Frank Conroy, dead at 69

[Root Doctor]

Frank Conroy, 69, memoirist, director of noted workshop
By Todd Dvorak, Associated Press | April 7, 2005

IOWA CITY, Iowa -- Frank Conroy, the memoirist and longtime director of the celebrated University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, died Wednesday. He was 69.

Mr. Conroy died at his home in Iowa City of colon cancer, said James Alan McPherson, acting co-director of the workshop. ''Frank took a great program and made it an extraordinary one," McPherson said.

Mr. Conroy won literary praise with his 1967 book ''Stop-Time," which chronicled his growing up in homes that included a Florida shack, a snowy cabin, and a tiny Manhattan apartment. The impressionistic memoir was nominated for a National Book Award.

It was a classic story of innocence, violence, and violation, as elemental as his mastery of the yo-yo and as troubling as a gang of boys -- Mr. Conroy included -- tormenting a schoolmate, punch by punch. His other works never surpassed it.

Instead, he gained even greater stature, and welcome stability, by helping others. In 1987, he traded life on the East Coast for the slower-paced Midwest when he accepted the job of directing the Writers' Workshop, the nation's oldest and most prestigious creative writing program.

Famously demanding, to the point of reducing students to tears, he held the post for 18 years before announcing his resignation last year.

''You have to get across to them that the work is separate from them. That's what good work is: a life independent of the life of the author," Mr. Conroy said. ''So you have unintended qualities in the prose -- personal tics, pretending to write, instead of really writing. All writers have to go through this and get it past them. I try to make that quicker for them rather than longer."

ZZ Packer, Nathan Englander, and Thisbe Nissen were among the young writers he taught.

Novelist Chris Offut, a student in Mr. Conroy's first class and now a visiting faculty member at the workshop, credits Mr. Conroy and ''Stop-Time" for his decision to pursue writing.

''I feel as I've lost a person who was most important to me as a writer," said Offut. ''He's had an enormous impact on American literature because of the seriousness with which he took his role here at the workshop."

Mr. Conroy's books also include ''Time & Tide, A Walk Through Nantucket," a collection of essays entitled ''Dogs Bark, But the Caravan Rolls On," ''Body & Soul," and ''Midair." He sold his first short story when he was a senior at Haverford College, dabbled in journalism, wrote short stories and essays for a variety of magazines, and served as literary director at the National Endowment of the Arts.

A lover of jazz, Mr. Conroy also played piano in clubs in New York for several years and befriended such musicians as Keith Jarrett and Wynton Marsalis. Mr. Conroy's friend David Halberstam once called him ''innately hip, the first true counterculture person I had ever met."

[Chris D]

This was the "Conrack" dude, right?

[cookie]

I had no idea who Frank Conroy was until my mother-in-law gave me a copy of BODY & SOUL. I really enjoyed that book and to me, it sounded like the author actually knew something about music. I came across copies of the hardback at a dollar store and bought one for my brother who also loved it.

Was sad to read the news of Conroy's death in the NYT. RIP.

[Root Doctor]

Originally Posted by Chris D

This was the "Conrack" dude, right?

I think that was Pat Conroy.

"Stop-Time" is a gripping memoir, well worth seeking out.

[Chris D]

Originally Posted by Root Doctor

I think that was Pat Conroy.

"Stop-Time" is a gripping memoir, well worth seeking out.

D'oh! Of course it was. Thanks, Root.

[Jesse]

Conroy (like Dow Mossman, Fred Exley, John Kennedy Toole, others) is a writer I discovered at 15 or 16, read with astonishment, re-read. I pushed Stop-Time on friends for years. A great bildungsroman, my favorite genre at an early age, it's greatness was never approached by his subsequent work.

The indelible scenes of boyhood at an all-boy's school, survival of the most cunning, and the protagonist's moral awakenings are excellent.

Though I have read this 5-6 times over the years, it's place on my list of memoirs is admittedly secured by the effect it had on me when a troubled adolescent (for my son, that work was Banks' Rule Of The Bone).

[jazzy mary]

I loved Conrack!! I want to read Stop-Time now!