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Summary: The power of sports
Review: Conroy describes how sports, specifically basketball, was the saving grace of a damaged childhood. If you've read him before, you know about the "Great Santini", who is more cruel than one can imagine. If you haven't, get introduced to the power of cruelty, even when your child is in college.A fine work detailing the life of an athlete at a military college. But, he does protest too much concerning his lack of athletic talent.
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Summary: One of the best books I've read in 50 years!
Review: I've read 80 to 100 books a year for almost 50 years. Many of them are memorable, but few have touched me the way this one did. Pat Conroy has been a favorite writer since I stumbled onto "The Water is Wide", and I love sports stories, so I expected that I woould really enjoy this book. Despite a few faults mentioned by other reviewers -- an excess of humility in describing his basketball prowess vis-a-vis the abilities of opponents, a preoccupation with his shortcomings as a player (and person), and a few editorial glitches -- this book is one that I will never forget. I thought it was wonderful that he could see through the despicable actions and statements of his coach to the essential humanity of this flawed individual. I also enjoyed his efforts to "get inside" the feelings of his teammates at the time of their losing season. But, as much as I enjoyed the narrative of the losing season, the last section of the book -- where he tried to articulate what all he learned in those few months affected the remainder of his life and the lives of his teammates -- was the icing on the cake for me. This is a book that can be enjoyed all many levels: as a narrative; as a self-study; as a study of institutional foibles; as a "the rest of the story" report; and as a philosophic essay. I purchased copies for my sons and my son-in-law and for several friends who will love the book like I did.
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Summary: A "Ruined" Writer
Review: This is a very disturbing book. Conroy has already told some of these stories through his fiction, but here the varnish has been removed, and we see the vicious brutality of his demeaning father, his dishonest and petty coach, and his malicious college, The Citadel. Conroy tells these tales convincingly and describes the results of this brutality on him and his siblings, teammates, and fellow cadets as "ruined" lives. Remarkably, he says that he "loves" his father, his coach, and his school and seems to believe that their viciousness somehow strengthened those they affected. On one level, this can be read as an extraordinarily forgiving. On another, it can be seen as yet another effect of the brutality, that even after all these years, Conroy continues to want to be accepted and esteemed by his tormentors. Where it gets particularly twisted, however, is in his conclusions about the Vietnam war. Although he acknowledges that the United States was wrong to be involved there, he considers the American participants as "heroic." He especially esteems a former teammate whose plane crashed and who was marched many miles to a prison camp; the real heroes, whose actions he describes but apparently does not see, are the man's Vietnamese captors, who nurse back to health the man who had been trying to kill them and then protect him against the citizenry that wants to kill him. Is it more heroic to save one's one life or the life of an enemy? Conroy is rightly horrified by an anti-war speaker's recommendation that American soldiers in Vietnam should kill their officers, but he expresses no similar horror for their killing of the Vietnamese soldiers, guerrillas, and civilians. Despite the fact that he believes the United States had no business there, Conroy writes that "I wish that I had entered into the Marine Corps and led a platoon of Marines in Vietnam. I would like to think I would have trained my Marines well and that the Vietcong would have had their hands full if they entered a firefight with my men." So Conroy wants to exorcize his personal demons, inflicted upon him by brutal military men and institutions, by killing people who do not deserve it. Like Conroy, I have stood at the Vietnam Memorial and wept. I have seen in the polished stone of that wall my reflection interrupted by the names carved in the wall and recognized the metaphor; I am incomplete because of these deaths. But I had another reaction as well: I wondered why the wall isn't several times longer so that it can also contain the names of the Vietnamese dead, those men, women, and children who were killed in our names and whose loss also diminishes us. Conroy has no trouble acknowledging the humanity of his opponents on the basketball court. Why is it so tough for him to honor and respect the Vietnamese?
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Summary: losing season
Review: Pat Conroy has been a favorite of mine for years, so didn't expect to be disappointed when i order the book, but i also didn't expect to be absolutely overwhelmed with the insight and honesty found in these pages. Pat Conroy is a wordsmith beyond compare, this autobiography puts new meaning in all of his other works. Thank you Mr. Conroy!!!!
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Summary: He goes way too far... ad nauseum
Review: Clearly Mr. Conroy, a genuinely appealing and gifted writer, would do better to stick to fiction. This book was really hard to read--not due to its wordiness or its theme, but due to its constant sycophantic ramblings about all the all-time, all-world, all-universe, god-emulating players Mr. Conroy encountered on the court during that one short year. One would think that such poor impostors as Wilt Chamberlin, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Earvin Johnson and Michael Jordan should hang their heads in shame to have dared walk onto the sacred hardwood and feign the remotest level of skill at the holy sport played with such divine pulchritude by these college boys Mr. Conroy constantly faced on the court during his senior season at The Citadel. Are you getting the idea yet? It gets worse. Mr. Conroy spends many pages telling the reader just how horrible he was in comparison to these deified young men. There's a lot of the "I'm not worthy to carry their stinky jockstrap" kind of prose, liberally peppered with even greater homage to the magnificence of these awe-inspiring players. Mr. Conroy concedes that his own work ethic was honorable, and that his ballhandling skills weren't half bad. Still, it's PAINFUL to read the constant self-flagellation combined with the nauseating hero-worship of opponents and teammates alike. It ruins the credibility of the story and makes it difficult to finish the book, because you're trying not to gag. The irony is that this would have been much better as fiction, in which evil can be black as night, and good can be as brilliant as the sun. The portrayal of Conroy's father (and his coach, for that matter) in this book deeply strains the boundaries of credibility. One hopes that no human father could be as evil as this man is written. One hopes that Mr. Conroy's writing of fiction, however, will continue unabated. There's plenty of biographical information in his novels to satisfy the most voyeuristic reader. Stick to the fiction, please, Mr. Conroy! It's what you do best.
