Status Updates From Stop-Time

His 4/10/05 obituary in the Chicago Tribune (by Stephen Bloom) calls this “one of the best books of our age” by “the director of the greatest incubator of literary talent ever assembled, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.” High praise indeed—and the memoir IS amazing.

If I had not read and loved “Body and Soul”, I would never have picked up this excellent memoir of a boy (author Frank Conroy), who overcame a terrible childhood of loneliness and neglect to become a writer of merit and distinction.

Bad, bad stuff at the fair: a pedophile was running the ring toss

His childhood was fundamentally unsafe and quite bizarre.

Reading this because I love the way Conroy writes in “Body and Soul”—I see now why his description of the world of a neglected, fearful child is so amazingly authentic and painful.

This is good and I love parts of this book. The last fifty pages in particular were really great. However, this book takes FOREVER to get into. Luckily, I’m into it now.