Lizards on the Mantel, Burros at the Door: A Big Bend Memoir by Etta Koch with June Cooper Price

Posted on January 28, 2016 by pagesofjulia

lizards burrosThanks to Fil for another hit. (Still don’t give me any more books, though, I tell you I’m swamped.) Reading this memoir about a place I love was engaging, amusing and comforting.

Etta Lindeman was born in Ohio in 1904. She was an active youngster but sickly in her young adulthood, when she married Peter Koch. One recommendation to help her breathing troubles was to move to a warm, dry climate. This, combined with Peter’s professional ambitions, took them on a trip cross-country that was to wind up in Arizona, where they would settle and continue to raise their three daughters. Peter was a newspaper photographer who wanted to make nature films and travel the country giving accompanying lectures; the National Parks Service helped by engaging him to promote several parks, including the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and eventually… Big Bend. The Kochs drove their 23-foot trailer (“Porky the Road Hog”) from Ohio to the Smokies, through Louisiana, where Peter filmed the wetlands’ water birds, and into Big Bend through Marathon, Texas. As Etta relates in this journal-like memoir, her family’s adjustment to the West Texas desert near the Mexican border was not without challenges. She was initially leery: “Texas had always been for me a movie set… A place of flimsy barrooms people by six-footers with six-shooters.” But eventually it wins their hearts and they settle permanently. The three Koch daughters have remained in Texas. The eldest, June, is co-author here, having done her own research, pulled together her mother’s papers and a first draft and seen them through to publication.

Etta’s voice is charming. She is not a professional writer, and her prose is perhaps not artful; I think of the term “outsider art” – but surprisingly lovely in moments, too. I liked her evocative descriptions, and these lines:

Nearby is a weeping juniper that is so strange. At first I thought the tree was wilting and perhaps ready to die but was told it is a dejected tree by nature.

Her style is mostly reportorial, but with a brisk, conversational tone. The chapters generally cover episodes or events: the surprise birthday party Pete throws her; a trip to Hot Springs; Pete’s trip down the Santa Elena canyon in a homemade boat. She has a sense of humor, too, a sense of fun (despite describing herself as the scaredy-cat of this active family). My favorite part must have been the final chapter, “Kaufman’s Draw,” which describes an adventure driving across the desert: it reminded me of Abbey’s “Disorder and Early Sorrow,” that story in The Journey Home that I loved so much.

I found the Big Bend I know and love in this book, although earlier, cleaner. When Etta writes,

I didn’t know the sky was so big… so blue… but as we traveled west I discovered that although the earth grew whiter and vegetation sparser, the sky grew more intense, more brilliantly blue.

I recognize this precisely. I have yet to find the scientific explanation for it, but the light out there is different: sharper, brighter.

Lizards on the Mantel, Burros at the Door is also a fine primary source on the work of community building, which is part of what it means to pioneer or homestead: as the Park Service’s settlement (in the Basin of the Chisos Mountains) grows in population, Etta – who had home-schooled her children since arriving in Big Bend – teamed up with other wives and mothers to provide schooling and cultural activities. The community puts on dances, has potluck dinners and cooperates in living and raising kids in such a remote spot.

Simply told but with unmistakable personality, this first-person account of roughing it in far West Texas won my heart. It will get extra points with readers who love the place, like I do, but there is certainly something here for everyone who likes history, memoir, and the romance of simple living.

Rating: 7 murals.

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Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

Posted on January 27, 2016 by pagesofjulia

fun homeFun Home won awards and got more attention than Bechdel’s later Are You My Mother?, which I loved, so this was an obvious choice and yes, I will add my praise to the chorus.

This is a memoir centering around Bechdel’s father Bruce, her own discovery that she is a lesbian and her coming out to her parents, which is immediately followed by the discovery that her father is gay, too, shortly before he kills himself just weeks later. (The evidence is inconclusive, but she makes a good argument for her conviction, that it was suicide.) The title is a reference to the family business, which is a small-town funeral home that they call ‘Fun Home.’ That’s a lot, right? It is also a memoir in graphic form, and I am crazy about Bechdel’s technique, which combines dialog (speech boxes for the characters in her panels) with a voiceover-style narrative in different boxes that sort of caption those same panels. It’s astonishing how much can be communicated in pictorial form.

