6.13.2004
Upon reading Frank Conroy's Stop-Time
A well-versed friend of mine swapped favorite book titles with me. I suggested he read Mary Karr's The Liar's Club, and he assigned to me Frank Conroy's Stop-Time. Both of these books are memoirs of frivolous childhoods, with the protagonist narrators being quick-witted adventurous loners, not unlike Mr. Caufield.
Stop-Time brought me back to being a kid in the summertime. Riding bikes everywhere, chasing things until exhaustion, snacking on sandwiches, running away... the duties and recreations of childhood that have now, in my entering adulthood, devolved into exercise regimines, dieting, and therapy.
The history is told in a non-linear fashion, with memories popping up seemingly randomly. We jump back and forth through location and time, but the way Conroy structures it leads to deductive conclusions and adherence.
Like Catcher in the Rye, Frank describes social epiphanies with such candidness, including astute digestions of the ridiculousness of people: the kind of critiques many creative, brilliant minds reduce at some point. Unlike Caufield, Frank is more lighthearted, experimental, and confident in his findings. He meets these realizations at a much younger age as well. Caufield, on the other hand, if often very unsure of what to do with all the observations of injustice that he's acquired. Frank springs off of his desperate confusion, while Caufield gets stuck in it like a glue mouse trap. Or Goofy in Jello from Mickey and the Beanstalk.
Moments of awe from Stop-Time:
"The secretions of corrupted minds are the juices that nourish modern society, just as the blood of animals nourishes our bodies." -Frank's teacher, discussing the power of words
"Outside I regain my sense of direction and continue south. After a few steps the rhythm of walking takes hold of me again and it's as if I'd never stopped. For mile after mile my mind is empty. No, not empty exactly. Imagine a symphony orchestra responding to a suddenly paralyzed conductor by holding a single note on and on, forever, without change."
-I got into wandering when I lived in France last year. By myself. For hours. No agenda. Just walking. No productivity. Hoping to soak in everything? It did result in several key memories, (like stumbling into a chocolate seminar, chatting with a French couple that eventually wanted to take me back to their apartment, and being asked by a stranger if I could take off my shoes so he could photograph my feet) and an impeccable sense of Parisian navigation.
"On the street, out of nowhere, desire swept me away. I wanted to live. I wanted to see something beautiful. Or to die. Anything definite, anything clear, visible and tangible, like dying, or saving someone's life, or being kissed by Jean Simmons. Tears of frustration started in my eyes. Something strange started to happen. My body felt it first- warmth, a sense of something gathering, a feeling of being possessed by magical powers, as if I could make the parked cars rise in the air by simply willing it. Suddenly a tremendous force carried me away, some really immense, earth-shaking power igniting like the unexpected second stage of a rocket already in flight. I screamed in the street and started running, flat out, crossing the intersections without looking. At home, in the elevator, I bent over and ran my head into the wall again and again, stunning myself but feeling no pain, hearing the hollow boom echo down the shaft each time, hitting harder to increase the sound. At the fifth floor I go out and stood in the hall for a minute, trembling, my fists and jaw clenched, feeling the power race around inside me, burning out my nerves. I opened the door to the apartment. Jean and Mother were talking in the kitchen. I went to my room, closed the door, and sat down on the bed in darkness."
-I developed a heightened level of anxiety/insanity attacks post-France, prone to moments of unbearable self-destructive passion such as this. It's nice to see I'm not the only coocoo. Thanks, Paris.
"Sitting on the smooth board with my legs dangling down into the hole, I drummed my heels against the padded sides. The other alleys were dark, the catwalk deserted on a slow afternoon. I was lucky to be working. The long thunder started, gathered power, and exploded underneath me as I lifted my legs. Pins flew in all directions and the ball hit the rear padding with a heavy thump. I dropped into the hole, my hands and feet going into the light as if into a pool of water. I heaved the ball up onto the track and watched it roll down the slope to start the long journey back to the front. After clearing the gutter with my foot I jumped up on the board."
-Great ambiguous description! Such imagery! But guess what he's doing, and analyze the information given.
