Rating: 
Summary: Loss, Survival and Truth
Review: Pat Conroy is a true literary artist and like all artists he needs to take his art into places he hasn't been before. No, this is not Prince of Tides revisited; this is a different kind of book, an insightful book about athletes written by a sensitive genius, but it asks one of the same questions as Prince of Tides. It asks about survival. Early on there is a telephone call, a friend has committed suicide. In the background children are crying. So begins the story. Later, a teammate mentions that he always knew he would have to come back to that awful year and revisit it. Since Pat Conroy is the writer he is we are all able to go with him through all the disappointments. Who else has the stamina to tackle a subject as painful as a losing senior year? This book is not for the weak of heart. This book hurts. Still there is great value in being able to examine losing in an age where athletes and the reality of loss are infrequently paired for public viewing. Against the norm this book exposes a necessary truth: it isn't and never will be, all about winning.
Rating: 
Summary: Losing as learning.
Review: "I was born to be a point guard, but not a very good one" (p. 1) bestselling author, Pat Conroy, writes in the Prologue to this memoir of his 1966-67 senior year basketball season at the Citadel. It was a season that haunts him still (p. 399). THE LOSING SEASON is not only Conroy's sentimental story of "a mediocre basketball team," The Citadel Bulldogs, a team that spent a year "perfecting the art of falling to pieces" (p. 14), but it is also the story of his encounters with loss, an experience which enabled him to endure a "child-beating father" (p. 388), aka "The Great Santini," and an experience which later sustained him during the "stormy passages" of his life, "when the pink slips came through the door, when the checks bounced at the bank," when he left his wife, and when he later contemplated suicide (p. 14). He observes, "losing prepares you for the heartbreak, setback, and tragedy that you will encounter in the world" (p. 395). Conroy spent four years interviewing members of his team and writing his book as an "act of recovery" (p. 394). Does Conroy turn his mediocrity as a basketball player into great writing in THE LOSING SEASON? Well, not quite. While this book does not reach the heighths Conroy previously travelled as a writer in THE PRINCE OF TIDES (1986), THE GREAT SANTINI (1989), and BEACH MUSIC (1995), it will not disappoint basketball fans or Conroy's following of readers. G. Merritt
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing, overrated
Review: As a memoir of a relatively prolific and popular author, this book is a very disappointing. Ardent fans of Pat Conroy obviously love this book, but then again, they love everything with his name on it irrespective of content (a cook book?) Conroy revisits his early experiences that provided the repetivive themes in his fiction as psuedo-non-fiction. (The dialogue in the book reads more like fiction, and it is simply not credible that he could recount exact conversations from childhood to college.) He gives the reader minimal insight into his experience as a writer. Rather, the book reads like an exercise in self-therapy that does explore his well known issues rather deeply (although losing is not one of them.) Conroy may have provided all that he can in terms of describing his process and how he approaches his craft. If that is the case, then this book should serve as inspiration for aspiring writers. Publishing fiction is not necessarily about literary excellence. It's a business.
His treatment of losing is also quite disappointing, and I'm not convinced that his experience on an NCAA division I basketball team can provide enough material to speak to the subject as an adult. The book is more about mediocrity and unfulfilled expectations than it is about losing. His experience on a losing team is completely uninteresting and there are far more storied losing organizations that touch sports culture in many ways, all of them more significant than what Conroy has to offer.
Rating:
Summary: Another 3 Pointer For Pat
Review: Pat Conroy is a national tresure. His writing is sublime, he is one of the few writers who can capably place the reader into almost any situation and paint such a realistic portrait that the reader feels he is actually there.
"My Losing Season" is incredibly detailed, beautifully layered and provides the type of rich texture that anyone who has been curious about what a college basketball player goes through on and off the court will find virtually everything he needs to know here.
Anyone who has read Conroy's work knows of the destructive relationship with his father, but never has it been more fully nor magnificently analyzed than here. That Conroy could finally skip the veneer of fiction to re-tell his story with his father is a magnificent accomplishment. That final assessment when he reveals how his father literally changed his personality just to spite his son and prove him a liar was one of ther most jaw dropping passages I have ever read.