Despite the often heavy subject matter, Bechdel is often laugh-out-loud funny, while also taking her material seriously. She beautifully evokes the absurdity of many different elements of her story. Bruce is a passionate restorer of historic homes, down to all the details, the bizarrely frothy, lacy, heavy decor. This is both hilarious and pathological. He “treated his furniture like children, and his children like furniture.” Bechdel and her father are most intimate when they share books and reading (note that this is an intimacy with decided remove). Bruce works as an English teacher as well as a funeral director; and two thematic elements of the book are death and books. Bechdel is best able to understand and characterize her parents when viewing them through the lens of literature: her father as Icarus, then Daedalus, then a character from Fitzgerald; her mother one from Henry James. “I employ these allusions to James and Fitzgerald not only as descriptive devices, but because my parents are most real to me in fictional terms.” On the other end of the cultural spectrum, as a child Bechdel confused her family with the Addams family.

The reader has a different experience of the story than she does, because we find out earlier than she does the big reveal – that her father has had relationships with men and boys. But she still has us share in mixed feelings of relief, shock, perplexity.

The story is weird, fascinating, and moving; Bechdel has a gimlet eye for the psychological struggle in each chapter of it; the structure of this book – the disordered chronology and release of facts – is a smart puzzle. But the art is what completes the perfection: I’m still reeling from, and trying to comprehend, how precisely she uses visual images (with those careful text additions) to communicate. I can’t adequately articulate it, but this is a special, a uniquely wonderful way to tell a uniquely interesting story. One to study.

Rating: 9 books, of course.

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Teaser Tuesdays: The Throwback Special by Chris Bachelder

Posted on January 26, 2016 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

I have a fun one for you today.

throwback special

Chris Bachelder’s novel The Throwback Special had me laughing out loud in the strangest of places. What a gift! Also, this novel is about football – the American kind – a sport and pastime I have no knowledge of or enthusiasm for; and I still loved it. I guess that’s because even more than it’s about football, it’s about people: specifically a group of not-entirely-happy middle-aged men. They interact in some funny ways. I loved this line:

Charles, who counseled adolescent girls with eating disorders, wanted to tell Robert to put that thought in his worry box.

Keep your eyes open…

This quotation comes from an uncorrected advance proof and is subject to change.

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short pieces: Walker, Tolkein, Stegner and more

Posted on January 25, 2016 by pagesofjulia

Ah, the irony: I said just the other day that I was done with Faulkner, and yet here we are. In a continuation of going through those pages that have been piling up, I’ve read a few essays and short stories – including one by Faulkner.

“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner: This may be the format for him & me, because I found him perfectly comprehensible and amusing in this short form. It seamlessly evokes a small Southern town with its prejudices and whisperings and feelings of rectitude; it has atmosphere. It also has an engrossing, entertaining, and fully-formed story in it. And I think this is a mark of the master of the short story: that it can feel complete. Those less adept at it leave us feeling like we missed out on something. Not so here. I won’t say any more about the story itself, except that yes, Faulkner can be enjoyable; and if you’ve balked before, as I have firmly balked, you might consider giving this one a try. If you hate it, it’s only six pages long.

An interview with Terry Tempest Williams from YES! magazine: “Survival Becomes a Spiritual Practice.” I still love Terry Tempest Williams. She is wise, even when she can be kind of gauzy and dreamy, as here. I like that this interview addresses two “places” that “we” are in just now: a state of the world, as well as her own geographical placement, moving back and forth between Vermont (where she teaches part of the year at Dartmouth) and her home in the Utah desert.

“The Sense of Place” by Wallace Stegner: If I ever get my hands on an audio-cassette player, I have a whole collection of “sense of place” essays by Stegner, read aloud by the man himself, and I cannot wait to hear them. Send me a tape player, somebody.

