Closing Time
A Memoir

This may be the first book I've put down in a good long time. If you haven't read this book, you may consider these points: Joe Queenan isn't really all that funny in this book. He takes pains to put in what he thinks are hilarious descriptions which tend to be overwritten, overwrought, and aimed pri......more

This could be the topic sentence for the first quarter of this book: When your father is an unemployed alcoholic and your mother has four children she can’t feed and may not even love, and there is no car and no TV and no telephone and no prospects, finding out that a stranger has donated a can of ar......more

Not unlike Queenan, I read my way into the middle class. I am familiar with a lot of the prejudices and knee-jerk attitudes he describes. I was much, much luckier than he, inasmuch as both my parents loved me and did their level best for me. Like him, I adore the English language in all its fearsome......more

Joe Queenan's rise from poverty to successful writer makes for one of the best memoirs I've ever read. Queenan's father, an abusive alcoholic and dreamer, cast a considerable shadow over him. But Queenan was determined not to be like his old man or repeat his mistakes. Thanks to his own yearnings to......more

One of the best memoirs I've ever read. Probably because I can identify with Queenan's childhood and escape from the working class. There are mentors along the way, most of them eccentrics that jump right off the page - and they make for hysterical reading. Ultimately though, books are what got him......more