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Stop-Time: A Memoir [Paperback]

Frank Conroy
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)

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Book Description

February 24, 1977

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.


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Product Details

  • Paperback: 283 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Books; Reissue edition (February 24, 1977)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0140044469
  • ISBN-13: 978-0140044461
  • Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.5 x 7.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #120,296 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

A must read for anyone who has even a passing interest in memoir. Andrew R  |  7 reviewers made a similar statement
It is hard to put my finger on, why it didn't feel right to me rather often. Robert J. Crawford  |  3 reviewers made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
80 of 84 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Rich, satisfying memoir March 17, 2000
Format:Paperback
Few autobiographies that I have read match the power of this one. It manages to communicate the loneliness and isolation of youth and young adulthood, yet as a commentator on the book has correctly noted, it is free of self-pity or sentimentality.

Like another great coming-of-age memoir, Richard Wright's "Black Boy," Conroy's work is a powerful rebuttal to romantic evocations of childhood. His was a life of rootlessness, occasional random (and inexplicable) violence and long stretches of boredom. Mental illness and instability seemed never to be far from his doorstep.

Conroy doesn't shy away from describing any of this, or the effects that his difficult home life and environment had on him. In a powerful early scene, he describes joining in a boarding school attack on a vulnerable classmate. There are overtones of "Lord of the Flies," but the most effective -- and chilling -- quality of his description of the event is its tone of dispassion. For example, he tells of eagerly awaiting his chance to get a clean, unmolested shot at the kid, but then admits that the actual punch was disappointing, not what he thought it would be. This recitation of events is transmitted to us through the mind of the boy, not as a narrator who looks back, eager for the chance to justify or explain his motivation.

But "Stop-Time" is elevated even further by Conroy's ability to capture moments of childhood magic (even though they are often leavened with disappointment). For example, there is a great chapter on his sudden obsession with learning how to do tricks with a yo-yo; another memorable sequence of scenes describes the uninhibited pleasure of driving bumper cars and partaking of a carnival's tawdry pleasures. Still, at the end of the carnival sequence, Conroy injects a note of menace, a recurring technique that emphasizes a key theme of the book: children, even in their happiest moments, are always moving toward the shadowy and dangerous landscape of adulthood.

There are far too may great sections of this book to do it justice in a brief review. Suffice it to say that "Stop-Time" will deliver bittersweet pleasures, no matter how many times the reader returns to it.

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66 of 69 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A Beautifully Written Memoir of Growing Up April 25, 2002
Format:Paperback
The memoir has become a particularly prominent literary form in the past decade, often blending fact and fiction in licentious literary exploration. I think, particularly, of Mary Karr ("The Liar's Club" and, more recently, "Cherry") and Kathryn Harrison ("The Kiss") and, of course, Frank McCourt's Irish ramblings, among others. But thirty or so years before all these candid, sometimes titillating, self confessions, Frank Conroy wrote a book titled "Stop-Time," a memoir that surpasses all of them in the beauty of its prose and the poignant and deep sensitivity of its feeling.

"Stop-Time" tells the story of Frank Conroy's first eighteen years of life, a life marked by the ordinary rather than the lurid or unseemly. But the ordinariness of the life is elevated by the dreamlike, sensitive, asynchronous wonder of Conroy's writing. As Conroy relates in the first chapter of his narrative, in a passage that gives you a feeling for his writing style and for the narrative to follow: "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."

"Stop-Time" is a stunning example of how great writing can elevate even the most ordinary of lives. The facts of Conroy's memoir are not remarkable. He grew up in relatively poor circumstances, his father died of cancer when he was 12 and lived most of his life apart from Conroy's mother, he spent his time primarily between New York and Florida, and he was a bright boy who performed miserably in school. But while the broad outlines of his life are seemingly unremarkable, Conroy possesses the great gift of the writer: he can focus on the mote of dust floating in the sunlight and take the reader into a world of dreams and memories that are startlingly real, a world that the reader can feel and identify from his or her own recollections of growing up.