This essay rounds out that inaccessible collection, as I understand it. Stegner describes us as being defined by place as well as defining place. He presents a possibly controversial idea, that

at least to human perception, a pace is not a place until people have been born in it, have grown up in it, lived in it, known it, died in it – have both experienced and shaped it, as individuals, families, neighborhoods, and communities, over more than one generation.

A few lines earlier:

The deep ecologists warn us not to be anthropocentric, but I know no way to look at the world, settled or wild, except through my own human eyes.

I like this honesty, because I acknowledge and respect the caution not to be anthropocentric; but Stegner makes a true point that we can only know the one perspective, really. (I guess I would counter that being less anthropocentric should simply involve acknowledging that there are other perspectives. I think Stegner gets that, though.) He gives equal airtime to those who have, perhaps, grown up nowhere, too.

If the rest of this essay collection continues on this path – of exploring what we mean to our places and vice versa, how we define one another – I need to hurry up and find that tape recorder.

“Leaf by Niggle” by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (because that is how his name is spelled out at this link. Funny, I never knew what J.R.R. stood for, I don’t guess). What an enchanting story! Niggle is a “little man… who had a long journey to make.” He doesn’t want to take his trip, but he knows he has to. He’d rather finishing this painting first: a painting of trees and countryside. He wants it to be perfect. But there are other pulls on his time, and he ends up being forced to go on his journey without perfecting his work. In fact, he’s so rushed he does not even pack a bag. I won’t tell you the rest…

I wondered throughout if this was a big beautiful allegory for art, for the making of art – Tolkien’s own writing, or any of ours. There are some lovely images and moments:

He had a number of pictures on hand; most of them were too large and ambitious for his skill. He was the sort of painter who can paint leaves better than trees.

And,

There was one picture in particular which bothered him. It had begun with a leaf caught in the wind, and it became a tree; and the tree grew, sending out innumerable branches, and thrusting out the most fantastic roots. Strange birds came and settled on the twigs and had to be attended to. Then all round the Tree, and behind it, through the gaps in the leaves and boughs, a country began to open out; and there were glimpses of a forest marching over the land, and of mountains tipped with snow. Niggle lost interest in his other pictures; or else he took them and tacked them on to the edges of his great picture. Soon the canvas became so large that he had to get a ladder…

Can’t you just see Middle Earth developing, demanding that Tolkien attend to it, in the same way?

“My picture!” exclaimed Niggle.

“I dare say it is,” said the Inspector. “But houses come first. That is the law.”

Ah, and there’s the rub.

This story can be said to comment on religion, the value of art, the question of what we owe our neighbors; it indicates some of Orwell’s 1984; there is a great deal in this short story (nine pages). Strange and fanciful and lovely, like all of Tolkien’s work.

“My Father’s Country is the Poor” by Alice Walker, 1977, The New York Times. In a short two and a half pages, Alice Walker paints beautiful, heartbreaking pictures: of her father and her own life, of a visit to Cuba, of the difficulties of race, culture, class, and their inextricability. She tells us “what poverty engenders… what injustice means.” Only Alice Walker, and even in 1977, so much that we should attend to. I don’t want to comment too much on this; better that you go read her words, which are few and flawless.

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book beginnings on Friday: Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Posted on January 22, 2016 by pagesofjulia

fun home

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

I loved Are You My Mother?, and don’t know why it took me so long to pick up Fun Home, her earlier work and sort of a partner to Mother. She is still hilarious, insightful, and smart.

Because this is a graphic memoir, I’ll have to do this beginning a little differently. Here is an image of the whole first page.

fun home start

That reference to Icarus was when I knew (not that I doubted) that we were going in a good direction. I can’t wait to spend some more time with Bechdel and her wacky family and amazing mind.

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The Treacherous Net by Helene Tursten

Posted on January 21, 2016 by pagesofjulia

Detective Inspector Huss works to protect a Swedish city beset by multiple violent crimes.

treacherous net

The Treacherous Net is the eighth book in Helene Tursten’s series starring Detective Inspector Irene Huss, who continues to be challenged by upheaval in her workplace and her personal life.

