Getting a feel for Conroy's life

Frank Conroy's memoir is a departure from the other memoirs we've read in several ways. First, Conroy shows us his poverty but doesn't overtly mention it. Parental dysfunction is observed in young Frank but is less "recognized" by the character, who doesn't seem to know any better or realize that anyone else's parent behave as parent should. Even Tobey's parents, who are more caring, aren't exactly "put together," and Jean's brother's families seem to be a mess too. While these differences make the book more enjoyable for me-- I realized while checking it out how badly I wanted not to read another memoir, but having read it fully enjoyed it--they are not the main feature of the story that makes it stand out to me.

Writing as a musician, Conroy has happened upon, or created, a style of writing that is rhythmic and lyrical, what I'd call the cadence of his inner thoughts and emotions coming out harmoniously on the page. This is no small accomplishment, because what he has done is essentially take a musical, poetic form and stretch it out over 283 pages. In the other memoirs we've examined, the writers have done a good job of evoking a region or time period with their attention to language and sound of each character. While Conroy continues to do this, he also pulls the reader into an internal landscape that hum with a certain sort of sound and energy. What this suggests overall is a form of characterization that we don't necessarily get with the other authors. Conroy's salvation lies in music; he becomes a drifting note in several passages; we learn about this man not so much from the words and scenes and ideas he spells out for us, but in the way he uses dissonance, harmony staccato moments and weaves everything together to make us feel, in the way that music makes us feel. His life has become his art; he has taken an aspect of his art and applied it to his life's story in this writing.

When I think about how these musical techniques work in music, I think about how even when I think I understand a song I'm sometimes left with a vague question of whether or not I really got into its rhythms the way the musicians intended. Conroy manages this effect well in Stop/Time, even overtly relying on the associations readers have with music at certain times.

"I stood as if listening to music, and in something like the way we are told suns are born, that specks of matter nearly empty space begin to fall, rushing across vast distances...I sank down until my knees touched the ground, and sat on my heels, almost reverently, within to disturb nothing in the suddenly harmonious world," he writes on p 139, detailing the moment he watched a girl through shelves at the library. "It was at once frustrating, and for some reason extremely exciting to see only this small part of her... my brain raced... at moments like this, as all men know, one becomes oblivious to to everything else in the outside world..."( 140).

Conroy does an great job of building the scene slowly, moving books, hunkering down, peeking; he lets the pressure build in the reader as it has built in himself, and then, with just a hint, he ends the scene and escapes into the private release of his own action, mentioning, tongue-in-cheekily, "the business--and I choose my words carefully-- at hand" (140).

The sensuality of the moment is made even more intriguing and delightful by Conroy's stop! of time before the scene reaches its climax.