Stop-time

Stop-Time is a 1967 memoir by American author Frank Conroy (1936–2005) that tells the story of his poor childhood and early adulthood, growing up in New York City and Florida. Focusing on a series of moments from his life, the book uses traditional fictional devices, while also delving deeply into the author's psyche. The book established Conroy's reputation as a writer. In his review, Norman Mailer wrote, "Stop-Time is unique, an autobiography with the intimate unprotected candor of a novel. What makes it special, however, is the style, dry as an etching, sparse, elegant, modest, cheerful. Conroy has that subtle sense of the proportion of things which one usually finds only in established writers just after the mellowing of their career." Critic Michael Dirda wrote, "In a 2002 issue of The Week magazine the critic James Atlas calls Frank Conroy's 'Stop-Time' the 'best book ever written on what it's like to be a boy growing up in postwar America.'" Another reviewer found that the book "almost offhandedly evoked the vacuity of ordinary America in the 40's and 50's." Many younger writers have cited Stop-Time as an important influence on their writing careers including David Foster Wallace. Conroy published his second book, Midair, a collection of short stories, 18 years later, and subsequently wrote three other books.

's "Aunt Dinah's Wedding Dance" (1895) ]] In tap dancing, jazz, and blues, stop-time is an accompaniment pattern interrupting, or stopping, the normal time and featuring regular accented attacks on the first beat of each or every other measure, alternating with silence or instrumental solos. Stop-time occasionally appears in ragtime music. The characteristics of stop-time are heavy accents, frequent rests, and a stereotyped cadential pattern. Stop-timing may create the impression that the tempo has changed, though it has not, as the soloist continues without accompaniment. Stop-time is common in African-American popular music including R&B, soul music, and led to the development of the break in hip hop. Stop-time is, according to Samuel A. Floyd Jr., "a musical device in which the forward flow of the music stops, or seems to stop, suspended in a rhythmic unison, while in some cases an improvising instrumentalist or singer continues solo with the forward flow of the meter and tempo. Such stop-time moments are sometimes repeated, creating an illusion of starting and stopping, as, for example, in Scott Joplin's "The Ragtime Dance" and Jelly Roll Morton's "King Porter Stomp"." Joplin's "Stoptime Rag" (1910) employs stop-time throughout; it even lacks his characteristic four-bar introduction. Stop-time in Joplin's rags is characterized by directions in the music for performers to stomp their foot to the beat. The sheet music for Joplin's "Ragtime Dance" contains the direction, "Notice: to get the desired effect of 'stop time', that the pianist will please stamp the heel of one foot heavily upon the floor at the word 'stamp'. Do not raise the toe from the floor while stamping." In his copyright submission for "Cornet Chop Suey," Louis Armstrong includes a written stop-time chorus. Allusions to the stop-time chorus of "Cornet Chop Suey" occurs in "Oriental Strut" and "Potato Head Blues." Thomas Brothers cites Armstrong's exposure to the tap-dancing of Bubbles, who improvised dance steps during stop-time choruses, at the Sunset Café as further inspiration for stop-time choruses in his repertoire. In Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin', and Slam Dunking, Gena Dagel Caponi writes: ==See also== Son clave, a cross-rhythm of which stop-time is a simplification Time signature ==References==

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