In the city of Göteborg, Sweden, Huss is frustrated with the new female boss of her Violent Crimes Unit, who uses her sex appeal to manage the men in her department; she has no use for Huss, the only other woman. Huss has lost her longtime partner, now the boss’s deputy, and the unit is short-staffed and overextended by an unusually high crime rate. Gang-related murders are up, a mummified corpse has been found bricked into a chimney during demolition of a burned-out building, and two teenaged girls have been raped and murdered. One was from an affluent family who promptly reported her missing; the other had scarcely been missed. Meanwhile, Huss worries over her supportive but stressed and overworked husband, her aging mother and her young adult daughters, now out on their own. A new addition to her work team will ease some of the load–and present new challenges.

Huss is a tough, committed investigator and a loving family woman, and her shifting alliances present a twist on the standard police drama. Several of the actors involved with the crimes in question are well-developed characters as well. But The Treacherous Net is most accomplished in its plot, with several threads exploring history, long-standing social stigmas and the power of the Internet. This fast-paced, gritty thriller offers both a dark story and a striking hero.

This review originally ran in the January 5, 2016 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

Rating: 6 cups of coffee.

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how long the lines would be

Posted on January 20, 2016 by pagesofjulia

I’ve said it before. I think I started saying it when I worked as a librarian in the leisure-reading library of a hospital, and people would ask me for reading recommendations: when they insisted on hearing what I would read, I would carefully point out that that’s not necessarily relevant to their needs. We can’t all like the same things in life, and it’s a good thing: imagine how long the lines would be.

I think it’s okay, and even beautiful, that we don’t all like the same things or have the same strengths & weaknesses. As my marriage of almost 8 years now continues to grow and flow, I learn more and more how different Husband and I are, in how our minds work, although we share many tastes & values. It makes us a stronger team, which is something I didn’t consciously recognize when we married. That’s a digression, though. I’m talking about what we all enjoy in life. We like different music, different food, different hobbies and different people – and again, good thing, because it wouldn’t work out well if we all wanted to marry the same person or thought Johnny Cash was the *only* artist worth listening to: how boring.

In books, though, there seems to always be a pressure to recognize one novel by a certain author as her classic work, or to agree that Faulkner is high art and Stephen King is pulp. I confess that some part of me still feels this pressure from time to time (although I think I’ve given up on Faulkner). But I’ve been trying for years to learn for myself, and to assert to any audience I may have, that it’s okay that we have different tastes. It really is.

The other day, I reviewed The Tender Bar, a book I loved. Not everyone will love it, though. For one thing, the author is extremely nostalgic and loving of one bar. This should go without saying, but if you are impatient with nostalgia in general, or opposed to bars in particular, this book will not work for you. I read a review online by a reader who doesn’t drink and doesn’t “get” the love of an individual bar: he didn’t like this book. Surprise, surprise. It’s okay! This just wasn’t a good match.

Further, Moehringer indulges in sentiment. If this is a major turn-off for you, no problem; but you should read elsewhere. We don’t all like that tone. And probably many of us like that tone only when it’s a nostalgia we can share – like, if you’ve loved a bar the way Moehringer loves the Publican, you’ll be better able to tolerate and appreciate his sentimental remembrances than if you have not. This doesn’t mean that I’m wrong, or that that other reader is. There’s room for both of us.

A writer I greatly respect recently expressed surprise that I love Rick Bragg as much as I do. He wrote to me:

I’ve always thought Rick Bragg was a bit of a blowhard. Maybe I’m too northern, or too judgmental when it comes to style. Maybe I just like a cleaner line.

When I read those lines, I immediately felt that I knew exactly what he meant; and I understand his criticisms. I think we are observing more or less the same things, although of course I didn’t describe my observations the way my friend did: I had a different personal reaction to the same writer. Because my friend and I are two different people. And isn’t that as it should be?

