Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #72433 in Books
• Published on: 1977-02-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Customer Reviews

A masterful essayist
At first, I was challenged by Conroy's use of section breaks; I was looking for congruency and thru-line. But when I went back and re-read chapters, wonderful and magical things started happening on a subconscious level. It's like having disjointed dreams that are thematically different, and when you wake up, you can't remember them, but have a particular feeling, perhaps an insight based on some common denominator. Conroy demonstrates this kind of disjointed insight throughout the book, making Stop Time a favorite read and Conroy, in my opinion, a masterful essayist.

An early confessional
When someone writes an autobiographical memoir, if it is honest, he bares his soul. Frank Conroy's soul is unlovely to say the least. He writes without remorse - indeed, boastingly - of his sedulous part in a terrible hazing incident that involved the group beating of a schoolmate to the point of unconsciousness. And then he drags us through his pathetic, sloppy early liasons with girls, as if his experiences are something transcendant and unique just because they are his. One reviewer wrote hysterically that he hates women. Not true, of course. He is simply a supreme egotist, supreme, here, meaning far beyond the norm, beyond the natural self-concerns of most people. In one lamentable episode he completely violates the trust of a loyal and heartbreakingly earnest young woman, then shows not even the slightest trace of remorse. In Frank Conroy's self-indulgent world, Frank Conroy is number one and the devil with everyone else. This is an attitude he never outgrew. It is almost, in fact, as if he is proud of his amoral stance, as though it lends a patina of masculinity, something which he seems insecure about anyway. He was known for reducing his students to tears in his renowned Iowa Writer's Workshop.
Other reviewers gush on about his writing skills. But when a writer's heart and soul are flawed, he cannot speak truth. Our writers and poets should be our moral and spiritual guides.
Upon acceptance of the Nobel Prize for literature, William Faulkner said: [Our writers must relearn] "the old universal truths, lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands."
Therre is no compassion and no pity for anyone in Frank Conroy's world but himself.

A great story of a great period of growing up.
I picked this up around '69 when I was 14-15 and what a great book to read at that time of my life.
I still have my original copy which is falling apart. I'd love to know how many times I've read it.
Its simply a great book.