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3.9 AVERAGE
3.9 AVERAGE
What a coming-of-age story. I fell in love with the cast of regulars at Publicans - their intelligence, warmth, humor, their ways with words. I also enjoyed the touching relationship between JR and his mom. A great memoir, full of life.
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
I struggle with this book a little bit because I really liked the story, but I couldn't help feeling like the book could have been a million times better if a more skilled writer had been at the helm. There were quite a few lines that made me cringe, and sometimes it felt like I was reading one of those high school essays where the student's only strategy is to use a ton of adjectives and a bunch of terrible metaphors. Sometimes I was downright confused because a metaphor was so bad, it ended up having the opposite meaning of what the author intended.
But, like I said, the story was there, and I'm always glad for the existence of a memoir when someone has led an interesting life.
The epilogue was probably my favorite part. It was like a sudden dose of reality to counteract the main story, which was pieced together from the memories of a dozen different people, and sometimes had a dream-like quality.
I loved the quote he used for "Part I": Slumbering in every human being lies an infinity of possibilities, which one must not arouse in vain. For it is terrible when the whole man resonates with echoes and echoes, none becoming a real voice. -- Elias Canetti, Notes from Hampstead
But it's definitely a bad sign when the only thing I've marked with a little post-it tabbie for the first 300 pages is a quote from someone else.
Some lines of his I did like:
pg 280: Above all I suffered from a naive view that writing should be easy. I thought words were supposed to come unbidden. The idea that errors were stepping stones to truth never once occurred to me, because I'd absorbed the ethos of the Times, that errors were nasty little things to be avoided, and misapplied that ethos to the novel I was attempting. When I wrote something wrong I always took it to mean that something was wrong with me, and when something was wrong with me I lost my nerve, my focus, and my will.
pg 338: And yet I also heard someone complain that the liquor wasn't working. In such a sea of sadness, it seemed, all the free whiskey in the world was but a drop. [Still a tiny bit cringe-worthy, now that I type it here!]
pg 370: Finally, my mother. [...] It has been my great fortune in writing this book, as in entering this world, to have had her as my primary source. [Again, a little cheesy, but god damn this guy loves his mother.]
But, like I said, the story was there, and I'm always glad for the existence of a memoir when someone has led an interesting life.
The epilogue was probably my favorite part. It was like a sudden dose of reality to counteract the main story, which was pieced together from the memories of a dozen different people, and sometimes had a dream-like quality.
I loved the quote he used for "Part I": Slumbering in every human being lies an infinity of possibilities, which one must not arouse in vain. For it is terrible when the whole man resonates with echoes and echoes, none becoming a real voice. -- Elias Canetti, Notes from Hampstead
But it's definitely a bad sign when the only thing I've marked with a little post-it tabbie for the first 300 pages is a quote from someone else.
Some lines of his I did like:
pg 280: Above all I suffered from a naive view that writing should be easy. I thought words were supposed to come unbidden. The idea that errors were stepping stones to truth never once occurred to me, because I'd absorbed the ethos of the Times, that errors were nasty little things to be avoided, and misapplied that ethos to the novel I was attempting. When I wrote something wrong I always took it to mean that something was wrong with me, and when something was wrong with me I lost my nerve, my focus, and my will.
pg 338: And yet I also heard someone complain that the liquor wasn't working. In such a sea of sadness, it seemed, all the free whiskey in the world was but a drop. [Still a tiny bit cringe-worthy, now that I type it here!]
pg 370: Finally, my mother. [...] It has been my great fortune in writing this book, as in entering this world, to have had her as my primary source. [Again, a little cheesy, but god damn this guy loves his mother.]
Todo el mundo tiene un lugar sagrado, un refugio, donde su corazón es más puro, su mente más clara, donde se siente más cerca de Dios, o del amor, o de la verdad, o de lo que sea que venere.
This is easily one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read, if not the best. Beautifully written and expertly crafted, I laughed and I cried. Everyone should read this deeply moving book.
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
I love a good memoir and I ended up flying through this one. Like the "publicans," Moehringer is a good storyteller and I was entertained. I resist the urge to rate it any higher because it is just storytelling. The love affair with Publicans and the men in it turns so abruptly that the meat of the story feels lacking. If this is supposed to be a coming-of-age memoir, Moehringer came of age by lightning strike because his story went from alcoholic roustabout to ambitious teetotaling newspaperman in the blink of an eye.
Autobio of a guy growing up poor in Manhasset, in the shadow of a famous bar. The first part of this book is terrific — beautifully written, evocative, touching, funny. Lots of interesting tidbits about Long Island too. Once JR, the protagonist, gets old enough to actually frequent the bar himself it became less interesting. Certainly the characters inhabiting the bar are fun and well-depicted, but none of them are as interesting as that of JR's mother, who is — sadly — largely absent from the second half of the book. In the end, it all felt a little shallow, as a seemingly-profound drunken conversation tends to be.