When I write book reviews solely for this blog, I am speaking with my personal voice, as Julia, about my personal reactions. When I write for ForeWord, or Shelf Awareness, or other employers, I am supposed to remove the personal: I’m supposed to behave like I did when I was a librarian performing readers’ advisory services. I try to show what the book is about and what strengths it has to offer and, in other words (sometimes explicitly, sometimes not), what kind of reader might enjoy it or be turned off. This is why I (rarely) add an addendum to the published review when I repost it here on my blog. This is also why you might see me rate a book lower than the review seemed to imply. That is to say, this is a good book – for a different reader than I.

As the number of books I read and review continues to grow, I continue to feel lucky to get to do this work. I love learning, I love meeting new people and concepts between the pages, and I love the intellectual as well as the emotional play between the book and myself. And I guess I just wanted at this point to stop and say: we won’t all love the same things, and that’s a beautiful fact. Take my ratings with a grain of salt. Ideally even, learn my tastes so you can recognize where we will and won’t agree. Don’t be afraid to like different things than the next person. I know a lot of people can’t stomach Hemingway, and that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends! Anyway, the lines are shorter this way.

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poetry: Dickinson, Frost, Coleridge and more

Posted on January 19, 2016 by pagesofjulia

The papers have been piling up on my desk. Once upon a time, while working as a librarian, I had a volunteer who helped me out one full day per week, who was herself a retired librarian. I was at the start of my career. She said once that you can always tell a busy and productive librarian by all the piles on her desk. (My mother points out that this is not necessarily a sign of productivity, but I like Anne’s thought better.) Well, I have piles. Hopefully this wisdom applies to writers, too.

I often pick up tips or follow links to short pieces of writing. For whatever reason, I am much more eager to pick up a whole book than I am to read an essay or short article; must be a mental block. When I come across short things that need reading, I often print them out and stack them up. After carrying this stack of papers cross-country on at least two trips now, I have finally gotten around to some reading. Today’s theme is poetry. And you may know that I am a perfect amateur when it comes to reading poetry, so these are the layperson’s interpretations.

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (text of 1834), by Samuel Taylor Coleridge: this was by far the longest poem of the stack, but it was a pure pleasure. I can remember my mother reciting the lines, “water water everywhere, and all the boards did shrink… nor any drop to drink” from way back, but I’d never read the whole thing. I love the rhythm, the rhyme, and the sound: I found myself mouthing the words, repeating lines and stanzas, tapping out the beat; the pure language and music of it is astounding art. I enjoyed some of the usages that are no longer modern, and have some questions for Mom (who is, among other things, a linguist) about historic pronunciation. Beyond all of these features, there is a story, that I found charming as well – particularly the concept, that this man must tell his story, that it is something like a bodily need. Naturally, for those of us that love stories, that is appealing. As I often feel when I encounter poetry, I wish I had an expert to help me delve into its depths; but I found The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to be more accessible than most. It has musicality and storytelling, and was easy to follow. Clear win all around. I can’t wait to read it aloud. Will Husband tolerate it?

Next, two Robert Frost poems: “The Oven Bird” and “Mending Wall.” I am sure I pulled these two titles from something I read recently, but I didn’t make note of the reference; why?? I’m afraid Frost lost me. For one thing, I kept looking for rhythm and rhyme, which Coleridge did so beautifully, and what I found here was no rhyme, and any rhythm was scarcely or not at all discernable to my untrained mind. The subjects were a little obscure to me as well. Ah me. I need the seminar course.

And then a batch of poems I pulled from someplace, some months ago, with the bizarre idea that I wanted to try memorizing poetry. (This may go nowhere.) They are therefore, mostly, short. I’m afraid I have lost my original source for the list. Nevertheless, here they are.

“Risk,” by Anaïs Nin: eight lines, clever, thoughtful and wise, unrhyming but perfectly clear to me: lovely.

“Nothing Gold Can Stay,” by Robert Frost: nice, short, clear Frost for a change. Like many in my generation, perhaps, I first met this poem in S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. (I haven’t seen the movie; does Ponyboy recite the poem like in the book?) I seem to still have it memorized from that childhood reading. It made an impression; and it rhymes. Maybe I’m simpleminded, but it’s easier when it rhymes. I like that it involves nature as well as a plainly stated concept about Life.

