Time and Tide: A Walk Through Nantucket

Crown Journeys Series

by Frank Conroy

Frank Conroy first visited Nantucket with a gang of college friends in 1955. They came on a whim, and for Conroy it was the beginning of a lifelong love affair with this "small, relaxed oasis in the ocean." This book, part travel diary, part memoir, is a hauntingly evocative and personal journey through Nantucket: its sweeping dunes, rugged moors, remote beaches, secret fishing spots, and hidden forests and cranberry bogs. Admirers of Conroy’s classic and acclaimed memoir Stop-Time will again delight in what James Atlas, writing in the New York Times, called his "genius for close observation."

In Time and Tide , Conroy recounts the island’s history from the glory days of the whaling boom to the present, when tourism dominates. He vividly evokes the clash of cultures between the working class and the super-rich, with the fragile ecology of the island always in the balance. But most fascinating of all, he tells his own story--of playing jazz piano in the island’s bars; of raising a barn in the early '60s with the help of a bunch of hippie carpenters; of leasing an old, failed bar with two island pals and turning it into the Roadhouse, a club "that was to be ours, the year-rounders, and to hell with the summer people." There’s a marvelous story of his first golf game, played on an ancient nine-hole course with two friends, a part-time sommelier and a builder from the South who invented the one-handed pepper mill.

This is a book that revels in friendship, music, history, and the gorgeous landscape of a unique American place, and is a wonderful work by one of our greatest contemporary writers.


From the Hardcover edition.

Genres: Travel, History, Nonfiction, Memoir, Essays

144 pages, Hardcover

First published January 8, 2004

About the author

Frank Conroy was an American author, born in New York, New York to an American father and a Danish mother. He published five books, including the highly acclaimed memoir Stop-Time, published in 1967, which ultimately made Conroy a noted figure in the literary world. The book was nominated for the National Book Award.
Conroy graduated from Haverford College, and was director of the influential Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa for 18 years, from 1987 until 2005, where he was also F. Wendell Miller Professor. He was previously the director of the literature program at the National Endowment for the Arts from 1982–1987.
Conroy's published works included: the moving memoir Stop-Time; a collection of short stories, Midair; a novel, Body and Soul, which is regarded as one of the finest evocations of the experience of being a musician; a collection of essays and commentaries, Dogs Bark, but the Caravan Rolls On: Observations Then and Now; and a travelogue, Time and Tide: A Walk Through Nantucket. His fiction and non-fiction appeared in such journals as The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, Harper's Magazine and Partisan Review. He was named a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government.
In addition to writing, Conroy was an accomplished jazz pianist, winning a Grammy Award in 1986. His book Dogs Bark, But the Caravan Rolls On: Observations Then and Now includes articles that describe jamming with Charles Mingus and with Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman. The latter session occurred when Conroy was writing about the Rolling Stones for Esquire. Conroy had arrived at a mansion for the interview, found nobody there, and eventually sat down at a grand piano and began to play. Someone wandered in, sat down at the drums, and joined in with accomplished jazz drumming; then a fine jazz bassist joined in. They turned out to be Watts and Wyman, whom Conroy did not recognize until they introduced themselves after the session.
Conroy died of colon cancer on April 6, 2005, in Iowa City, Iowa, at the age of 69.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Co...

Reviews

[Lee Klein · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the old guy -- and read this in the summer after his death. When I finished I said aloud "damn that was a good book". He includes the exclamation "Veblen!" toward the end, which is really weird since I have a story where the narrator exclaims "Thorstein!" -- Both Frank and I apparently were/are into Thorstein Veblen. No wonder I liked him. Also, though, yo, this book is slight and thoroughly enjoyable for a memoir about a preppie island, since it's about how this preppie island changed over time, lost authenticity. Great ancedotes and conveyance of wisdom/experience (not necessarily bragging) seemingly worked over and over for years orally (surely over drinks) and finally committed to print. Feels real because it's real.

