman Mailer and William Styron. Part of this memoir first appeared in The New Yorker, Partisan Review, The Paris Review, and The Urban Review.
January 9, 2011
2.5 stars
This so-called classic ocming of age memoir didn't impress me. Some of the prose was nice byt the structure of plain exposition with no revelation was puzzling. Maybe it was groundbreaking in its time (1964) but it did little for me.
This so-called classic ocming of age memoir didn't impress me. Some of the prose was nice byt the structure of plain exposition with no revelation was puzzling. Maybe it was groundbreaking in its time (1964) but it did little for me.
April 26, 2010
I kept trying and trying to let the text take over, but it just wasn't happening. It is well written, but something about it I never found compelling.
July 3, 2024
Giugno è stato un mese piuttosto complicato: l'arrivo dell'estate non porta più con sé, ahimè, profumo di vacanza e promessa di giornate lunghissime...però ho letto dei bei libri, pochi, meno del solito,Ìý ritagliandomi un'oretta qua e là .
Uno di questi è Stop-time, che mi ha permesso di conoscere Frank Conroy: nato a New York nel 1936, è stato direttore della più famosa scuola di scrittura americana, la University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, dalla quale sono usciti talenti del calibro di Raymond Carver, John Irving e Flannery O'Connor.
Stop-Time è il viaggio solitario, faticoso, resiliente dell'autore attraverso l'infanzia e l'adolescenza: un memoir quindi, che a dispetto delle 350 pagine che avrebbero potuto indulgere all'autocelebrazione o all'autocommiserazione, procede netto, deciso, con una prosa disadorna che va dritta al punto e non si abbandona agli umori né cede agli sfarzi di chi, scrittore sublime, potrebbe pure permetterseli; eppure è così intensa e penetra, acuta, nell'animo del lettore.
L'America di fine anni 30, un padre assiduo frequentatore di cliniche psichiatriche, una madre distratta, impreparata, un patrigno capitato per caso, la solitudine dell'essere precari, del vivere borderline, inevitabilmente diversi; poi i traslochi, le scuole, le lunghe e deserte autostrade americane.
Un po' On the road, un po' giovane Holden, Frank Conroy scrive un bellissimo romanzo di formazione e crescita, la sua; scrive per il ragazzino che è stato, per liberarlo dall'irrazionale, dall'incertezza che avvolge la sua vita, dalla quale può proteggersi trovando la "chiarezza del mondo" solo nei libri. I libri sono la realtà . I libri e la scrittura salvano.
Stop-time è il debutto di Conroy, pubblicato nel 1967 e tradotto in italiano da Matteo Colombo per Fandango nel 2014.
Uno di questi è Stop-time, che mi ha permesso di conoscere Frank Conroy: nato a New York nel 1936, è stato direttore della più famosa scuola di scrittura americana, la University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, dalla quale sono usciti talenti del calibro di Raymond Carver, John Irving e Flannery O'Connor.
Stop-Time è il viaggio solitario, faticoso, resiliente dell'autore attraverso l'infanzia e l'adolescenza: un memoir quindi, che a dispetto delle 350 pagine che avrebbero potuto indulgere all'autocelebrazione o all'autocommiserazione, procede netto, deciso, con una prosa disadorna che va dritta al punto e non si abbandona agli umori né cede agli sfarzi di chi, scrittore sublime, potrebbe pure permetterseli; eppure è così intensa e penetra, acuta, nell'animo del lettore.
L'America di fine anni 30, un padre assiduo frequentatore di cliniche psichiatriche, una madre distratta, impreparata, un patrigno capitato per caso, la solitudine dell'essere precari, del vivere borderline, inevitabilmente diversi; poi i traslochi, le scuole, le lunghe e deserte autostrade americane.
Un po' On the road, un po' giovane Holden, Frank Conroy scrive un bellissimo romanzo di formazione e crescita, la sua; scrive per il ragazzino che è stato, per liberarlo dall'irrazionale, dall'incertezza che avvolge la sua vita, dalla quale può proteggersi trovando la "chiarezza del mondo" solo nei libri. I libri sono la realtà . I libri e la scrittura salvano.
Stop-time è il debutto di Conroy, pubblicato nel 1967 e tradotto in italiano da Matteo Colombo per Fandango nel 2014.
December 4, 2021
I picked this up because David Foster Wallace mentioned it in an interview saying it was a favorite of his. The first chapter is an incredible read, then I spent the rest of my time reading plucking out moments DFW might have lifted for Infinite Jest, including a short version of the Eschaton game, but Frank created something called Hysteria with a group of boys. Is this important for a review of a book to know that I have, in fact, finished Infinite Jest? Yes. Why else would I be publicly sharing my thoughts about a book I just finished.