“The Fish,” by Elizabeth Bishop: I read this aloud to Husband and he nitpicked the details of the story, because he is a fisherman and perfectly literal-minded. I find it a lovely piece of description and imagery, but I share his concern that she let the fish go without removing those other nasty hooks. No rhyme, but I found it a perfectly readable, comprehensible piece of carefully composed writing.

“Kubla Khan,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge: I recognized the language, the lilt and sound immediately, and felt glad. The story here is less clear to me, but I like the sounds. This is where I definitely need an expert to walk me through.

“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” by Dylan Thomas: unlike Coleridge, whose beat varies throughout, this one has a single, strident, regular rhythm. It is a strong poem, and with strong subject matter. I again wanted illumination of the finer points, but have no trouble understanding on some level what he is getting at, and the tone and pace of it is powerfully captivating. I would certainly be glad to have this one handy in my head to recite at will.

“Hope,” by Emily Dickinson: it’s been a long time since I’ve read Dickinson (high school English with Mrs. Smith; I still own a big fat volume of it), but I suspect not all of her words are so clear as these, and I feel sure not all are this hopeful. I love love love the image, and every line of this short, charming poem is as good as every other.

“Richard Cory,” by Edward Arlington Robinson: am I the only one who thought of the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby? Sort of as a counterpoint. Powerful images, a strong and regular beat (although not so drumlike and insistent as Thomas), and a clear and striking finish. Not my favorite here – perhaps because its ending is so disturbing, as it is meant to be – but very good.

“No Man is an Island,” by John Donne: I have always been captivated by this poem, because its concept is so big and calls for contemplation. There is the added attraction of its famous penultimate line, which as we know as been recycled as the title of one of the finest novels I know. Free verse again, but somehow still with a rhythm, a compelling set of sounds that propel it to its finish.

“The Road Not Taken,” by Robert Frost: I am aware of some question as to Frost’s point in this one, and again wish I had a friend to discuss. Pleasant images, certainly, that I would sit comfortably with for an afternoon. Clearer than those Frosts, above. But somehow not my favorite.

This has been an enjoyable and thought-provoking exercise; I should do it more often. As to memorization, my busy schedule says HA!, but I would love to learn a few of these by heart: “No Man Is an Island”; “Hope”; “Do Not Go Gentle”; “Risk.” And for that matter, I would love to be able to recite “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by heart – but it is fifteen and a half pages long; I may as well aspire to learn the Odyssey (which would be great). I would happily settle for paraphrasing, and a few individual lines here and there. My brain is filling: for years and years I knew the title, author and synopsis of every book I’d ever heard. And then in the last two years or so, I stopped being able to add new ones, except for the very most outstanding of the books I continued to discover; and the less impressive of those from years back began to fade away. Ah, me. Rage, rage against the dying of the light…

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The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer

Posted on January 18, 2016 by pagesofjulia

tender barI loved this one.

The Tender Bar is a memoir of one man’s life in a bar. JR was a little boy surrounded by women and girls: he lived with his mother, grandmother, aunt and four girl cousins (and a grandfather, uncle and a boy cousin, but still). He felt drawn to men: in his hindsight telling, he felt the lack of a father, and sought male attentions and teachings, and a model for becoming a man. He found this in his uncle, but even more so, in the hallowed space just 142 steps away, where his uncle tended bar.

This is both a bildungsroman and the story of a bar. By some extension, it is thirdly the story of a place: Manhasset, Long Island, a town historically fixated on drinking and comfortable, sociable places to do it in. We see JR’s childhood – deeply chaotic and troubled in his home life, but bolstered by a beloved and mostly stable (if chaotic in their own way) group of men from the bar. We see him grow up, learn about himself and the world, and experiment with concepts of what he owes to his world and what he’ll do with himself. There is always the bar, at the center of these concepts. Eventually, JR becomes an adult, and the bar ages alongside him. Losses come with age, culminating in the losses of September 11, 2001, which were widespread for a town that commuted into the City and into the World Trade Centers.

