Body and Soul (Critical Overview)

Critical Overview

The critics seem to be evenly divided into good, bad, and indifferent opinions of Body and Soul. The phenomenal success of Frank Conroy's first book, Stop-Time, raised great expectations in the literary world. This autobiography of his youth demonstrated originality of style and masterful writing, so readers waited eagerly for a first novel. Conroy was only thirty-one years old in 1967 when he published Stop-Time, but he did not publish again until 1985 when he produced a somewhat disappointing collection of eight short stories. Finally, in 1993, at the age of fifty-seven, his first novel appeared to mixed reviews.

The main complaint of the critics who panned Body and Soul is that it is so similar to Stop-Time. Claude Rawlings is only a fictional version of Frank Conroy. Both grow up lonely and fatherless in poverty in New York City in exactly the same time period. Both pull themselves out of these circumstances through talent: Conroy is a gifted writer, Rawlings is a musical prodigy. However, according to critics, Stop-Time was innovative while Body and Soul seems to be a fill-in-the-blanks parade of stock characters, predictable outcomes, and hard-to-believe coincidences.

Perhaps the critics who complained that Body and Soul was too much like Stop-Time were actually disappointed that it wasn't exactly like Stop-Time. But it was never Conroy's intent to repeat the style and innovations of Stop-Time in his novel. Rather, as Conroy told Sylvia Steinberg in an interview for Publishers Weekly, "Body and Soul is a real old-fashioned novel — a big fat book with a lot of people and a lot of plot." Explaining Claude's "incredible string of good luck," Conroy concedes that he has made the novel "in many respects a fairy tale."

Joseph Olshan writes in his review for Harper's Bazaar that it is tempting to compare Conroy with Rawlings because of the similarities. But the important difference is that Conroy admits to being a merely competent pianist. Olshan reports, "Rawlings, to use one of the novel's central metaphors, attempts to get 'beyond the Wall,' to overcome his physical limitations to find his soul in his music," and he has the talent to be able to do so. Conroy described to Olshan the moment of his final breakthrough in writing Body and Soul: "Driving east from Iowa City, I suddenly came up with Fredericks, who tells Claude the secret of the Wall. That development affected the entire novel. If you listen carefully to the text, the way you listen to music, it reveals the answer to each problem it creates."

Perhaps the negative critics did not listen carefully enough to understand the story even though it was written in a "supple and elegant prose" according to a review in Publishers Weekly. This review calls Conroy's depiction of Claude "brilliant" and the explanations of musical theory "lucid." Nonetheless, Publishers Weekly found the second half of the book less successful because Claude's obsession with music that "makes him fascinating as a youth makes him hollow as a man." The review admits that Conroy is purposely trying to make Claude's life devoid of emotion, but feels that he fails to maintain an interesting character in the process.

Other critics agree that Claude is a flat character, although they often remark on the skill with which Conroy conveys the passionate feelings of an artist. But none of the critics seem to complain about the technical detail supplied when Conroy describes the music that Claude works on. One odd feature, however, is denounced by Stanley Kauffmann in his review for the New Republic: overarching comments. "This device not only jars our focus, not only makes us inappropriately aware of Conroy rather than Claude, it suggests a nervousness in the author, a worry that he isn't getting enough in, that he must enrich his book." By overarching comments, Kauffmann means the parenthetical glimpses into the future that Conroy inserts. For example, Catherine predicts that when Claude is forty-five he will be famous and have some fabulous young woman on his arm, and Conroy interrupts with a confirmation that that is exactly what happens. The reader is also told in a parenthetical note that Peter commits suicide in later years. If the author cannot think of a way to blend such character elements into the story, it is a crutch to use an intrusive author's comment.

Despite its faults, Body and Soul is a readable story, the kind that is hard to put down. Maybe it is only soap opera quality, but then soap operas are very popular, and there is occasionally some very good acting in the daytime dramas. So it is with Body and Soul. Critics and readers were expecting one thing and got another, and some could not adjust to the change. Others were open-minded enough to try to see what Conroy was attempting to do. Whether or not he succeeded is, as always, left up to the opinion of the individual reader and the connection made between reader and author.

Compare & Contrast

• 1940s: This is the Big Band Era and swing music is all the rage.
  1950s: The mellow sound of the crooners gives way to the rise of rock 'n' roll with Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley.
  1960s: Pop and rock rule the music scene. Folk songs played at "hootenannies," psychedelic rock, and the Motown sound have a phenomenal impact.
  Today: Swing music makes a big comeback while America's broadened, eclectic tastes make room for rap, country, rhythm and blues, jazz, and classical music all at the same time. Many stars of the 1950s and 1960s still perform in "classic" tours.
• 1940s: Segregation is practiced in most of the country. Except for the Tuskegee Airmen, blacks may work only in menial jobs in the armed services.
  1950s: Desegregation begins in the schools, but any attempt at mixing the races is met with violent rejection.
  1960s: The Civil Rights Bill passes in 1964, but racial intermarriage is still banned in nineteen states until a 1967 Supreme Court ruling declares miscegenation laws unconstitutional.
  Today: All races have equal rights under the law, but only four percent of marriages are interracial.
• 1940s: Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union forces Stalin to join the Allies during WWII, which leads to the postwar takeover of Eastern Europe.
  1950s: The Cold War ensues and communism spreads throughout the world. America joins in the Korean War against the communist Chinese in the North, and lives in the grip of fear of communist attack and espionage.
  1960s: The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 brings the Soviet Union and the United States to the brink of war.
  Today: The Soviet Union has broken up and communist governments exist in only a few places in the world.
• 1940s: The Holocaust takes six million Jewish lives. Many survivors come to America and other countries, but the state of Israel is created in 1948 to provide a homeland for Jewish people.
  Today: After several wars over fifty years with its Arab neighbors, Israel is still working on peace agreements.