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Title: My Losing Season
ISBN: 0553381903
Author:
Pat Conroy
Publicate Date: 2003-08-26
Publish: 2003-08-26
List Price: $15.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $4.33
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $0.01
Amazon Merchant Price: $10.20
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| Customer Review: |
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1: The Floor General
I initially chose to read My Losing Season because I play basketball. The book is not just a basketball story but one that shares life lessons that can be learned through basketball. So even if you don't have a great love for the game like I do, you still can enjoy this book and be inspired. The author uses a lot of good detail and his past experiences to help you understand his present. The title of the book is called My Losing Season but Pat didn't necessary loose. I learned along with Pat a very important lesson and that lesson was that winning isn't everything.
As basketball season comes around it is a great read and I recommend it for all ages. I thought the lessons that Pat learned were important and I could take them with me for the rest of my life. I think that it is important that not only were these lessons learned independently but they were learned with the help of his teammates. The 1966-67 season for Pat would be one of the most humiliating seasons ever for many people but not for Pat. "My team taught me there could be courage and dignity and humanity in loss. They taught me how to pull myself up, to hold my head high and solider on." In the end, his losses turned him into a winner and you can see tremendous growth from when he began his career, where his coach felt that he could maybe be a 9th or 10th man and changed into a starter at the Loyola University New Orleans.
If you are a fan of flashbacks and like to piece stories together, this is a good choice because Pat Conroy is very effective when using flashbacks. He uses good flash back examples throughout the story that show that he grew in some way, "In November I made the fifth-grade basketball team, and in our first game the sixth grade stomped us and teased us so mercilessly that one of my teammates wept....In our third and final game...... I scored the lay-up that won the game and felt the glorious rush of teammates trying to hug me all at once." In the end this is a great read and you can learn how to take a lot from a situation when there is not a lot.
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2: Successful Losing Season
In My Losing Season Pat Conroy chronicles his painful senior year playing basketball for the Citadel Bulldogs. Though Conroy's timeframe is limited to one year, this memoir melds the past with the present to bring reflection and perspective to the memories. The title forecasts a negative experience--on the court, with his team, and with life in general. It was a losing season. But a losing season may not be as downbeat as it initially appears. It's possible a losing season may be an opportunity for growth. That is Conroy's conclusion, but not the original story.
The year was negative for Conroy; so negative he forgot many of the details. He used newspaper accounts of the games, and interviews with the other players to recall events. He found that his depressing experience was equally as depressing for many of the other players. Conroy shares his interviews with the reader--interviews with his middle aged teammates.
Ostensibly Conroy divides chapters into wins and loses of the season, but the games are only an excuse for him to delve into the personalities on the team pitted against the callous behavior of their coach Mel Thompson. Why was Thompson so heartless? Conroy and his team mates try to understand. Conroy uses dialogue and descriptive body language to describe the coach and the players. His writing is so clear it puts readers into the action and emotion of the sweaty young men.
The Losing Season goes beyond Conroy's life and becomes a joint memoir of a team of players. The story takes place during the Viet Nam War era in a military academy where athletes were not valued. None of the men had wanted to revisit the losing season, but once Conroy began the process they had an opportunity to examine what had happened, and try to make sense of a difficult time. These old men confess to each other. They absolve each other. They annoy each other.
In his interview with Al Kroboth, the one Conroy says he feared the most, Conroy, who did not deploy to Viet Nam but demonstrated publicly against the war, listens to Kroboth's story. Kroboth recounts his capture, humiliation and torture by Viet Cong. The two men and Kroboth's wife cry together. Conroy acknowledges his shame for not fighting in the war. He says he should have protested only after fighting for the country. He calls Kroboth a hero. He said he now knew the country was good enough to fight for.
Conroy's chapters are not only a play by play account of a basketball season, but real life reflected on by old men who had been young men together. Universal questions are asked. There are no definitive answers; questions remain, but the losing season was a success. Finally the pitiful team that had not bonded during their losing season came together with love and generosity. They are no longer a losing team, but a team bound by maturity, forgiveness, and hope. That is the success of Conroy's literary effort.
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3: If you're in the mood for this sort of thing...