I loved many things about this book. I loved the format, which begins with some (presumably research-based) backstory about Manhasset, and with some musings on bars and life. (See my book beginning.) I loved Moehringer’s tone: of immense and frequent humor, often self-deprecating, but also of sober reckoning. He made me laugh out loud until I had to put the book down and hold my belly. I liked the perspective he took, the places where his adult’s wisdom did and did not inform his telling of the child’s experience. I felt drawn to the family, the bar community, and JR’s difficulties with differences in class (when he goes off, of all places, to Yale) and geography (moving at one point to Arizona, where his accent stands out). Despite being totally foreign to me, the Manhasset setting made sense, came alive in this telling. (And not for the first time: Manhasset is the model for the setting of The Great Gatsby.) And of course as much as anything I loved this bar: I loved his love for the bar, and sympathized with it, and I loved the place itself. I recognize and feel affection for a place with playfully rude, unhurried service, a divey atmosphere but with professional cocktail construction. It is a literary place, named Dickens in Moehring’s youth and later changed to Publicans but keeping its nod to culture, song and theatre, and especially words. JR tried for years to write about the place while in the place – the concept that the reader knows would eventually become The Tender Bar.

In this place he meets men (and some women) from all walks of life, professors and police officers and bookies and poets and more. He compares the bar to the Iliad (sure to either win my heart or offend me; here, the former):

In fact the bar and the poem complemented each other, like companion pieces. Each smacked of ageless verities about men.

And he goes on to identify the Ajax, the Hector, the Achilles he finds in Publicans.

I’m sure I give the impression that this is a book seeped in testosterone, and that’s not untrue, but it’s more nuanced than that. For years, JR looked for men to teach him what it meant to be a man. It was something of an obsession for this mostly-fatherless boy (although one wonders how much of that is inserted in hindsight). There are women in the story, too, of course: a girl cousin, a girlfriend, female friends, but centrally his mother, from whom he learns a lot. In the end, he acknowledges that she did a better job of many of the virtues he looked to men for, than did the men he found.

He offers nuggets about writing. As attributed to a priest he meets in the bar car of the train from the City back to Manhasset:

Do you know why God invented writers? Because He loves a good story. And He doesn’t give a damn about words. Words are the curtain we’ve hung between Him and our true selves. Try not to think about the words. Don’t strain for the perfect sentence. There’s no such thing. Writing is guesswork. Every sentence is an educated guess, the reader’s as much as yours. Think about that the next time you curl a piece of paper into your typewriter.

I could spend all day on this quotation alone, some of which I’d take issue with – I think words are very important, and I think the perfect sentence is to be sought – but there’s a lot to ponder and a lot of wisdom there.

I feel like I’ve gotten to know JR Moehringer by reading his story, and I like him. I acknowledge his flaws but would be his friend. That’s a fine outcome for a memoir, I think. This was an excellent book, in its stories, its characters, its format, the details of its writing, and its emotional tone. It’s a little like The Liars’ Club in its best parts: funny, self-deprecating, sad, beautiful, brave, honorable, ironic. I raise my glass.

Rating: 9 pet mice.

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book beginnings on Friday: The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer

Posted on January 15, 2016 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

It felt like a great and happy luxury to take time out of my professional reading to read this book just for me. (Actually it is referenced as a standard by a book I was hired to read, and you will see that one come up later. But I already had this one on my desk. So it counts.) I was struck immediately by the opening lines: how perfect.

tender bar

We went there for everything we needed. We went there when we were thirsty, of course, and when hungry, and when dead tired. We went there when happy, to celebrate, and when sad, to sulk. We went there after weddings and funerals, for something to settle our nerves, and always for a shot of courage just before. We went there when we didn’t know what we needed, hoping someone might tell us. We went there when looking for love, or sex, or trouble, or for someone who had gone missing, because sooner or later everyone turned up there. Most of all we went there when we needed to be found.

There is, of course, a certain special bar that I think of, where I have gone when happy and when sad. Miss y’all.

Just a few paragraphs later, another piece of profundity:

While I fear that we’re drawn to what abandons us, and to what seems most likely to abandon us, in the end I believe we’re defined by what embraces us.

I think this will be a good one, friends.

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