Rating: 
Summary: The Voice of the Point Guard
Review: Pat Conroy has given us a true gem. I have been a big fan since I read "The Prince of Tides". Mr. Conroy has always had a decidedly autobiographical tone to his fiction. This is autobiography written with the eye and ear of one one of our country's great writers. Mr. Conroy's prose is magic. Like all great writers he transports us to another time and place. The time is the early to mid-60's and the place is The Citadel. We watch Mr. Conroy as young man attempting to understand his place in the world. This is a wonderful book!!
Rating: 
Summary: GO BACK TO WRITING FICTION MR. CONROY
Review: After reading the book I glanced through the ... reviews and asked myself "Did I read the same book as these reviewers?"
I am a fan of Conroy's. I have read and enjoyed all of his work except for this self serving and overly written biography. The parts I found interesting (his relationships with people) he did not explore, the parts I found boring (play by play action on meaningless basketball games) he analyses as if he's on ESPN Sportscenter.
Conroy chooses a losing season in basketball as the defining event that shaped him as a man. I think he is a writer bending the experiences of his life to try and fit them into the events of his youth.
This book tells us that the Conroy, a point guard at The Citadel, overcame an abusive father to become a very successful writer. So what? Millions of people overcome this and even worse circumstances.
Conroy's loss was not a sports season, it was his inability to maintain relationships. Conroy raises the question in the beginning of the book when he speaks of his impending divorce and says "I was in the middle of a most terrible breakdown where I could not shake the obsessional urge to end my life." (Page 12)
He solved this urge by writing about a losing basketball season?
If only solving life's problems were so easy.
Go back to writing fiction Mr. Conroy. At least there you can embellish the story to make it more interesting.
Rating:
Summary: More than a Sports Story:Conroy Conquers Great Adversity
Review: Fascinating story of Pat Conroy's senior Citadel team that after their last game, the players separate from each other as if to avoid any memories of a severe loosing season made more frustrating by a coach who worked them excessively hard and frequently degraded their performance. Conroy goes back in time to find his teammates and he pulls them together to tell the story of a team with talent that self-destructs during an arduous season. But Conroy also goes back to his youth and his relations with his father. It's hard to believe when Conroy says the portrait of his father in the "Great Santini" was actually a softer image of his father. Conroy survives constant degradation by his father through not only basketball but also a love of literature where he becomes an accomplished student. He suffers the embarrassment of losing what he thought was a sure scholarship offer to South Carolina while small college offers were tossed by his father who wouldn't even open letters from colleges that didn't meet his approval. With a near miss scholarship out the window to South Carolina, Conroy enters the Citadel alone after a 5-day train ride. Conroy then suffers through the plebe system and after one particularly brutal night of hazing, he is saved by the intervention of a no rank senior who with other no rank seniors form a shelter in which he can survive. He never forgets their kindness as he eventually emulates them when he becomes an upper classman. Conroy does develop academically at the Citadel and in spite of his frustration with the Plebe system, he continues to develop in literature and his aspirations of day being a writer seem to coincide with his confidence as a basketball player. While experiencing difficulties with communicating with his coach, Conroy develops excellent academic relationships with his professors achieving scholastically beyond his basketball endeavors. But the bulk of the story is the telling of his development into a better than he describes basketball player. Conroy tells the entertaining story of the Citadel basketball team from his freshman year to that final year where he battles better athletes for the starting point guard position. He provides biographies for each player including their strengths and weaknesses while they play for a college that does not have any real affection for jocks. Their coach is a former NC State rebounder of high regard who seems frustrated that he is coaching in the Southern Conference. He handles his players harshly with virtually no positive feedback. On Christmas Day they practice for 4 hard hours only to have baloney sandwiches twice a day while they live in the visitor's dorm on the empty campus seems incredibly Spartan. But in spite of the negatives Conroy survives to eventually take his place as the captain of the team and as the eventual starting point guard. In addition, he blossoms as a student and makes strong friendships with his mentors that derive pleasure from his grasp of literature. The telling of the basketball season is virtually game-by-game as he tells of teams familiar with anyone in the south who is aware of the Southern Conference. Conroy captures the exciting play as the team plays Davidson, then coached by Lefty Driesel, VMI, VA. Tech, Richmond, Jacksonville, William and Mary, Clemson and many others. He not only describes the game action well but also he describes the arenas such as the old Blow Gym at W & M, the VMI pit with the Keydets and playing in the hostile world of Clemson. Conroy provides insight to the players and their feelings and their struggles to play well in spite of their coach who at times punished the best players and sometimes wore them down before the games even started. As the book evolved it seems that Conroy got in touch with himself realizing the consequences of living in a suffering house hold made him attracted to the down trodden particularly women that had a hard life. The psychological damage that he feels is portrayed through the book and after the season is over Conroy seems to look back not only at the lives of his teammates but his own life as well. After graduating, Conroy becomes estranged from the Citadel because of his books and then his father because of the "Great Santini" ("It put a missile in his cockpit"). But this a positive story after all because in spite of his modesty, Conroy achieves beyond his dreams on the court, and academically at the Citadel and eventually his father makes a dramatic turn for the better. The basketball story is riveting but Conroy's survival even more so. And in his openness about his athletic limitations, the reader has to think that any point guard that can score over 20 points a game four times in a season has got to be a good player. But the high point is the bonds between the players that although they were not obviously evident during the losing season actually become cemented almost 30 years later as Conroy contacts his teammates as they jointly explore that catastrophic season. The one mystery is how his father could change so dramatically that at his death he was beloved by his family and his community. That aspect deserves more detail.
