Sunday, February 28, 2010

RasoirJ's Book Notes: My Losing Season

My Losing Season, a memoir by Pat Conroy (Rating = 4 = I liked it a lot)

Conroy is a florid writer for my taste. He seems to love every metaphor that occurs to him, is not at all troubled by clichés, and has a streak of sentimentality astonishing in a military college grad. But still. The stories he has to tell of his senior year as point guard on the The Citadel basketball team are marvelous. He’s got the deadpan locker-room humor of athletes cutting on each other down beautifully. Of course, this book is about much more than basketball, though it’s one of the top five inside-sports books I’ve ever read (and I’ve read a lot). It’s also about a writer finding his vocation and voice. And no one has have ever had to cope with a tougher, meaner SOB of a father than Conroy. On top it all, the portrait of the driven, egomaniacal Citadel coach Mel Thompson is a classic of the type.

Quotes:
 “Athletics are mercilessly fair.”

“Coaching at a military college is the hardest coaching job in America.”

“America is a good enough country to die for, even when she is wrong.”

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