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was not for me, I wish I'd read the good reads summary before getting this book. I thought it was going to be a natural history of Nantucket maybe something about the whaling history. But in fact it was more of a memoir of the authors. All fine and good but just not what I was looking for. Still looking for that book about the Nantucket Sleigh ride, my favorite song by Mountain.

[Gail Pool · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Nantucket is drenched with memories of the whaling days and the nineteenth century,” writes Frank Conroy in Time & Tide, an entry in the Crown Journeys series which takes readers on brief “walks” through various places. Having lived in Nantucket either as a year-rounder or summer resident since the '50s, Conroy knows the island well and proves an engaging guide to its geography, culture and evolution from the 19th century to the 21st.

As a whaling town, Nantucket was wealthy in the old days: “the rich,” says Conroy “were truly, mind-bogglingly rich.” After the end of the whaling era, the town was left with sheep herding and cranberries. Today, the rich in Nantucket are mind-bogglingly rich again, but when Conroy arrived in the ‘50s, before the biggest changes came, Nantucket, he says, was a “real town,” with a “small-town ‘feel,’” “a relaxed oasis in the ocean.”

Conroy evokes the unique geography and landscape of Nantucket: its distinctive harbor, its exposure to the ocean, its dunes, salt marshes, and moors (around one-third of all moors in America), its brutal winters, and its “delicate wilderness,” which he says, some people “misperceive as bleakness.”

Through anecdotes, about himself and others, Conroy conveys a sense of an older Nantucket and how he found his place in what he describes as a somewhat oddball community. Struggling at first to live on a literary writer’s income, he played piano at a hotel, tried scallop fishing, and collected unemployment checks (along with “half the working people of the island”). In the 70s, he and two partners (one with money) started The Roadhouse, a club with music, booze, and simple, good food—not a financial success for its naïve founders, but extremely popular.

Nantucket has changed, sadly, and Conroy records the impact that development, tourism, and the onslaught of money has had on the island. At one time, he played golf on a beautiful 9-hole course, “high on the island with views of the sea,” for a dollar a hole. In recent times, just a half mile away, an 18-hole course has been constructed by a club that costs $300,000 to join. Indeed, the author’s earliest childhood memory involves watching boys diving for coins at Steamboat Wharf in Nantucket. More recently, his daughter-in-law, wading on the beach, found 2 one-hundred-dollar bills floating in the water.

Conroy, who died in 2005, was for many years director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and he is a fine writer. Time & Tide captures Nantucket as a place, though brief as the book is, it felt padded. Reading it, I wanted to visit the island again for its natural beauty. But to stay there, I’d want it to be as it once was.

[Matthew Pennell · Rating 2 out of 5]

On the shorter side for a book - it reads more like a long-form New Yorker article - and it's lacking a coherent through-line to tie Conroy's reminiscences about Nantucket from the 1950s up until the early 2000s. Twenty years after his death, you wonder what he would make of the place now, with Presidents past and present among the regular summer visitors.

[Rosemary · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's not a special book, in my opinion, but I enjoyed reading about Conroy's love for Nantucket.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a delightful read, and there were a few sections I loved. But my faith in the book was shaken early on. In the first chapter, Conroy writes:

"The sandy beach just north of Siasconset (or 'Sconset, as it is called by islanders) is the easternmost edge of the United States. The familiar Mercator Projection to be seen in every schoolroom makes it look like Maine sticks out farther, but that is no more than an effect of flattening three dimensions into two. On a globe, Nantucket beats Maine by between two and three degrees."

This is plainly wrong. I sat up in bed and said, "This guy's been smoking grass!" I knew -- have known for as long as I've known anything at all about geography -- that the easternmost point in the United States is in Maine, but I confirmed it quickly and easily with my bedside globe, which Conroy suggests would inform me otherwise. Having inadvertently rousted my wife in my outrage, I demanded that she fetch her iPad from her bedside table, and I used the internet to speedily confirm something else: Nantucket doesn't even contain the easternmost point in its own state.

How did a claim so simply proven false make it into print? And what is a reader to do with all the other claims about geography and history casually made throughout the book?

