J. R. MoehringerReviews

(blank)

I was actually assigned this book in high school for summer reading. It was the right book for that stage of my life. My copy is annotated to hell, and I look back and see a lot of personal notes. I’ll admit it’s been a decade since I read it, but at the time I had been really infatuated with it.

Far too many of the reviews for this book here on LT criticize the book and the author for 'whining' about his childhood. I can only deduce these readers had their humanity removed in some kind of surgical procedure meant to bolster their own perception of themselves. Honestly, the reveiwers/readers all must come from perfectly well-adjusted families and are themselves superior to everyone else in every way. Far from whining, Moehringer regularly castigates himself for his faults, even though they are largely not of his own making. He came from an altogether dysfunctional family and struggled for everything, particularly a grounded sense of himself. The characters are so credible and unique that they would never be believed in a fictional account. It's the kind of book that is wildly popular these days, only from a female perspective. Don't get me wrong, there are far too few female authors and female narratives because of the gender gaps in publishing. But, I'd argue, there are also too few honest male voices writing sincerely about male identity and struggles - Moehringer fills this void with class. For those who reviewed this book negatively, I'd say, "Get over yourselves." For everyone else, "Read this book."

The book was recently adapted to film, and the producers, which included Moehringer, did a nice job of capturing the tone of the narrative - boy basically grows up in a bar, raised by ne'er-do-well barflies - but the book is much more evocative, lighter on the Hollywood moments and heavier on the heart-felt emotion.

Highly Recommended!
5 bones!!!!!

I have two confessions... I didn't know this was a memoir until I started reading it. Actually (not the second confession yet), I didn't know a memoir is quite close to a biography. And I don't read biographies. I read long time ago Bob Marley's biography and just hated it. Will this change? probably not, but this was an amazing read.
The second confession? It made me think about myself as a father, a lot. This book is able to get to your guts. And it's just so beautifully written. Absolutely worth it.

I read about this book in a menu.
No kidding.
There's a great sushi joint in town called Miya's that has a menu with facetious descriptions of food, stories on how dishes and drinks came to be, and even footnotes and an epilogue. Most fun menu I know- even better than the color-you-own ones.
And in this menu. _The Tender Bar_ was mentioned as "a short story" where the son of a single mother grows up in a bar using the men around him as the father figure (collectively) he doesn't have. This intrigued me and I saw the possibilty of a puppet piece coming from it, and so I marched my butt to Strand's the next time I was in the City and looked for a short story collection containing _The Tender Bar_.
Low, and behold, it was a 368-page hardback memoir, but it was on the sale table and I was on a mission, so it went home with me.
The book is not what I expected, not what I wanted, and so I hated it. But I could never really get up the steam I needed to really let that hatred set in because I was turning pages rapidly (for me, at least), chuckling and weeping (shh- don't tell).
Moeringer has such a clear remembrance of so many events, such clarity on what he felt and how to say it, even as a very young child, that I often wondered if I was reading the next LeRoy. But I didn't care too much, because I wanted to believe it and, ultimately, it didn't affect me one way or another if it was completely true, mostly true, or inspired by truth.
The book has unlovable, unlikeable characters who Moehringer manager to have me empathizing with even though their behavior is despicable. Fromt he outside, I saw that if this one character, Grandpa, had been different, that everything else, all the horrid things that happened and the terrible way people treated each other and their self-destructive behaviors could have been different, and probably better in some cases. ANd yet, I found myself saying, "Poor Fella" as I saw little acts of humanity in him.
It is not a nice, neat book.
It's a heartbreaker that goes on and on with little mendings and perpetual chipping away at J.R.'s heart- and mine. And then, it's about what happens after your heart breaks wide open and you're still alive.
The book is not always well-paced, and drags significantly in parts. I can't tell if that is the author trying to convey how his life was also dragging interminably at that time, or poor editing. And if you can stomach the heartache, it's surely a quick-ish read: no dense concepts, no giant vocab.
And despite the realtvely short time I spent reading it (under a week?), I sometimes find myself thinking about "that guy I knew, the one who hung out at the bar a lot and kept that kid out of trouble"-- and then I realize I am thinking about his very, very real portrayal of (presumably) real people he loves very much, and I kind of do, too.

my favorite book of 2006

The Oprah Magazine (which I've never read) says "Will steal your heart." It was right. I was thoroughly engrossed by both the story, and by the character of Willie Sutton.