This book is Conroy's labor of love, and reading it is no different. Conroy's insights into the game of basketball, his teammates, coaches, and the bizarre situation of playing for the Citadel have been majestically re-told here. I have loved most of Conroy's work (Beach Music was the exception), and this one goes on the top shelf as one of the best books I have ever read.
Rating:
Summary: Lords of the Boards
Review: Conroy works emotion like Michelangelo did marble. An absolute master. I suggest that one read The Great Santini and The Lords of Discipline before My Losing Season to fully appreciate his artistry - as he develops the emotional nuances on his palette to weave fiction out of the autobiographical details of his life. I was very moved when he spoke to Will McLean to have his doppelganger recede to the background so Pat Conroy could explain the facts of his heroic VMI game. Likewise when he explained how his father remade himself after the Great Santini - since Conroy took pains to embue Bull Meechum (Don Conroy) with a modicum of admirable traits his "real" father never had. But then again, perhaps Don/Bull did - and that realization may eventually come to Conroy in his twilight years.
Perhaps this book will serve as a final catharsis as regards his late father. If I have a criticism of My Losing Season, is that Conroy retains an adolescent angst while writing from the perspective of a middle aged man and that produces a sense of atrophied personal development. On re-reading the book, this was the message I got page after page: "Here I am, a 5'10" midget with no talent and I go on to be the team captain and MVP of my college basketball team. And, pal, all I got from my dad was a backhand across the puss. And all I and my teammates got from their coach and The Citadel was a figurative backhand as well. So, tell me, pal, who are the real losers here?"
One is left to wonder, as I am sure Conroy himself does, whether he would have attained such personal and career heights were it not for descending into the abyss that was the relationship with his father and with The Citadel. It could well be said that The Citadel has re-fashioned itself much as his father did. Such is the power of words well written.
Rating:
Summary: Loss, Survival and Truth
Review: Pat Conroy is a true literary artist and like all artists he needs to take his art into places he hasn't been before. No, this is not Prince of Tides revisited; this is a different kind of book, an insightful book about athletes written by a sensitive genius, but it asks one of the same questions as Prince of Tides. It asks about survival. Early on there is a telephone call, a friend has committed suicide. In the background children are crying. So begins the story. Later, a teammate mentions that he always knew he would have to come back to that awful year and revisit it. Since Pat Conroy is the writer he is we are all able to go with him through all the disappointments. Who else has the stamina to tackle a subject as painful as a losing senior year? This book is not for the weak of heart. This book hurts. Still there is great value in being able to examine losing in an age where athletes and the reality of loss are infrequently paired for public viewing. Against the norm this book exposes a necessary truth: it isn't and never will be, all about winning.
Rating:
Summary: A Slam Dunk!
