Mentor

Starred review from May 17, 2010
A grim look back at a writer’s journey from publication to crippling self-doubt prompts Grimes (Redemption Song), the director of Texas State University M.F.A. program, to reflect deeply on his literary mentor, Frank Conroy. In 1989 Grimes, then a married 32-year-old waiter in Key West, Fla., with a few published short stories under his belt and a lot of ambition, was accepted into the Iowa Writers’ Workshop on a top scholarship at the instigation of director Conroy (famous for an early memoir, Stop-Time), who anointed Grimes—on the strength of an unfinished baseball novel—as the next golden boy with unlimited promise. Grimes was both "electrified by hope" and paralyzed by anxiety during his stint in Iowa struggling to finish the novel; on Conroy’s recommendation, Grimes signed with agent Eric Ashworth and soon had five offers by publishers, though none of them terribly enthusiastic or high paying. Pressured to make a quick decision, Grimes chose badly, he later believed, underscored by the subsequent critical failure of the novel, Season’s End. "All Frank had hoped for had not come to pass," writes Grimes in defeat, and though their friendship endured until Conroy’s death in 2005 ("I arrived fatherless; I departed a son"), Grimes never quite recovered from his overreaching ambition. Employing a constant tension of ambivalence—shame and tenderness, pride and humility—Grimes proves in this stunningly forthright, forlorn memoir that his great subject is Conroy himself.

July 1, 2010
Grimes candid and finely wrought memoir is at once a self-portrait of the writer as an anxious MFA student and homage to his guiding light, Frank Conroy, the legendary director of the Iowa Writers Workshop, the crucible from which so many extraordinary writers emerged, from Flannery OConnor to Kurt Vonnegut to Marilynne Robinson. Grimes was in his thirties when he arrived, weary of waiting tables and writing in grim isolation. Conroy had unshakable faith in Grimes, and the two formed a profound bond. Writing with the qualities Conroy tirelessly championedmeaning, sense, clarityGrimes not only expresses boundless love and gratitude for Conroy, he also unveils with rare specificity the strange trance borne of concentrating on the endless possibilities of language, and the initial elation and eventual complications of publication. Fascinating literary anecdotes give way to somber revelations of the nervous breakdowns Conroy and Grimes each endured. Grimes staggering self-critique, keen tribute to Conroy as writer and mentor, and hard-won insights into the true demands of writing and the deep resonance of literature are arresting and cautionary, inspiring and affecting.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)