"French, which I'd failed three times in high school, was in fact a real language, spoken by real people. Europe existed."
-A familiar acknowledgement.
(Thanks for the literary trip, Corey)
Stop-Time brought me back to being a kid in the summertime. Riding bikes everywhere, chasing things until exhaustion, snacking on sandwiches, running away... the duties and recreations of childhood that have now, in my entering adulthood, devolved into exercise regimines, dieting, and therapy.
The history is told in a non-linear fashion, with memories popping up seemingly randomly. We jump back and forth through location and time, but the way Conroy structures it leads to deductive conclusions and adherence.
Like Catcher in the Rye, Frank describes social epiphanies with such candidness, including astute digestions of the ridiculousness of people: the kind of critiques many creative, brilliant minds reduce at some point. Unlike Caufield, Frank is more lighthearted, experimental, and confident in his findings. He meets these realizations at a much younger age as well. Caufield, on the other hand, if often very unsure of what to do with all the observations of injustice that he's acquired. Frank springs off of his desperate confusion, while Caufield gets stuck in it like a glue mouse trap. Or Goofy in Jello from Mickey and the Beanstalk.
Moments of awe from Stop-Time:
"The secretions of corrupted minds are the juices that nourish modern society, just as the blood of animals nourishes our bodies." -Frank's teacher, discussing the power of words
"Outside I regain my sense of direction and continue south. After a few steps the rhythm of walking takes hold of me again and it's as if I'd never stopped. For mile after mile my mind is empty. No, not empty exactly. Imagine a symphony orchestra responding to a suddenly paralyzed conductor by holding a single note on and on, forever, without change."
-I got into wandering when I lived in France last year. By myself. For hours. No agenda. Just walking. No productivity. Hoping to soak in everything? It did result in several key memories, (like stumbling into a chocolate seminar, chatting with a French couple that eventually wanted to take me back to their apartment, and being asked by a stranger if I could take off my shoes so he could photograph my feet) and an impeccable sense of Parisian navigation.
"On the street, out of nowhere, desire swept me away. I wanted to live. I wanted to see something beautiful. Or to die. Anything definite, anything clear, visible and tangible, like dying, or saving someone's life, or being kissed by Jean Simmons. Tears of frustration started in my eyes. Something strange started to happen. My body felt it first- warmth, a sense of something gathering, a feeling of being possessed by magical powers, as if I could make the parked cars rise in the air by simply willing it. Suddenly a tremendous force carried me away, some really immense, earth-shaking power igniting like the unexpected second stage of a rocket already in flight. I screamed in the street and started running, flat out, crossing the intersections without looking. At home, in the elevator, I bent over and ran my head into the wall again and again, stunning myself but feeling no pain, hearing the hollow boom echo down the shaft each time, hitting harder to increase the sound. At the fifth floor I go out and stood in the hall for a minute, trembling, my fists and jaw clenched, feeling the power race around inside me, burning out my nerves. I opened the door to the apartment. Jean and Mother were talking in the kitchen. I went to my room, closed the door, and sat down on the bed in darkness."
-I developed a heightened level of anxiety/insanity attacks post-France, prone to moments of unbearable self-destructive passion such as this. It's nice to see I'm not the only coocoo. Thanks, Paris.
"Sitting on the smooth board with my legs dangling down into the hole, I drummed my heels against the padded sides. The other alleys were dark, the catwalk deserted on a slow afternoon. I was lucky to be working. The long thunder started, gathered power, and exploded underneath me as I lifted my legs. Pins flew in all directions and the ball hit the rear padding with a heavy thump. I dropped into the hole, my hands and feet going into the light as if into a pool of water. I heaved the ball up onto the track and watched it roll down the slope to start the long journey back to the front. After clearing the gutter with my foot I jumped up on the board."
-Great ambiguous description! Such imagery! But guess what he's doing, and analyze the information given.
"French, which I'd failed three times in high school, was in fact a real language, spoken by real people. Europe existed."
-A familiar acknowledgement.
(Thanks for the literary trip, Corey)
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