The Tender Bar

Far too many of the reviews for this book here on LT criticize the book and the author for 'whining' about his childhood. I can only deduce these readers had their humanity removed in some kind of surgical procedure meant to bolster their own perception of themselves. Honestly, the reveiwers/readers all must come from perfectly well-adjusted families and are themselves superior to everyone else in every way. Far from whining, Moehringer regularly castigates himself for his faults, even though they are largely not of his own making. He came from an altogether dysfunctional family and struggled for everything, particularly a grounded sense of himself. The characters are so credible and unique that they would never be believed in a show more fictional account. It's the kind of book that is wildly popular these days, only from a female perspective. Don't get me wrong, there are far too few female authors and female narratives because of the gender gaps in publishing. But, I'd argue, there are also too few honest male voices writing sincerely about male identity and struggles - Moehringer fills this void with class. For those who reviewed this book negatively, I'd say, "Get over yourselves." For everyone else, "Read this book."

The book was recently adapted to film, and the producers, which included Moehringer, did a nice job of capturing the tone of the narrative - boy basically grows up in a bar, raised by ne'er-do-well barflies - but the book is much more evocative, lighter on the Hollywood moments and heavier on the heart-felt emotion.

Highly Recommended!
5 bones!!!!! show less

A memoir of a young man whose mother struggled to raise him alone after leaving his abusive father. In place of the man he never really knew, JR (it doesn't STAND FOR ANYTHING!) latched on to his Uncle Charlie and a motley assortment of bartenders and patrons at "The Bar", the neighborhood watering hole in his hometown of Manhasset on Long Island. Throughout his teenage years, these men took him under their collective and individual wings, took him to the beach, discussed books with him, gave him advice (of varying degrees of usefulness), encouraged him to dream of and eventually apply to Yale and made him feel he had a home beyond the bedlam of his grandparents' house, where he and his mother most often lived. Later, they supported him show more through failed love affairs, demoralizing attempts at novel-writing and dead-end jobs, taught him by example (mostly how to drink and survive hangovers), and gave him unconditional love. The story could be depressing as all get-out, but it's not. There is so much humor and tenderness in it--and after all, here is this supremely well-written memoir you're reading, as proof that it all turned out OK in the end. show less

Moehringer is a born storyteller, the sort of fellow whose yarns I'd listen to all night long. This memoir, ostensibly about a Manhasset bar but really about fathers and sons, mothers and sons, love, memory, writing and what it means to become and to be a man, is full of fantastic characters and hilarious dialogue. This is quite a feat, considering the characters are often dysfunctional alcoholics (are their any other kind?) and his broken, battered, impoverished and sometimes desperate relatives.

As someone with over seventeen years sobriety I approached this book cautiously, since I'm not interested in reading glamorized accounts of bar-life, having witnessed the horrific truth of that life. And Moehringer does flirt dangerously show more close, I think, to the line between painting a gritty, realistic portrait of lives drowned in liquor and painting it with a gloss of fairy-dust. But he manages it, and every time I found myself shifting uncomfortably in my seat, concerned about the tidal wave of alcohol flowing over the pages toward me, he masterfully turned the narrative back to the struggle for human dignity, belonging and love. In the end, the author himself is sober, although he doesn't linger on why or how, but I felt he was able to do whatever was necessary in terms of his own sobriety without damning or judging those people in his past who made different choices. It's quite lovely.

A book about dysfunctional families and colorful bar folk may sound formulaic, and perhaps it is. But the heart of the work comes from the stories Moehringer tells, and from the author's keeping a broad literary perspective. The bar is called Dickens (later changed to Publicans) and the patrons, who are undeniably Dickensian, love to talk about books and writers. F. Scott Fitzgerald looms large, especially since Manhasset is the setting for "Great Gatsby". One of the funniest moments is when two of the patrons -- mentors to the author -- discover, to their horror that this budding writer (Kid's a scribbler) has never read it.

In fact there are many laugh-out-loud moments in the book. Pay particular attention to a character called "Fuckembabe" because that's the only understandable thing he says:

"This must be the migwag with the wugga mugsy," he (Fuckembabe)said, shaking my hand and smiling, a becoming smile despite his dry lips and cardboard teeth. "Chas," he said, "I ain't gonna let him legweg my nugga fugga smack jack. I'll tell you that, fuck 'em, babe, fuck'em haw haw haw." I looked to Uncle Charlie for help, but he was laughing, telling Fuckembabe that this was true, so true. Fuckembabe then turned to me and asked me a question. "What's the biggerish thing you and your fucking muncle ever did wip the nee nonny moniker doody flipper?"

Snort. And then there's his Uncle Charlie, a somewhat mysterious and sad character who's adopted Bogarts mannerisms ("lips never wider than a cigarette), who tends bar at Publicans and likes to use big words but then apologizes for them,

"Isn't this mellifluous!" Uncle Charlie would say, "You don't mind if I say 'mellifluous' do you?" or "The whole town's inebriated. You don't mind if I say 'inebriated' do you?"

Along with the levity, there are also many heart breaking moments -- some when we watch the narrator get his heart broken by a decidedly Daisy Buchanan-like girl, and certainly those when the narrator listens to the voice of his absent father, who's an announcer, over the radio night after night.