One of my favorite fictional books of all time is The Prince of Tides, by Pat Conroy. I enjoyed it so much I read all of his other books, which I had to confess were disappointing. Nonetheless, when I saw his memoir on the bookshelf, I thought perhaps it was worth a read. Unfortunately, I was disappointed again. In fiction, his characters can be self-absorbed and still be engaging. The character doesn't even have to be aware of this flaw as long as the reader and narrator are. And through imaginative plot development and counter characters, he can wring the melo out of drama. But in memoir when an author is held to perceived reality, and the narrator, author, and protagonist are all the same individual, Conroy's penchant for overstatement is embarrassingly revealed. Still, if you're in the mood for a sappy story that will grab easy-to-pull heart strings, go for it. Conroy does have his moments.
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4: salvation through basketball
Amazon.com Book Review
My Losing Season by Pat Conroy
The difficulty and pain that military basketball players go through are shown in My Losing Season by Pat Conroy. Pat Conroy writes about his life as a Southern college student at The Citadel during the 19676 basketball season.
Pat Conroy's father grew up in the South. His father is in the military and is constantly being sent to work at different places. This causes the author to attend many different high schools during his teenage years. These years are filled with the beatings from his father to his entire family. Pat Conroy is able to put everything he was into the basketball he plays at high school and college. These games and practices help keep Pat from killing his father during one of the many depressing times Pat has. After high school, Pat accepts a basketball scholarship at The Citadel, a military college. His first years at The Citadel are filled with the harsh practices from his coach, the sweat parties during plebe week, and the constant reminder of his father. When the author is a senior he doesn't start the first basketball games and isn't picked as a captain. Instead, he rides the bench with the Green Weenies. Pat battles with his coach, his father, and his college throughout his time at The Citadel.
As time progresses, Pat goes through numerous challenges. The author is faced with the conflict of depression, and does whatever he can to survive the painful time it brings. Conroy is forced to deal with his father and his basketball coach. He is constantly beaten by his father. Pat is also benched by his basketball coach and yelled at for doing nothing. Pat has to somehow go through the challenge of living his own life happily. The author shows the pain his father caused him when he says, "The game kept me from facing the ruined boy who played basketball instead of killing his father" (6). Along with Pat's father, Conroy has to deal with his basketball coach, Mel Thompson. Mel forbids dates, laughing, or any fun a basketball player could have. This causes pat to go through most of life unhappy and causes him to do whatever it takes to become happy. The basketball that he played was one of the few things that solved his conflict.
Pat Conroy is able to write in a way that makes one feel that they are attending the events that Pat Conroy is talking about. He is able to write in a way that shows what his life was as a child, but still make it interesting and exciting for the reader. He is able to show the things that he is feeling and the suffering he has as his college. Pat Conroy shows his writing when he describes his team when he says, "I felt my team coming together at last, the way teams are supposed to feel, the ones who you would go to the wall for, dive on the floor for, and shed your blood for" (331). Pat Conroy has the writing style that is very descriptive. The way he writes makes me feel I am watching a movie, instead of reading a book. I am able to see and feel the pain, depression, and rare happiness during the story.
I felt that this is one of the best written books that I have ever read. This book made me keep reading and kept me from putting the book down. I felt that Pat Conroy did a very good job of writing about his college basketball career in a way that anyone would like it. I liked how he made his own life interesting and true. Also, I liked how nothing was hidden, and he told the truth like a clear jump shot from the corner.
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5: A Winning Read
Growing up Catholic in the 1960's and 1970's and playing basketball every day because we didn't have the money to go on vacation, are two of many drivers that singles out Pat Conroy's "A Losing Season" as the most talked about book among my friends in our New York suburb.
Mr. Conroy's ability to balance brutal honesty with a sensitivity toward young men of our era, dwarfs my favorite writers such as Tom Wolfe in nailing the complexities of being innocent in a period that was conflicted with our feelings of supporting the beliefs of our fathers who were from WWII and the realities of the 60's and 70's.
When a writer as strong as Pat Conroy takes on young men growing up in the 60's and 70's trying to figure out their catholic up-bringing, clashing with their generation's challenge to conventional beliefs - the result is explosive. Don't miss the best read of your life.
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