Rating:
Summary: my losing season
Review: "Basketball lifted me from the malignant bafflement of my boyhood. It lifted me up and gave me friends that I got to call teammates. The game gave me moments where I brought crowds of strangers to their feet, calling out my name. The game allowed me to like myself a little bit, and at times the game had even allowed me to love the beaten, ruined boy I was." Pat Conway wrote these words - indeed, this book - for me. Like him, my whole life revolved around basketball from the time I was a little boy dreaming about someday playing on the high school team, right up until the day in my early 40's when Father Time forced me to switch to tennis. In accordance with the rituals of the Plebe system, he was abused by the upperclassmen at the Citadel. I was abused by the other kids in grade school and junior high because they just plain didn't like me, which, in its own way, might have been worse. My salvation was basketball. Like Conway, I put my whole heart and soul into being the best basketball player I could be, and, like him, I succeeded beyond my greatest expectations. Although Conroy goes into detail about the intricacies of the game of basketball, this book is not just for basketball players. It is a marvelous description of his journey through adolescence to manhood, written with such honesty, beauty and sensitivity that it moved me to tears time and time again. Whether the tears were for him or myself, I still don't know. But they weren't all tears of pity. In one wonderful instance, they were tears of laughter. I have never read a more perfect description of a an inappropriate, uncontrollable laughing jag as when Conroy describes his own breakdown in the locker room in front of his coach and his team after one of their most humiliating defeats. Conroy's amazing insight into his own feelings and those of his peers, coaches and family are simply beautiful. He not only let me see into his heart and soul, he gave me the gift of a completely new look at myself. For that, I will be forever grateful.
Rating: 
Summary: He doesn't write fiction
Review: My favorite book of my youth was "The Lords of Discipline" followed closely by "The Great Santini." As someone who also felt out of place in a military school and who loved the game of basketball immeasurably but wasn't too good at it--I felt like Conroy was writing his books with only me as his target audience. Because I enjoyed those two books so much (for the record I also loved "The Water is Wide", but for whatever reason I couldn't get into "The Prince of Tides") I found the book to be incredibly compelling as far as explaining the motivations behind his characters. It also became VERY obvious that Conroy was basically drawing on his life experiences when creating his fiction. There was not a single chapter in this book where I didn't recognize a theme or story he used in either "The Great Santini" or "The Lords of Discipline". Because of that--I can't give the book 5 stars, because somebody who didn't read these books wouldn't be able to fully appreciate the man behind the book, and the lessons in them. It's still hard for me to believe that someone as despicable as Pat's Father could have created such a sensetive and insightful person---it's very hard to believe that "The Great Santini" was actually worse in real life than in fiction. Five stars for Conroy fans, 3 stars for a Conroy novice, and 4 stars to average it out.
Rating:
Summary: Best of the Year
Review: My Losing Season is the best of the ~50 books I've read this year -- my first, but certainly not the last, exposure to Pat Conroy. Conroy writes from deep within his soul.
Rating:
Summary: My Losing Season
Review: As a Citadel man and a child of abuse, I found this book to be so unbelievably true and emotionally moving. Only Pat Conroy can weave a tale that holds so much truth. I have been a Conroy fan since his first book, THE BOO. I only wish that Conroy would write more books as in my opinion he is the premier American author. I have read all of his books--multiple times and as my wife says, "If Pat Conroy wrote a phone book, you would read it." So true. This is truly a remarkable, soul-searching book and should be read by all---not just basketball fans. KUDOS!!!
Rating:
Summary: Conroy another Faulkner
Review: Pat Conroy is the finest writer of my "baby boomer" generation. This non-fiction book brings us full circle and we can more clearly understand the thought life situations that went into Santini and Lords of Discipline. You do not have to be a sports fan to love this book- you only need to have been young and full of hope. Ironically Conroy constantly sells himself short apparently from the complex given him by his horrendous upbringing. Yet you read the book; you read between the lines and realize that there is so much more. My one wish would be to have a few beers with Pat and discuss his works.
Rating:
Summary: A great author
Review: I just finished this book and it is great. i recomend however that people read The Great Santini and The Lords of Discipline before reading this just b/c he makes references to these books. It is no neccesary but however if there is one book to read in your life make it The Lords of Discipline. this is a great book though and very moving. This book is classic Conroy and you truely understand his characters from past novels. The Book does however stand out on its own as a great book.
Rating:
Summary: About life
Review: I am not a fan of basketball. But I found this book to be more than about the game of basketball...it is about life. I'm sure many people can see themselves in this book. I highly recommend it.
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