Anyway, fantastic readable prose for a memoir that mostly focuses on formidable experiences and moods the author lived through. You’d think by that description it would be indulgent or like a diary-entry. Nope. It’s specific and all over the place. A whole chapter about a Yo-Yo obsession? You bet. A story about a step-dad clearly having an affair with a stranger he met driving his cab? For sure.
Who gives a shit about where your parents were born and how they were often distant. This is a memoir strictly concerned with memory and feeling, and delivering it to the reader as straightforwardly as possible. A satisfying memoir considering I have no idea what Frank Conroy did with his life after the age of 17. I loved it.
Anyway, fantastic readable prose for a memoir that mostly focuses on formidable experiences and moods the author lived through. You’d think by that description it would be indulgent or like a diary-entry. Nope. It’s specific and all over the place. A whole chapter about a Yo-Yo obsession? You bet. A story about a step-dad clearly having an affair with a stranger he met driving his cab? For sure.
Who gives a shit about where your parents were born and how they were often distant. This is a memoir strictly concerned with memory and feeling, and delivering it to the reader as straightforwardly as possible. A satisfying memoir considering I have no idea what Frank Conroy did with his life after the age of 17. I loved it.
January 14, 2024
This book has sat on a bookshelf in my house for the past thirty years. I started it once and then put it down. Perhaps, had I read it when I bought it, or better yet, read it when I was much younger, I would have been impressed.
I do love his writing style. (I loved Mid-Air and Body and Soul.) You ease into his world. But it is a familiar world to anyone who took creative writing in the 1970s or 80s. This is not a surprise. He ran the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in those days.
These memories, or rather vignettes, of working as a pin-setter in a bowling alley, punching a guy who used the n-word in reform school(along with all of his fellow students), working at an chemical company, nights in a mental institution with his father(when there was no sitter) and countless others, seem contrived. Unless, of course, you must live an impoverished, desperate life filled with odd and sometimes dangerous people to come out the other end a writer.
I do love his writing style. (I loved Mid-Air and Body and Soul.) You ease into his world. But it is a familiar world to anyone who took creative writing in the 1970s or 80s. This is not a surprise. He ran the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in those days.
These memories, or rather vignettes, of working as a pin-setter in a bowling alley, punching a guy who used the n-word in reform school(along with all of his fellow students), working at an chemical company, nights in a mental institution with his father(when there was no sitter) and countless others, seem contrived. Unless, of course, you must live an impoverished, desperate life filled with odd and sometimes dangerous people to come out the other end a writer.
April 14, 2020
"I read four or five hours every night at home, but it was never quite as sweet as in school, when even a snatch read as I climbed the stairs seemed to protect me from my surroundings with an efficacy that bordered on the magical. And if the story dealt with questions of life and death, so much the better. How could I be seriously worried about having nothing to hand in at Math when I was pinned in a shallow foxhole, under a mortar barrage, a dead man across my back and an hysterical young lieutenant weeping for his mother by my side? I could not resist the clarity of the world in books, the incredibly satisfying way in which life became weighty and accessible. Books were reality. I hadn't made up my mind about my own life, a vague, dreamy affair, amorphous and dimly perceived, without beginning or end."
October 23, 2019
Frank Conroy in Stop-Time: Possibly I cried. I really can’t remember. My last image is from on top of the stone pillar, recognizing the car and watching it come toward me. In a sense it’s as if it never reached me, as if approaching me, it drove into invisibility. Perhaps children remember only waiting for things. The moment events begin to occur they lose themselves in movement, like a hypnotized dancer This is a very poetic coming of age memoir exploring childhood until Frank Conroy goes to university. If you like this excerpt you will like this book. It is often dreamy, in the way events are dreamy to a child, especially a child who has a traumatic, neglected background as he did. There were stronger chapters--the one describing when he runs away at age 15 is especially moving-- though other chapters did make me wince. His relationships with women are definitely problematic from today's perspective, and I wonder what he would have said about them now. But the book feels honest to me. He does not ever make excuses.
March 8, 2018
Il traduttore è bravo, qui lui non c'entra, è proprio l'autore che mi fa sorridere: "Jean, uomo di una bellezza gallica quasi insostenibile... (???) Aveva un viso dall'ossatura straordinariamente fine e proporzionata, appena più piccola della grandezza naturale (???), cosa che ne accentuava la delicatezza. Una testa di perfezione ellenica, ma priva di elleniche effeminatezze (???). I tratti somatici erano francesi e virili". Boh. Pregiudizi razziali?
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