Conroy can lie down in a kennel with his family's dogs and dream that he, too, is a dog running through a field. He can relate the fear of being left alone in a cold cabin in the middle of winter while his mother and her boyfriend work the third shift at a state mental institution. He can recall a trip to the carnival with his best friend and how he was cheated and more by a seedy carnie hawker. He can precisely detail learning all the tricks you can do with a yo-yo, and learn them well. And he can recall the tumescent longings of early adolescence, of sneaking and peeking with his cousin and, as he got older, of experiencing, too. It is all related with a feeling, with a literary sense, that would be called "perfect pitch" if it were music.

"Stop-Time" is a remarkably written memoir that not only should be read, but also studied, as a stunning example of how the literary imagination can give vibrant life to the mundane.

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31 of 33 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Classic American memoir September 23, 2003
Format:Paperback
Conroy has been compared to Holden Caulfield, but Stop-Time, of course, is memoir - not fiction. Also, Conroy's writing is understated, haunting, and lyrical, even when he's talking about pretty brutal and gritty stuff. It's a must-read for anyone who wants to study the art of the memoir. First published in 1967, it still rings with the truth of boyhood and adolescence during a certain time in America.
The facts are not so terribly remarkable: He grew up poor, was bright but didn't do well in school, moved around a lot, his father died when he was 12, and he didn't get along with his stepfather (who, after Conroy's mother left, moved an insane girlfriend into the home). Okay, all that makes a good enough tale - but what really elevates it to high art is Conroy's skill as a writer, his ability to take a teensy memory or detail and expand it into something utterly remarkable.
Read it.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordianry memoir...
A friend gave me this book, telling me it had lasted with him since he'd read it many years ago. I was stunned by the beauty of the writing and its subject matter, Conroy's life... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Katharine N. Begien
5.0 out of 5 stars Captivating story, told with skill and emotion.
I had never heard of this writer until my book club chose it, but I was enthralled from the first page. I was amazed at Mr. Read more
Published 2 months ago by J. S. Loeb
5.0 out of 5 stars Astonishing
The best memoir of childhood I've ever read. Conroy's gift for describing the uncertainties and challenges of growing up is masterful. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Andrew R
4.0 out of 5 stars The writing, not the life, is what makes it great.
Conroy's memoir is more a story of coming-of-age than a tale based around a singular event (such as in a trauma memoir) or a tale of an extraordinary life lived. Read more
Published 5 months ago by smele
2.0 out of 5 stars reach exceeds his grasp, however vivid his troubled life was
This is an ambitious book that does not quite live up to its promise. Conroy writes well and had a horrifically eventful life, but (at least in my reading) you feel he is... Read more
Published on February 10, 2011 by Robert J. Crawford
3.0 out of 5 stars Stop-Time doesn't stand the test of time
Perhaps this book was outstanding in 1967, but not so much in 2011, when I read it. To hold up across decades it has to be more than just titillating for the audience of the... Read more
Published on January 24, 2011 by Earth Momma
3.0 out of 5 stars eloquent, but not much substance
The details are unimportant, but it took me some doing to get this book: I couldn't find it used, there were problems when I did get a copy, etc. Read more
Published on July 8, 2010 by Caraculiambro
5.0 out of 5 stars A guilty pleasure?
This is a memoir of a rather ordinary boy told in a quite extraordinary way. Do I approve of Frank Conroy's life? No, not in some cases. Read more
Published on December 17, 2009 by S. G. Fortosis
1.0 out of 5 stars Hard to finish it!
I expected this to be a chronological autobiography. This book jumps all over the place and it is hard to follow from chapter to chapter. Read more
Published on April 1, 2009 by L. Bell
5.0 out of 5 stars A masterful essayist
At first, I was challenged by Conroy's use of section breaks; I was looking for congruency and thru-line. Read more
Published on September 23, 2006 by Monique Parker
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