Memoir, Fiction, and Balls vs. Testicles in Literature

I read Frank Conroy's memoir Stop-Time for my lit seminar on Wednesday. What's good about it is the writing. Conroy doesn't tell his story in a linear fashion, and at times switches to the present tense. I just tried both of these techniques for a story that I handed in last week which will be workshopped on Monday, so it is nice to have another successful model to learn from. (I patterned my work on A Feather on the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez.)

During a break from the meandering class discussion, a friend calculated that we pay $125 an hour for our classes. We resumed class. After a ten minute debate on Conroy's use of the word "balls," which our professor defended by saying, "Balls is a great word," I thought about other uses I had for $20.84 I spent for that. Not that I disagree that balls is a great word or really minded talking about whether Conroy should have used "testicles" instead of balls, but still. That's a lot of money for something I talk about for free all the time.

Speaking of balls, I posted four more chapters of Always. Chapter 9 is one of my favorites so far, and Chapter 10 (not to be confused with Chapter 10*, as I had two chapter tens) is one of the most gag-inducing. The similes flow in Chapter 11 most impressively. I actually learned a lot from myself from twenty years ago while typing up this work.