Torn between the feminine comfort of his mother and the masculine camaraderie he finds in a series of bars and taverns, Moehringer details his difficult but loving upbringing.
A classic American story of self-invention and escape, of the fierce love between a single mother and an only son, it\'s also a moving portrait of one boy\'s struggle to become a man, and an unforgettable depiction of how men remain, at heart, lost boys..
In the grand tradition of landmark memoirs, The Tender Bar is suspenseful, wrenching, and achingly funny.
Time and again the bar offered shelter from failure, rejection, heartbreak--and eventually from reality. to leave home, the bar became an increasingly seductive sanctuary, a place to return and regroup during his picaresque journeys.
But when it was time for J.
R. tried to forge a self somewhere in the center.
Torn between the stirring example of his mother and the lurid romance of the bar, J.
R.
They taught J.
R., tended him, and provided a kind of fathering-by-committee. to the beach, to ballgames, and ultimately into their circle.
The alphas along the bar--including J.
R.\'s Uncle Charlie, a Humphrey Bogart look-alike
Colt, a Yogi Bear sound-alike; and Joey D, a softhearted brawler--took J.
R. turned in desperation to the bar on the corner, where he found a rousing chorus of new voices.
At eight years old, suddenly unable to find The Voice on the radio, J.
R.
Though J.
R.\'s mother was his world, his rock, he craved something more, something faintly and hauntingly audible only in The Voice. would strain to hear in that plummy baritone the secrets of masculinity and identity.
Sitting on the stoop, pressing an ear to the radio, J.
R. spoke his first word.
It was the voice of his father, a New York City disc jockey who vanished before J.
R.
Moehringer grew up captivated by a voice.
J.
R.
In the tradition of This Boy\'s Life and The Liar\'s Club , a raucous, poignant, luminously written Memoir about a boy striving to become a man, and his romance with a bar.
The New York Times bestseller and one of the 100 Most Notable Books of 2005.
Torn between the feminine comfort of his mother and the masculine camaraderie he finds in a series of bars and taverns, Moehringer details his difficult but loving upbringing
