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Closing Time: A Memoir
Joe Queenan
Viking Adult
April 2009
On Sale: April 16, 2009
352 pages
ISBN: 067002063X
EAN: 9780670020638
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
A deeply funny and affecting memoir about a great escape
from a childhood of poverty Joe Queenan’s acerbic riffs on movies, sports, books,
politics, and many of the least forgivable phenomena of pop
culture have made him one of the most popular humorists and
commentators of our time. In Closing Time Queenan turns his
sights on a more serious and personal topic: his childhood
in a Philadelphia housing project in the early 1960s. By
turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Closing Time recounts
Queenan’s Irish Catholic upbringing in a family dominated
by his erratic father, a violent yet oddly charming
emotional terrorist whose alcoholism fuels a limitless
torrent of self-pity, railing, destruction, and late-night
chats with the Lord Himself. With the help of a series of
mentors and surrogate fathers, and armed with his own
furious love of books and music, Joe begins the long flight
away from the dismal confines of his neighborhood—with a
brief misbegotten stop at a seminary—and into the wider
world. Queenan’s unforgettable account of the damage done
to children by parents without futures and of the grace
children find to move beyond these experiences will appeal
to fans of Augusten Burroughs and Mary Karr, and will take
its place as an autobiography in the classic American
tradition.
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