Mr. Moehringer has written Willie as a sympathetic character -- someone who tried to be good but circumstances kept getting in his way. Someone who loved to read and educate himself. Someone devoted for life to his one, true love. A folk hero who robbed the evil banks and never hurt a regular person. Maybe not an accurate portrayal (Willie Sutton was a real person), but it worked in the novel.

The late scene with Kate broke my heart. The final chapter where Reporter is looking back over things was anti-climatic in comparison, but it brought closure for Reporter, and showed how Willie's infamy had come to an end.

So well written. It grabbed me from the beginning. Life in the 1920s and 30s in New York was so well described, as were the prison conditions Willie endured. A truly great read!

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.

One of the best memoirs I've ever read. Beautifully rendered.

A memoir of a young man whose mother struggled to raise him alone after leaving his abusive father. In place of the man he never really knew, JR (it doesn't STAND FOR ANYTHING!) latched on to his Uncle Charlie and a motley assortment of bartenders and patrons at "The Bar", the neighborhood watering hole in his hometown of Manhasset on Long Island. Throughout his teenage years, these men took him under their collective and individual wings, took him to the beach, discussed books with him, gave him advice (of varying degrees of usefulness), encouraged him to dream of and eventually apply to Yale and made him feel he had a home beyond the bedlam of his grandparents' house, where he and his mother most often lived. Later, they supported him through failed love affairs, demoralizing attempts at novel-writing and dead-end jobs, taught him by example (mostly how to drink and survive hangovers), and gave him unconditional love. The story could be depressing as all get-out, but it's not. There is so much humor and tenderness in it--and after all, here is this supremely well-written memoir you're reading, as proof that it all turned out OK in the end.½

I'd say it's between a 3.5 and a 4 on the star scale, but we round up in my family.

Some of the writing didn't feel very tight, and some of the situations didn't seem very believable. These were a small enough part of the whole that reading this book was still very enjoyable. The epilogue had me in tears.

Un libro trasparente: scrittura scorrevole, ambientazione anonima, personaggi dimenticabili. A parte qualche guizzo (la visita del nonno a scuola, gli incontri con Sidney, qualche momento a Yale) non scatta mai l'empatia col protagonista, tutto scorre via senza che si percepisca il bisogno di aggrapparsi a qualche evento memorabile.

Il bar stesso con tutta la sua ciurma di (semi)alcolizzati non restituisce neppure un quarto dell'afflato poetico promesso nell'introduzione.

Boh.

---
Precedente: [b:I romanzi cortesi|43920233|I romanzi cortesi|Chrétien de Troyes|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1549879924l/43920233._SY75_.jpg|438235]
Successivo: [b:Il migliore|50212567|Il migliore|Bernard Malamud|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1577800448l/50212567._SX50_.jpg|1433491]

Well written memoir, although a bit too boozy for my tastes.

J.R. Moehringer grew up in Manhasset, New York, estranged from his father and living with his mother in his grandparents' ramshackle home filled with cousins, aunts, and uncles. Though it was a somewhat chaotic upbringing, he was a mostly happy child, though he would sit by the radio on a regular basis just to get a chance to hear his father's voice as a New York City radio DJ. Without a true father figure, he spent his younger years hanging out in or near the bar near his home where his uncle worked. Here, he met an eclectic group of men who eventually welcomed him into their circle and taught him about life. As J.R. eventually entered college, struggled to find his career, and fell in and out of love, he continued his relationship with these men and kept coming back to the bar which was like a second home to him.

I remember putting this book on my wishlist shortly after it had been published, and it saddens me that it took me so long to get around to reading it. I actually listened to an abridged version on audio, despite at one time having a hardcover version, which I've since given away. It's a shame, because after reading the abridgment, I wish I still had the original hardcover so that I could go back and re-read this. All that is to say that I was quite pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this memoir. Despite Moehringer being a Pulitzer Prize winner, a journalist, and co-author of Andre Agassi's memoir, I knew none of that and virtually nothing about him prior to picking this up to read. But like I said, I'd added it to my wishlist a long time ago, apparently because I'd seen some hype or good reviews. This is basically a coming-of-age memoir, and I generally enjoy novels of that genre. There is just something about Moehringer's writing voice (although he also has a pleasant actual voice on audio as well) that spoke to me -- a combination of nostalgia, honesty, humor, and feel-good that was very appealing. The brief smooth jazz interludes between sections was a nice touch as well on the audiobook. I was honestly sad to reach the end and as stated above, I now regret that I read an abridged copy because I was left wanting more. I just recently read that Prince Harry has chosen Moehringer to co-write his autobiography, supposedly due to be published later this year, so I'm definitely going to have to get my hands on that.½