It's very hard to write a book that's funny, poignant and utterly entertaining, but Moehringer's managed it. I didn't want it to end. show less

I can't remember the last time a book made me laugh out loud so often and I am only about one-third of the way through. The people are so vivid and real, the suburban East-Coast setting so well drawn, that many readers will feel unexpectedly at home in Manhasset, Long Island, even if they have never set foot there.

This is a story of non-traditional families, of substitutes fathers, of extended families taking care of their own the best way they know how. None of the people that formed the J. R. Moehringer's "family" was perfect--their faults are lovingly recorded and acknowledged--but each and every one of them earned his or her place in the man the boy became. I know these people that I've never met and I thank J. R. Moehringer for show more introducing me to all of them. show less

This episodic memoir of a boy becoming a man in the 70s and 80s, centered on his hometown bar and its characters, is deeply confessional and almost always engaging. It has humor, it has heartbreak--probably more of the latter--and it has a tremendous amount of truth in it as the young writer struggles to find his way in life. At times, it lags, and midway through, it lacks the momentum to keep the reader turning pages into the night, but as the author begins to realize and address his shortcomings, the pace picks up and the book comes to a memorable--and sad--conclusion with an epilogue that takes place right after 911. In addition to his relationships with the men at the bar, his relationship with his mother is well described, and the show more epiphany he comes to near the book's conclusion is unforgettable. His relationship with his troubled father--both at a distance and later, occasionally, in person--is also fascinating. All in all, this a memoir unlike any other I have read. Like the best such books, it makes us reflect upon our own relationships. show less

I read about this book in a menu.
No kidding.
There's a great sushi joint in town called Miya's that has a menu with facetious descriptions of food, stories on how dishes and drinks came to be, and even footnotes and an epilogue. Most fun menu I know- even better than the color-you-own ones.
And in this menu. _The Tender Bar_ was mentioned as "a short story" where the son of a single mother grows up in a bar using the men around him as the father figure (collectively) he doesn't have. This intrigued me and I saw the possibilty of a puppet piece coming from it, and so I marched my butt to Strand's the next time I was in the City and looked for a short story collection containing _The Tender Bar_.
Low, and behold, it was a 368-page hardback show more memoir, but it was on the sale table and I was on a mission, so it went home with me.
The book is not what I expected, not what I wanted, and so I hated it. But I could never really get up the steam I needed to really let that hatred set in because I was turning pages rapidly (for me, at least), chuckling and weeping (shh- don't tell).
Moeringer has such a clear remembrance of so many events, such clarity on what he felt and how to say it, even as a very young child, that I often wondered if I was reading the next LeRoy. But I didn't care too much, because I wanted to believe it and, ultimately, it didn't affect me one way or another if it was completely true, mostly true, or inspired by truth.
The book has unlovable, unlikeable characters who Moehringer manager to have me empathizing with even though their behavior is despicable. Fromt he outside, I saw that if this one character, Grandpa, had been different, that everything else, all the horrid things that happened and the terrible way people treated each other and their self-destructive behaviors could have been different, and probably better in some cases. ANd yet, I found myself saying, "Poor Fella" as I saw little acts of humanity in him.
It is not a nice, neat book.
It's a heartbreaker that goes on and on with little mendings and perpetual chipping away at J.R.'s heart- and mine. And then, it's about what happens after your heart breaks wide open and you're still alive.
The book is not always well-paced, and drags significantly in parts. I can't tell if that is the author trying to convey how his life was also dragging interminably at that time, or poor editing. And if you can stomach the heartache, it's surely a quick-ish read: no dense concepts, no giant vocab.
And despite the realtvely short time I spent reading it (under a week?), I sometimes find myself thinking about "that guy I knew, the one who hung out at the bar a lot and kept that kid out of trouble"-- and then I realize I am thinking about his very, very real portrayal of (presumably) real people he loves very much, and I kind of do, too. show less

A true tale of the underdog, this briskly paced memoir charts the rites of passage of JR Moehringer with a mix of humor and pathos. The first half of the book stands out the most in its uniqueness with its focus on the author's dysfunctional family. Moehringer deftly captures his feelings at that young age and his growing into the world around him as he learned about family and begins his hero-worship of the bar life. Its an odd quirk of the book that his actual growth as a writer is left unchronicled for the most part. For a book about a writer realizing a dream to join the New York Times, there is very little about the 'writer's life'. The book just casually mentions he wrote for Yale's student paper, but nothing about that experience show more is shared. Likewise gaining entry into Yale is no mean feat, and yet the book makes it seem almost like a lucky fluke, which is hard to believe. Yet reading the book, you realize how talented he is as a writer and you know there is more to tell about all this.

Some of the standout sections of the book for me were his stint at the strip mall bookstore and the two (gay?) men who ran it and his retail experience at Lord and Taylor. The description of how they still operated the store in turn of the century fashion I found hilarious. Not being a drinker, the segments in the bar with its alcoholic patrons were less amusing and since this book is about his love for the bar life, I guess I may not be the intended audience here. Nonetheless the pace of the story is quite brisk and there's enough humor and interest to keep hooked even the most ardent Prohibitionist. show less