My Losing Season (47 page)
Authors: Pat Conroy
The Conroy children were all casualties of war, conscripts in a battle we didn't sign up for on the bloodied envelope of our birth certificates. I grew up to become the family evangelist; Michael, the vessel of anxiety; Kathy, who missed her childhood by going to sleep at six every night; Jim, who is called the dark one; Tim, the sweetest oneâwho can barely stand to be around any of us; and Tom, our lost and never-to-be-found brother.
My personal tragedy lies with my sister Carol Ann, the poet I grew up with and adored. She has spent much of her adult life hating me with a poisonous rage she can't control. Her eyes turn yellow with the fury of a leopardess whenever I walk into a room. For a long time I endured her wrath with a stoic forbearance because I was an eyewitness to her forlorn life as a girl. I watched Mom and Dad coax her to madness and I grew up applauding her wizardry with the English language. She was the original truth teller in the family and she force-fed me the insider information that our parents were crazy. Her perspicacious voice formed the anthem of my own liberation. Don and Peg devastated a sweet kid and smothered her like a firefly in a closed-up bottle.
My books have always been disguised voyages into that archipelago of souls known as the Conroy family.
When
The Prince of Tides
was published, my father said, “I hear you made me a mean shrimper in this one.” I replied that my father couldn't catch a shrimp with a fork in a seafood restaurant. When
Beach Music
made its appearance in 1995, Dad said, “Hey, I'm a drunk judge in this one. And as mean as shit again. Folks are gonna get the idea that your old man is something of a monster. Let's face it, Pat, you can't write down the word âfather' without my face hovering over you. Admit it.”
It was superb literary criticism. I realized its truth when I wrote down the word “mother” on a blank sheet of paper and my mother's pretty face appeared in the air above me. Once, I wrote that my father and mother always appeared like mythical figures to me, larger-than-life Olympians like Zeus and Hera. For many years, because of the house they created, I've wished I'd never been born. I've felt like I was born in a prison yard and would never be eligible for furlough or offered safe passage into a cease-fire zone. My family is my portion of hell, my eternal flame, my fate, and my time on the cross.
Mom and Dad, I need to go back there once again. I've got to try to make sense of it one last time, a final circling of the block, a reckoning, another dive into the caves of the coral reef where the morays wait in ambush, one more night flight into the immortal darkness to study that house of pain a final time. Then I'll be finished with you, Mom and Dad. I'll leave you in peace and not bother you again. And I'll pray that your stormy spirits find peace in the house of the Lord. But I must examine the wreckage one last time.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
P
AT
C
ONROY
is the bestselling author of
The Boo
,
The Water Is Wide, The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, The Prince of Tides,
and
Beach Music
. He lives on Fripp Island, South Carolina, with his wife and two dogs.
ALSO BY PAT CONROY
The Boo
The Water Is Wide
The Great Santini
The Lords of Discipline
The Prince of Tides
Beach Music
MY LOSING SEASON
“Movingâ¦will lunge for nostalgic readers' hearts.”
â
Entertainment Weekly
“As heartfelt and poignant a memoir as they come and a splendid
contribution to the literature of sport.”
â
Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Haunting, bittersweet and as compelling as his best-selling fiction,
My Losing Season
succeeds because Conroy fuses his basketball story with a remarkable portrait of tireless teammates, a fractured family, a nation in transition and a young boy learning the hard way that sometimes losing can be just as rewarding, if not more so, than victory.”
â
Boston Herald
“Conroy revisits his past with naked candor.”
â
Houston Chronicle
, Fall Books Preview
“A coming-of-age theme can hardly go wrong when spun by a real wordsmith. This won't disappoint.”
â
Daily News of Los Angeles
“Thrilling and heartbreaking.”
â
Richmond Times-Dispatch
“A sports memoir written with the darker music.”
â
The Miami Herald
“The triumph of his losing season!”
â
Sun-Sentinel,
Fort Lauderdale
“Ties a lot of loose ends together for legions of fans who follow Conroy's signature lyrical prose, as languid and haunting as the Spanish moss along the South Carolina coast where he grew up and lives. . . . He is a beacon; a tough little s.o.b. whose sports book about losing contains a smart lesson few of us ever get: Never wait on
anyone's permission to become who you know you are.”
â
The Charlotte Observer
“A remarkable little gem that speaks not just of camaraderie and courage, but of the times.”
â
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Pat Conroy makes a winning book out of a losing season. . . . A voice you will recognize if you ever loved the game and waited in vain for it to return the favor. . . . A book you may want to hand to your children.”
â
The Sunday Oregonian
“When Conroy's on his game, he is unbeatable.”
â
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Compelling. . . a memoir that reads like fiction. . . irresistible.”
â
Akron Beacon Journal
“A moving. . . intimate look at how suffering can be transformed to become a source of strength and inspiration. . . Anyone who has a son or knows a son will be touched by this book.”
â
Publishers Weekly
MY LOSING SEASON
A Bantam Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Doubleday hardcover edition published November 2002
Bantam trade paperback edition / September 2003
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2002 by Pat Conroy
Excerpt from
The Death of Santini
copyright © 2013 by Pat Conroy
Team photograph: From 1967
Sphinx
, The Citadel's yearbook
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2002066212
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
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Published simultaneously in Canada
eISBN: 978-0-553-89818-7
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