I really enjoyed this book because I wanted to relate/see myself in the character. It's about a kid who becomes a man and tells about his experiences growing up in a bar. Really great write, super smart guy who went to Yale. You definitely learn a lot reading it. So much character development. It kept my attention because of how it was written and how I was looking for similarities to me/my life.½

Publicans, the bar where the author found his mojo, has just been rechristened in Manhasset. I guess it's pretty telling that I liked a 5 star and a 1 star review, because both made valid points about the book. On the positive side, Moehringer writes well (for a Yalie anyway), but his life is a mess, with a deadbeat, absentee father, and a mother barely able to keep them afloat, shuttling between living with her parents or trying to make it in their own place. The other highlight is the zany characters at home (Uncle Charlie, his cousin), the bar, and his college girlfriend, Sidney. In fairness, it all gets tiring, repetitive and predictable.

Memoir written by an LA Times reporter, who tells of his childhood and young adulthood in Manhasset, Long Island, centering on his attachment to a bar there and the men who work and drink there. JR grows up fatherless, living mostly in the home of his maternal grandparents home, which he and his mother regularly move out of in a bid for independence before slinking back in because his mother can't make enough money to survive on her own. His father has abandoned him, and his grandfather is miserable, so he turns to the bar for his male role models. The book brings us through his childhood, through Yale, and then his early adult years working as a copy boy for the New York Times.
As the memoir unfolds, we are left questioning whether the bar is a sanctuary that allows him to center himself or a drag on his ambition, allowing him to hide from the world.
As with most memoirs, the author is battling demons, and Moehringer is certainly hard on himself. I find myself, however, not liking him very much. I know it's a memoir, but he's so self-absorbed!
So I didn't like it very much½

Good for JR to write this book to share his love for His hometown family reminding us that we are all awkward children seeking to be understood. I most liked the way he honored his Mother in her imperfect ways and his realization that she had a special wisdom.

Fictionalized biography of sorts of an early 1900s NYC bank robber/folk hero. Some beautiful stuff but nothing life-changing.

A very enthralling & sympathetic tale. I can easily sympathize with Willie, trying so hard to live a good life but being stymied time after time by economic events out of his control.
By the time we get to the last chapter, I start to think that Moehringer is speaking about himself, an perception that I didn't get earlier in the story, where the Reporter is not necessarily mentioned sympathetically.½

Book on CD narrated by Dylan Baker


Book on CD narrated by Dylan Baker

Everyone knows the Willie Sutton quote; asked why he robbed banks, Sutton purportedly said, “That’s where the money was.” Of course, this was later questioned, but it has remained part of the Sutton lore. In this historical fiction novel, Moehringer tries to explain why Willie robbed all those banks. In a brief author’s note Moehringer relates that after spending half his life in prison, Sutton was released from Attica on Christmas Eve 1969. He spent the entire day with a reporter and a photographer, retracing the steps of his personal history through the boroughs of New York City. The resulting article, however, was curiously sparse in detail. Moehringer writes: “Sadly, Sutton and the reporter and the photographer are all gone, so what happened among them that Christmas, and what happened to Sutton during the preceding sixty-eight years, is anyone’s guess. This book is my guess. But it’s also my wish.”

I wanted to like this. I remember the hoopla when Sutton was released in 1969, and I’ve always been fascinated by true crime works. I knew this was a novel, however, I expected something along the lines of other novels I’ve read that are “fictionalized biographies.”

The trouble I had here was Moehringer’s chosen device: following Sutton, the reporter and the photographer throughout Christmas day 1969, and then having Sutton recall one event after another from his past. It just didn’t work for me. I would be involved in the past and then yanked to the back seat of the car while Willie’s scarfing down donuts provided by the photographer. I also didn’t like the author’s choice to call his characters not by name, but by their roles in Sutton’s life: Photographer, Reporter, Left Cop, Right Cop, etc. It annoyed me.

On the plus side, I really liked the sections where we were living in Sutton’s past. Moehringer brought the 1920s and 1930s to life in his descriptions and scenes on the streets of Brooklyn, or in the prison cells in which Sutton was held. The text version of the book also includes a map of the route taken by Sutton and the reporter on Christmas Day; I found that helpful at times.