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Summary: Started good but went downhill
Review: This is my first read of a Conroy book. I enjoyed the depicitions of his childhood and the Plebe system at the Citadel and some of the basketball game footage, but there was way too much play by play action in the bball and I love basketball. Also he didn't bring together the whole losing season concept. A good portion of the bball games he described were wins and he didn't do a good job of telling us why it was such a bad season other than Mel Thompson was such a jerk. At least a summary of the team's record would have been good. Conroy is also schizophrenic about his ball playing. One minute he's saying how little talent he has and the next minute he's raving about how well he did. It a bit annoying after a while. Hey, you're playing in college and starting at point guard - you're good, ok. Just admit it and get on with it. Also, Conroy is way too sappy and sentimental. How many best friends and beautiful women and touching moments and blah blah blah. Seems like he's remembering everything in an overly rosy light and it got a bit disgusting. I was tempted to scan the end of the book but I stuck it out with not much reward.
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Summary: Conroy is a master storyteller
Review: Having read all of Conroy's works I was anticipating another excellent read. However, I just couldn't put the book down. Conroy endured so many ups and downs in life, no wonder he is a bit on the crazy side. No matter, the man is so talented and apparantley a decent basketball player in his day as well. I didn't think Conroy could top the Prince of Tides but, in a different way he has faced his demons. What a book!
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Summary: A season of gargoyles and stunted trolls
Review: I don't think I wanted to enjoy this book as much as I ended up doing, gosh darn it. I know I didn't expect to. For one thing, I've never enjoyed basketball, and don't think I've ever in my life sat through a basketball game end-to-end, either live or on TV. And I had seen other reviewers' complaints about Conroy's wordiness. But as it turned out, I enjoyed this book a lot -- not only for the revelations about sports and manhood and (my particular interest) life at a military college, but also for the author's sheer storytelling ability and skill at bringing people to life on the page. Yes, Conroy can be wordy. With a bit of effort, this book could have been 100 or so pages shorter. But frankly, I don't mind. Conroy's writing has always been intensely personal -- both about himself and *for* himself. He makes a passing reference here to writing "the books which explain who I am to myself" (p. 163), and later to finding "the gargoyles and stunted trolls that ate me alive" (p. 344). If he sometimes confuses his basketball season with the Trojan War, and waxes Homeric about every drop of sweat that fell to the hardwood during that miserable, wonderful year, it's because that's how this season looms in his life (aided and abetted by an English professor, Colonel John Doyle, who himself compared Conroy to Hector). I'm more than willing to let Conroy frame his season in those terms in return for his letting me into his introspection. While Conroy was failing as a point guard, he was also discovering himself as a writer, and it's this part of his story that I found most compelling -- that and the post-season (thirty years post-season) discoveries and reflections that finally knit this group of individuals, once and for all, into a team. Anyone who's ever read "The Great Santini" will want to read this, to discover "the rest of the story" about Conroy's father and the impact that book had on his life and family. I didn't expect to like this book, but I really do, and recommend it highly. (I still don't like basketball, though.)
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Summary: A powerful story
Review: My Losing Season is a powerful story. Conroy shows how he found strength despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles - his father, his coach, his school, his athletic abilities. He finds the strength to survive, but the scars of his experience are evident - 3 failed marriages, a battle with suicidal tendencies, etc. One can only wonder what the seeds of this can be - and My Losing Season provides plenty of potential explanations. Conroy is a deep and complex person. All former athletes can relate to Conroy's life long connection to his team mates and "what might have been." It is truly amazing that such wonderful stories can come from such incredible pain. This is a great story. God Bless Pat Conroy and help heal his wounded soul.
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Summary: Will the Real Pat Conroy Please Stand Up!
Review: What a joy to read a book by a novelist who has dropped the pretense of fiction. Especially a novelist whose own story has figured so prominently in past novels. This book is about basketball. Mr. Conroy has written about his basketball career beginning as a child and ending with his final year as the quasi-captain of the 1966-67 Citadel team. I am sure that former athletes will find much that resonates in this "thrill of victory and agony of defeat" account. However, it is not necessary to be a jock to appreciate this story. There is a fascinating segment in which Conroy, the writer, confronts an auto-biographical character from an earlier work that dealt with the same material. It is wonderful that Conroy can portray even a little of the creative process in such a resonating way. Also extremely interesting is Conroy's admission that fictionalizing his past has had a detrimental effect on his memory. At times one might question the author's sanity. Of course Conroy has never hidden his history of mental problems. Lest you think from my examples that the book is an indulgent look back by a highly successful writer, let me assure you that the bulk of the book reads like the best novel I've read in a long time.
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