Frank Conroy, Stop-Time

Frank Conroy, Stop-Time. At the very end of this memoir (in the last ten pages), I got the distinct feeling I had read this book before. I couldn't remember any details, so perhaps it was just literary déjà-vu. Anyway, I didn't really like Frank in the book; but I saw myself in him, especially his escapism and unwarranted self-superiority. The book's a little Salinger-esque, very east-coasty, full of angst, exactly what you'd think an author's childhood memoir would be like. I liked it, but I disagreed with the blurb on the back cover in which William Styron praised "its almost total lack of self-pity"; I thought there was much calculatingly understated self-pity through every chapter. One thing that I liked was that it was such a solitary memoir, very much about being a lonely child, growing into a lonely young adult.