Review: When I began reading "My Losing Season", I glanced at the endpaper photograph. Reprinted from the '1967 Sphinx', the class yearbook of The Citadel, it depicts twelve young basketball players posing for their official team photograph. Author Pat Conroy is the small guy at the front and center of the old black and white photo, kneeling alongside the basketball, a spot typically reserved for the team captain. But we can't be sure he is the team captain, or for that matter, we can't be sure anyone is the captain. No one actually holds the ball. Over the course of 400 pages, I found myself looking back to this photo repeatedly, as Conroy adds deep dimension into each player's background and character. Conroy unveils the story behind his team, the 1966-67 Citadel Bulldogs who lost more games than they won, but as he brings forth, learned enough for a lifetime. "My Losing Season" tells the story of a young man's journey through a very difficult boyhood, his escape into sport, his endurance at a southern military school, his central participation on a team of moderately talented basketball players, and his discovery of language and writing through wonderful professors at the Citadel. Conroy's greatest strength, his strong and unabashed character portrayals, resonates through this book. Readers of The Great Santini (or viewers of the Robert Duvall movie) will become reacquainted in great detail with the real-life Santini, Conroy's abusive father. "In My Losing Season", we also meet basketball coach Mel Thompson, who inflicts psychological terror on his charges, constantly tearing apart his young players and destroying any chance at winning this team might ever have had. Conroy adorns his professors and deans at the Citadel with laurels for giving him the keys to his future as a writer. But Conroy shines the light most brilliantly on his teammates. He effuses his fellow cadets with the color that is missing from the front photograph, intimately introducing the reader to his court colleagues. We learn about strengths, weaknesses, skills, fears, and limitations of each of the twelve. Four years of coach Mel Thompson, cadet hazings, severely repressed social lives and a total absence of support make for an over-extended "Survivor" episode. Conroy saves the best for last: a reunion tour in which he reconnects with each of the individuals on the team and their families independently, thirty years after hanging up his Converse high-tops. Emotions spill over. Nearly a dozen basketball games are described, in a kind of sepia-toned movie reel, as Conroy relives the play-by-play from his vantage at point guard. He overuses the flowery adjectives at times ("the beautiful boy" and such) but balances it with good locker room banter and the practical jokes of young men. The games themselves come alive again, and I found myself rooting for second half comebacks and last second heroics. You can feel the ball coming up the court, and like his teammates, you wonder where the pumpkin's going to go. Conroy emotes a strong love for his game, and basketball fans will appreciate the occasional name-dropping of great players and coaches he once bumped into. If you don't have courtside seats to this year's ACC or SEC tournament finals, this book will be a suitable replacement. Nothin' but net, baby!
Rating: 
Summary: MY CAPS LOCKS BUTTON ISN'T WORKING...
Review: This was a fantastic book. It is an autobiography of the author from his teenage years through his senior year at The Citadel in 1966-67. I am amazed that Pat Conroy survived being at the Citadel, much less dealing with an extremely abusive and violent father. The author is a survivor and it was basketball that helped him through his adversities. Pat Conroy was abused emotionally, verbally and physically by his father, a pilot in the Marine Corp. And if that abuse wasn't enough, he tells an amazing story of survival as a freshman plebe at The Citadel in South Carolina. Since many of us can not imagine dealing with an extremely abusive father or dealing with the violent and demeaning hazing of The Citadel's military-style campus in the mid-1960's, just reading Conroy's exploits is chilling. The author was tough. But as emotionally difficult as his high school years were, the abuse he took as a freshman plebe at The Citadel was even worse than the abuse and violence his father relished dishing out. Getting through college and thriving his senior year on the basketball team is yet another great part of the author's story. Pat Conroy overcame a multitude of adversity. His writing and prose makes this book a fast read and very entertaining. I hope they don't make this one into a movie. It would ruin the vivid images in this book. Five stars, easy.
Rating:
Summary: As powerful as it is entertaining
Review: I must admit I had my doubts entering My Losing Season. For starters, most books in the sports genre are dull, uneventful, predictable, and leave little to the imagination. Although a basketball fan myself, I wasn't overly keen on reading this one. To say I'm glad I did would be a vast understatement. Conroy, long known for his semi-autobiographical works that divulge so much of his traumatic childhood, has written his first pure work of nonfiction in the incomparable My Losing Season. Conroy takes us through his unbearably torturous plebe year at The Citadel as he endured unremitting physical torment bordering on categorical sadism - the likes of which he already had suffered from his father. Conroy recounts how it was only on the basketball court where the reticent Pat felt alive and allowed to shine in a futile attempt to build a bond with his mercilessly abusive father. The 12 man team of The Citadel 1966-67 basketball team that had a losing season and lost in the first round of The Southern Conference tournament may not sound like a great subject for a book. That being said, words cannot truly do justice to My Losing Season. It is only through adversity and the stigma created by losing, Conroy writes, that one ideally discovers - via introspective reflection - the person one truly is. Losing, in turn, brings out the best in some and the worst in others. Moreover, it provides previously unexploreed opportunities for self-discovery and growth. Simply stated, My Losing Season is a book that should not only be read, but cherished as a keepsake on one's bookshelf as a pillar of sagacity and wisdom.
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