51 pages • 1-hour read
My Losing Season
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Part 4, Chapter 30-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4: “The Point Guard’s Way of Knowledge”
Chapter 30 Summary: “New Game”
Part 4 of the memoir, titled “The Point Guard’s Way of Knowledge,” begins with a lengthy final chapter that explores the present-day process of interviewing Thompson and the players of the team when writing the book. Chapter 30 also discusses some of the fallout that has taken place because of Conroy’s writing over the years, specifically with his father and with how The Citadel responded to its unflattering portrayal in his novels. While tracking down his former teammates to interview for the book was not difficult, Thompson’s availability proved much more difficult for Conroy.
Conroy begins the chapter writing “lurking as both touchstone and the defining myth behind this book has stood the evasive, mysterious, and wordless figure of Mel Thompson” (361). Conroy finally was able to interview Thompson and came away realizing that “he remained untouchable at his core” (366). Conroy also points out that Thompson dominated every conversation and had failed to ask him a single question about himself or any of his teammates.
One of the interviews that Conroy describes as extremely emotional was that of Al Kroboth. Conroy feared the interview with Kroboth because it would be the “hardest encounter with how [he] conducted himself during the Vietnam War” (369). Kroboth had been shot down in Vietnam and held captive at the notorious prison in Hanoi. At the same time, Conroy was protesting America’s involvement in Vietnam.
Conroy also discusses what he describes as his “thirty-year war” with The Citadel in Chapter 30. This self-described war came about because of the way that Conroy portrayed The Citadel in some of his books. His 1970 book The Boo was written as a defense of the beloved Assistant Commandant of Cadets Thomas Nugent Courvoisie, who had been fired in 1968. Conroy writes that “the book was banned on campus for six years” (383). His novel The Lords of Discipline, published 10 years later, was even more controversial with the administration and many alumni of The Citadel because of the way he portrayed its brutal plebe system. For his own safety, Conroy was not allowed on campus for 20 years after the book’s publication, but he finally returned in 2000 to receive an honorary degree.
Epilogue Summary
My Losing Season comes full circle in Conroy’s Epilogue. The book came about because John DeBrosse sought out Conroy during one of his book tours to discuss a game from nearly 30 years earlier. At the beginning of the Epilogue, Conroy writes, “I should have written this book when I was twenty-five, but I needed John DeBrosse to startle me back to the awareness that this season of badly played basketball had been seminal and easily one of the most consequential of my life” (393). In writing the book, Conroy was able to catch up with every one of his old teammates, and he introduces each along with a description of what they have done with their lives since college. Conroy writes that “all of [his] teammates agreed that they took the lessons they learned during that long fatiguing season and applied them to their jobs” (397). Conroy reinforces the value of losing, the overarching theme of the book, throughout the Epilogue. In closing the book, Conroy argues that this was the year he “learned to accept loss as natural law” and that there could be “courage and dignity and humanity in loss” (400).
Part 4, Chapter 30-Epilogue Analysis
Part 4 of My Losing Season, titled “The Point Guard’s Way of Knowledge,” consists only of a single closing chapter and an Epilogue. Because Conroy’s basketball season and academic year ended with Chapter 29, he can move away from his timeline entirely and discuss his memoir in the present day. He does this in Chapter 30, “New Game,” primarily by revealing what went into the writing process and the interviews that he conducted with his teammates and Coach Thompson. Both of the final two chapters strongly reinforce to the book’s overarching theme: the value of losing. Conroy makes this clear when interviewing Al Kroboth for the book. When Kroboth asks him “why are you writing this book, Conroy?” he replies, “I’m trying to figure out if you learn more by losing than winning” (369).
Aside from the author himself, the two primary figures of My Losing Season are Mel Thompson and Conroy’s father, Donald. In Chapter 30, Conroy humanizes both of these men who seemed to be inhuman throughout much of the book. Although Conroy notes that Thompson “remained untouchable at his core” (366), dominated every conversation, and failed to ask a single question about Conroy or his teammates’ post-college lives, he points out that “he knew he loved his children with all the ardor that his fierce heart could muster” (364). In Chapter 30, Conroy also goes into great detail discussing how his father has changed over the years. He attributes that change to him not liking the image that he was linked to through Conroy’s novels, particularly The Great Santini. Writing about his father’s mellowing and transformation, Conroy states that “he remade himself and walked into his new life that I had willed and made possible for him” (392).
In his Epilogue, Conroy writes that “this book has been an act of recovery,” and also adds that he “wore the memories of that season like stigmata or a crown of thorns” (394). Although their losing season was a painful one for Conroy and each of his teammates, the lessons that they learned through loss and through trial by Mel Thompson have no doubt provided value and shaped them into the successful men that each of them have become. Conroy writes in the Epilogue that winning is fabulous, but “there is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss. The great secret of athletics is that you can learn more from losing than winning” (395).
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