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The Tender Bar Hardcover – September 1, 2005
J.R. Moehringer grew up captivated by a voice. It was the voice of his father, a New York City disc jockey who vanished before J.R. spoke his first word. Sitting on the stoop, pressing an ear to the radio, J.R. would strain to hear in that plummy baritone the secrets of masculinity and identity. Though J.R.'s mother was his world, his rock, he craved something more, something faintly and hauntingly audible only in The Voice.
At eight years old, suddenly unable to find The Voice on the radio, J.R. turned in desperation to the bar on the corner, where he found a rousing chorus of new voices. The alphas along the bar--including J.R.'s Uncle Charlie, a Humphrey Bogart look-alike; Colt, a Yogi Bear sound-alike; and Joey D, a softhearted brawler--took J.R. to the beach, to ballgames, and ultimately into their circle. They taught J.R., tended him, and provided a kind of fathering-by-committee. Torn between the stirring example of his mother and the lurid romance of the bar, J.R. tried to forge a self somewhere in the center. But when it was time for J.R. to leave home, the bar became an increasingly seductive sanctuary, a place to return and regroup during his picaresque journeys. Time and again the bar offered shelter from failure, rejection, heartbreak--and eventually from reality.
In the grand tradition of landmark memoirs, The Tender Bar is suspenseful, wrenching, and achingly funny. A classic American story of self-invention and escape, of the fierce love between a single mother and an only son, it's also a moving portrait of one boy's struggle to become a man, and an unforgettable depiction of how men remain, at heart, lost boys.
- Print length384 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHyperion
- Publication dateSeptember 1, 2005
- Grade level8 and up
- Reading age18 years and up
- Dimensions6.25 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-101401300642
- ISBN-13978-1401300647
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Editorial Reviews
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Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The New Yorker
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker
From Bookmarks Magazine
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
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Review
"In his gimlet-eyed memoir, The Tender Bar, J.R. Moehringer lovingly and affectingly toasts a boyhood spent on a barstool." -- Vanity Fair
"Simply a wonderful book about a heaven of a life that had everything going against it except intense love . . ." -- James Salter, author of Burning the Days
"The Tender Bar will make you thirsty for that life -- its camaraderie, its hilarity, its seductive, dangerous wisdom." -- Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls
"The best memoirs of his kind since Mary Karr wrote The Liars' Club." -- New York Times
"The best thing about The Tender Bar is that it is many stories in one. -- Entertainment Weekly
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Hyperion; First Edition (September 1, 2005)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 384 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1401300642
- ISBN-13 : 978-1401300647
- Reading age : 18 years and up
- Grade level : 8 and up
- Item Weight : 1.35 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.25 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #69,868 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #8 in Mid Atlantic U.S. Biographies
- #80 in Journalist Biographies
- #2,242 in Memoirs (Books)
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Although the yarns can be quite tender at times, there's also plenty of grit, violence, betrayal, and humor. Pick an emotion, and you can be pretty sure the author will take you there. Although everyone's life journey is unique -- and there are sob stories aplenty out there -- "The Tender Bar" is easy material for everyone to relate to.
Even before Publicans becomes a fixture in his own life, young, anxiety-ridden J.R. lives in the ramshackle world that results from his family’s lifestyle of libations. He and his mother repeatedly move in and out of his grandparents’ overpopulated, chaotic house, which is decaying from abject neglect. In fact, neglect is a recurring characteristic of the men in J.R.’s family. His father is a deadbeat disk-jockey, whom J.R. knows only by his on-air voice. His grandfather is an emotional batterer, and his uncle is an alcoholic and gambling addict. But as a strange counterpart to the abuses, the family is also proficient in sacrificial love. The innate literary talent among them is the unexpected cherry on top.
As J.R. grows, the men of Publicans become his surrogate fathers, and he loves them arguably more than he ought. His relationship with them morphs into a relationship with the bar itself, and his relationship with the bar becomes the linchpin of his life, profoundly directing the course of his education, his career, and, most sentimentally, his fate with Sidney, his movie-star gorgeous, heart-breaking, man-eating girlfriend.
Moehringer’s treatment of the barfly lifestyle is respectful and sensitive. He portrays the sweeping diversity, surprising comradery, and occasional combat among the customers with lavish heart and color. But it’s simultaneously depressing to watch these lovely humans sink into such destructive dependency. It’s an existential dilemma. The relationships are priceless, but the repercussions are exorbitant.
While the story starts with great hope for a bright, sensitive, underdog kid, it spirals downward into the depressing depths of addiction. But J.R. finally wields his incredible gift with words to recover from a bad turn ⎼ well, several bad turns ⎼ and the story ends optimistically. You’ll close the back cover with a good feeling for his future and a great fondness for his writing.
(Check out my other reviews at [...].)
I found this book to be extremely well written by a most talented young writer, but the subject matter and the cast of characters were of little sustaining interest. Perhaps JR is modeling himself after the Hemingway and O'Neill members of the writing fraternity. Perhaps the first 30 years of his life enabled him to find something about which to write. But the crux of this book and that which has prepared him to be, potentially, so fine a writer occurred in the following decade or so of his life, culminating in the events of and the aftermath of 9/11. It is during this period that his maturity becomes evident...when he stopped depending on the crutch of drinking...took hold of his responsibilities...and only then placed in perspective the important pieces that make up the composition of "life". Unfortunately, the great body of this work is Much Ado About Very Little, aimlessly passing time, wasting time and education, and living in the narrow focus of the bar and its inhabitants.
Still, the book is a worthwhile read if for no other reason than to see how Mr. Moehringer grows and continues to mature in his future endeavors.
Top reviews from other countries
The book is another dimension and with the read.
It’s written in a style which is unusual for the present , with punctuation to make to read, and then think before savouring the prose and its meaning.
I have recommended this book to friends before I completed reading the total volume.
It’s that good!!!