While Stop-Time was Frank Conroy's autobiography, it is apparent that he continues to draw from his own childhood experiences to create the world in which his characters live. Born on January 15, 1936, in New York City, Conroy was the son of an absent, mentally ill father and a cold, unloving mother. He spent much of his childhood escaping from his loneliness by reading books and teaching himself to play jazz on the piano. Yet from this miserable childhood came the inspiration for the writing that would later make him famous.

Conroy attended Haverford College in Pennsylvania. While there he met Patty Monro Ferguson, whom he married in 1958, the same year he graduated. Patty introduced him to the world of New York's social elite. Then in 1967, at the age of thirty-one, Conroy published his first book, the uniquely styled autobiography Stop-Time. This story of his childhood in New...