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I visited Nantucket in 1978 on a biking trip with some fraternity brothers, that I have lost contact with. That's 40 years. ago. This memoir reminds me of spending summers as a kid on the Delaware beaches between Rehobeth and Bethany Beach at a place called Indian River Inlet. It is still there. We, my siblings, Tim , my older brother, and Gretchen, my younger sister and associated family, returned in 2017 to scatter my mother's ashes.
It is not the same.
It can't be.
Nothing remains the same.
Nantucket, okay Cape Cod, in general, is the one place that I have visited that my wife has not seen and I would like to return, the off-season for sure, as I think my head would explode if I returned in the summer. For some reason, I remember Wellfleet and Truro as particularly charming places. The book is a fast read and it gave me a good feeling because of the nostalgia that resulted. It is safe to say, IMHO, that money ruins everything and after reading this I am not sure I would return.

[Marilyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop but also a fun loving jazz musician, Conroy fell in love with Nantucket in 1955 and for a while lived there full-time. He parses his love of the island and what makes it magical to him. But, also has some great reminiscences and opinions of how it's changed. As a regular summer visitor for 32 years, I enjoyed seeing it through Conroy's eyes.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting glimpses of life and changes on Nantucket. Brought back good memories my visits there.

[Barbie Brennan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely valentine to the island of Nantucket

[Beach026 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good quick read. When it began. I was worried it would be just another history lesson, but once the author began sharing personal stories I really enjoyed it.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short and sweet history of Nantucket

[Vel Veeter]

A small book written by the essayist and novelist Frank Conroy. I am not from New England and didn’t grow up in any kind of public intellectual sense, so Frank Conroy does not have any kind of reputation or presence in my life other than being referenced in David Foster Wallace’s “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again” as having written a commissioned essay for a cruise line, which makes DFW feel some kind of way. This book has a similar vibe, but is still quite good because it ends actually being about something, more or less. The book is called “A Walk through Nantucket” which I only really know through the tv show “Wings” and different versions of it in New England writers’ stories — and of course from Moby Dick. Frank Conroy seems to have been one of those people who came to the island initially as a vacationer turned town bum — ie a college student who shows up for the whole summer and ends up working a job instead of lounging around. This gives him the kind of lifelong goal of becoming a year-rounder. In a way he feels like he’s made his mark having owned a bar for a long time, and also he knows he can’t ever make it. The book is a kind of touristy book, but also indicates that there’s a Nantucket almost none of can ever know because it’s either long-gone, or kept private from outsiders. He talks about the various kinds of gentrification that’s happened to the island, how the charm masks the eclecticism, as well as the various hateful ideologies that hides behind the faces (not especially hateful, but not immune from it either). What it seems to come down to is that as the fishing trade waned and the tourist trade waxed, not everyone was on-board with how this would change the face of the island.

I had a funny moment in understand about who Conroy is (think: a significantly less prolific John Updike) when he says at one point “My then current wife said to me…”.

[Alan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Rarely have I given a book only one star--honestly, I would give it less, if that were possible.

Conroy has not written a book about Nantucket; he has written a book about himself and his oversize sense of his importance to a Nantucket that only he and a few cronies can understand and treat well--"The shops stayed open late [for Christmas Stroll], welcoming people inside for punch, canapes, and cookies, or shots and beers on the sly for special friends. (I found myself with a distinct buzz on before I was halfway up the street.)" Wink, wink, nod, nod. Instead of walking us through a beautiful island and its history, we are taken on a sad trip on Mr. Conroy's ego. I'll take Nantucket, thank you.

I can't believe this sad, so-called "writer" was the the "longtime director of the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop."

If you're interested in a good book about Nantucket, read Nathaniel Philbrick's Away Off Shore, which is beautiful and does justice to a beautiful island.

[Amy Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would probably give this book a 3.5 stars if I could. I did enjoy reading it a lot but I guess I was looking for more information about the island of Nantucket. It was a short book and I wish it had been longer. Since I'm going there in a few weeks for the first time, this book actually made me sad that I never got to experience the Nantucket of 40 years ago ...the time when Conroy was a young adult. I thoroughly enjoyed reading his story, which he wrote in an interesting way. Things have changed so much over "time" and it seems he describes the "evolution" of Nantucket as the unstoppable march of progress that spoils so many of these kinds of destinations ...before they are discovered and trampled on by the masses.

