iumdaa.blogg.se - Closing time by joe queenan

Plagued by a brutal, alcoholic father, and a childhood lived in humiliating povery, Queenan, the survivor, kept his spirit alive. " I enjoyed every word of this bittersweet memoir.

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Along with the New York Time Book Review Notable Books of 2009, I highly recommend this book." The stories of the many characters he meets along the way are interesting and often laugh-out-loud funny. Queenan decides at an early age to escape the doldrums of Philly and the terror of his drunken father and sets about it in a most determined way by seeking out jobs, books, education, friends, and experiences that take him away from his miserable home life (including a stint in a theological school embracing a youthful flirtation with piousness and becoming a priest). Although the story of the alcoholic, abusive, constantly unemployed, and down-on-his-luck father has been told many times before, it is Queenan's gift for story telling and language that makes this book stand out. The story centers around the author's extremely difficult relationship with his alcoholic and incredibly abusive father. It is the very well-written, heartbreaking, and at times, uproariously funny account of Joe Queenan's childhood growing up in the poor and downtrodden neighborhood's of 1950's and 60's Philadelphia. "Of the hundreds of memoirs I have read, this memoir is certainly one of the best.

Queenan's unforgettable account of the damage done to children by parents without futures and of the grace children find to move beyond these experiences will appeal to fans of Augusten Burroughs and Mary Karr, and will take its place as an autobiography in the classic American tradition. With the help of a series of mentors and surrogate fathers, and armed with his own furious love of books and music, Joe begins the long flight away from the dismal confines of his neighborhood-with a brief misbegotten stop at a seminary-and into the wider world.

By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Closing Time recounts Queenan's Irish Catholic upbringing in a family dominated by his erratic father, a violent yet oddly charming emotional terrorist whose alcoholism fuels a limitless torrent of self-pity, railing, destruction, and late-night chats with the Lord Himself. In Closing Time, Queenan turns his sights on a more serious and personal topic: his childhood in a Philadelphia housing project in the early 1960s. Joe Queenan's acerbic riffs on movies, sports, books, politics, and many of the least forgivable phenomena of pop culture have made him one of the most popular humorists and commentators of our time.