My Losing Season. Pat Conroy.

 

 

My Losing Season.   Pat Conroy.

A Memoir.

 

It may have been fate tempting the exploration of this book, My Losing Season, authored by Pat Conroy.    An older book, published in 2002, yet still a relatively timeless story.    The opportunity was passed over when perusing it at a rental home while away on vacation.    A few months later, this memoir was waiting to be found in the local library.   This time a commitment and engagement were forthcoming.    Uninformed about Conroy, the esteemed author, it became pretty apparent that he penned several other distinguished and acclaimed novels.    An immediate upside upon engagement is that the reader gets to experience a piece of Conroy’s life as a youngster and the years leading through his collegiate and plebe days at the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina.  

Conroy did not have it easy growing up in the 1950’s and early 1960’s.   His father was in the military and thus they moved around the eastern part of the country quite a bit.    Consequently, Conroy had a hard time making friends or sustaining lasting friendships as an adolescent.    What’s more is that his father was not a supportive person and frequently verbally/physically abusive to him, his mother and his siblings.  

The game of basketball, however, intrigued Conway.    In fact, Conroy dedicated much of his youth to making himself a better player—the best that he could be.    He did this often with little support or encouragement from his father who, co-incidentally, had played small college ball during his youth in the mid-west.    Despite playing scholastically at two different high schools, Conroy turned himself into an all-state prep in the Palmetto state.    He was a scrappy point guard with some solid skills but not great size or athleticism.  The future author received some college interest, including in-state Citadel, but no formal offers came his way by the time he graduated from Beaufort high school.    In the end his parents helped arrange a deal where he would walk-on to the Charleston based Citadel in the fall of 1963.   

The book is written with impeccable details and accuracy because the author is writing about his own life.    Gripping to the reader are the myriad experiences Conroy endured, many adverse and heart breaking, at a young age.    On one hand we can applaud him for opening up about his past and so elegantly putting it in print.   Even though some of the experiences were like watching a train wreck, the content often compelling.     Reading about the individual game experiences of his senior season at Citadel could be dry.   However, the perseverance to endure a trying season with a hard line coach could serve as a lesson or guide for young athletes today who face these challenges and struggle with adversity.

Conroy was able to prevail through the setbacks and challenging requirements experienced throughout his scholastic and prep days.    Some lives are simply more difficult than others.  That seems to be the case according to the authors account of his life in the 1960’s.   Conroy went on to become a successful and accomplished writer and author until his death in 2016.   Did the experiences at school shape him into the writer he became?    Did the abuse and dysfunction of his family hold him back from reaching or achieving even greater heights?  

His parents helped arrange for him to attend the Citadel even though they were about to relocate, once again, to middle America.    On the other hand, Conroy was miserable the first year going through the military requirements and trying to walk on to the basketball team with a less than supportive coach.   The head coach was not one to nurture or support the full student-athlete college experience.   Fortunately, the author found a few influencing professors that helped guide him into the right career path.    Some of that was simply natural talent and a strong ambition to make it in that field as well. 

It is a pretty valuable asset when an author can draw upon their life experiences to form best-selling books and novels.    That is what makes it interesting and worth the investment to experience the writer’s trials and tribulations.    Whether one likes basketball or simply roots for a good story, they can find intrigue, not to mention some thought provoking discussion questions, in My Losing Season(paperback) of nearly four hundred pages.   

•     You might like to read this book if you are a basketball fan.
•    You might like to read this book if you like reading about military schools.
•     You might like to read this book if you enjoy reading about young people and their struggles coming of age.  
•     You might like to read this book if you are a fan of Pat Conroy books and writings.