[Gail · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess I'd give it 2 and 1/2 stars. This would be considered a "slight" book--I think it was less than 150 pages--and I should have read it in no time at all, yet it took me at least 2 months to read! I guess I just didn't find it very engrossing, though it was fairly interesting. I'd find myself reading a little before going to bed, then putting it down and not picking it up again for days or even weeks. I liked reading about the history of Nantucket, though it made me sad to realize that, because it has become so crowded and ever more touristy, much of its charm has probably been lost. Still, if I'm ever in the Northeast, I wouldn't mind visiting this little island off the coast of Massachusetts.

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite coincidentally, the second consecutive book I've read by an author with the last name of Conroy, the first the overstuffed The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy. This is one of a series of slim books on the micro-geography of famous places:

Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg (Crown Journeys)
Washington Schlepped Here: Walking in the Nation's Capital (Crown Journeys)

that I've read and reviewed that are not exhaustive or encyclopedic, but instead personal and intimate.

Conroy describes the small and shrinking (literally and figuratively) Nantucket Island on which he has spent some time as a near-native year-round resident, and where he still owns property.

[Toni · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yesterday I would have said that everyone can tell good stories about where they grew up or a place they love, but today I have been proved wrong. Conroy lists many random things--jumping around with no real continuity--but the moment he starts to sneak up on what might be a good story with a little bit of detail, he makes a sharp detour off onto something else quite unrelated. Of course, I can see his point--why break a perfect record?

Not recommended.

[Patricia Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm very glad I read this book. Though I agree with the reviewer who noted that the book is more about the author than the place, the level of expertise Conroy brings to the area make this an excellent historical travel document. It's also a good example of an established author who doesn't need to consider the reader much and can therefore go into detail where the detail doesn't matter. The section about golfing was anecdotal and dull.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly, I picked this book because it was small. I had several doctors appoinments on my calendar and this book would fit neatly in my purse. Half memoir, half travelogue, Mr. Conroy writes of his memories of Nantucket since moving there in the 1950's. Lot of change, lots more people, but he still loves his island. It was very short, and a nice book to read. Though in way, it was kind of a yawn.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This author was head of the Iowa Writer's Workshop and lived across the street from one of my piano students. He also had strong ties to Nantucket and this book is about Nantucket. It is not about ancient Nantuckett, but nevertheless interesting - mostly about the late 50's to 2004, the time the author experienced it.

[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love this series of short travel memoirs in general, and Conroy's portrait of Nantucket does not disappoint. Makes me sad to have lived in MA 36 years and never visited the place. But for memories of the way it used to be, and the island-ness of it despite the money that overwhelms it now, I am glad to have read the loving record of one who spent many years there.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listening to Frank Conroy read his work was a delight. The work sparkles with reminiscences that like beautiful leaves pressed between pages of a favorite book fall to your lap as the pages turn. Beautifully written, beautifully read. This is not great fiction, but it is rings true and heart-felt.

[Greg Western]

I feel like I now have a pretty feel for what Nantucket was like and is like now. I had only spent time there watching Wings, but this was a lot better. Conroy was there before it was cool and shows things he liked about living there. It is combo memoir and travel book, that makes a 30 mile trip across the water seem pretty attractive

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A history of Frank Conroy's love and habitation of Nantucket. It's light reading, but particularly worthwhile if you are vacationing there and want to get a feel for the mixing of the locals, the summer regulars, the newbies, and the ultra-rich.

[Colleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author Conroy writes in a conversational tone about his time on Nantucket. This is the second book I've read from the Crown Journeys series. They are good, short reads by writers who live in the places written about.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book. I hope to make it to Nantucket some day.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed listening to this book. Ruth read it and liked it, so I listened to it while I worked around the house.

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pleasant read...respite from hard fiction.

[Ris · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice book to read on vacation in Nantucket. A lovely ambience take on the island.