Dylan Baker does a credible job of narrating the audiobook. It’s difficult to follow at times because of the constant moving back and forth in time. The text version uses different fonts to give the reader a clue, but the person listening to the audio version doesn’t get any such clue. That’s not the narrator’s fault, it’s the author’s.

On Christmas, 1969, America’s most beloved bank robber, Willie Sutton, is released by Nelson Rockefeller. He taken in tow by two journalists, Reporter and Photographer, who want an exclusive. He wants them to drive him around Brooklyn and Manhattan to the most important places in his life. Each stop triggers memories in Sutton, and he regales his handlers with stories of his bloodless robberies, his daring escapes, and, above all, his one true love, Bess. Reporter, however, is under orders from his editor to get Sutton’s reaction to the horror that capped his career: the murder of Arnold Schuster, the naïve youth whose recognition of Sutton led to his final arrest. At this point, Sutton breaks down in a way that leads the reader to suspect that he has been deceiving the journalists and himself.
Dylan Baker, the reader, is an actor I’ve seen often on television, most recently in the fourth season of “The Americans.” He gives a performance as much as a reading here. He establishes a slightly New Yorkish accent for the basic narration, then gives Sutton a tired rasp of an old man; Reporter, a youthful, anxious, begging tone; Photographer, an obnoxious, very New Yawt know-it-all whine. He gives also gives the best vocalizations of women that I’ve heard. He does overdo it at time, but he succeeds in the important task of making the rich heart of the story come to life.

Well read by the narrator! It certainly added dimensions to the book.

I enjoyed it -- it's always good to like the protagonist, and I did find myself rooting for the "bad guy" even though you know how it ends (because of how it begins). All Willy's ups and downs, his tenacity, it's admirable even while it's incredible.

Comments on the conclusion:
The scene at the end with Bess's granddaughter -- that was good. It reframes your perspective and makes you question everything you "believed" from the story. That makes for a good conclusion. Was the epilogue-esque part with Reporter, 11 years later, necessary? I didn't think it was, except that you learn a bit about Willy after the interview. Nothing new, however, that really added to the story (aside from the conflicting memoirs and missing novel). The way Reporter reflects on the encounters with Willy since the interview paints a totally different picture of their relationship than I took from the main narrative. It felt untrue to the story, though perhaps it is part of the non-fiction component?

Either way, the profound observations and statements Sutton makes on life are worthwhile, even if you question his sanity. That just adds another layer to the puzzle of life.

I finished this book several days ago and I find my thoughts returning to it. I try to imagine myself growing up in Sutton's neighborhood in the early years of 1900 and facing the poverty, despair and futility of everyday existence. Up one day, flat out the next with no prospects. We have all heard the stories of the signs "Irish need not apply."

Several other readers mentioned the sub-treatise on the banking industry and there is no doubt that he parallels the industry then and now. I am not sure it was necessary. The banks existed and Willie Sutton chose to rob them because that is where the money was.

The truly interesting aspect of this book for me was the insight into the personality of Willie Sutton and I enjoyed all the literary devices Moehringer used to bring Sutton to life. Sutton is depicted as a man who knew love and whether it was love found, lost or imagined it was all believable. The brutality he endured - all believable. The book was worth every minute devoted to it.

A fictional rendering of the life of notorious bank-robber and jail-breaker Willie Sutton, who supposedly answered a reporter's question about why he robbed banks with the classic line "Because that's where the money is". Sutton, later in life, said that he probably would have said that if anyone asked him that question, because it's pretty obvious, but that the story wasn't true..."The credit belongs to some enterprising reporter who apparently felt a need to fill out his copy..." [Sutton] is based on an enterprising reporter's attempt to get Willie's story on Christmas Day, 1969, after Willie had been released from prison for the last time, in ill health. Willie takes Reporter and Photographer (these characters and many others in the book, are referred to only by their occupations) on a tour of his old haunts around Manhattan and Brooklyn, ostensibly leading up to the big pay-off, i.e. his revealing what really happened to the clean-cut kid who spotted him and alerted the cops several years after Willie's last successful prison break. Reporter and Photographer don't get much but tired, but Reader.....Reader gets the works. This is one of the most engrossing stories I've read in a long time. The crimes he committed are not the focus of the tale; Moehringer (an enterprising reporter himself) has fleshed out the man, and given us a Willie Sutton we can understand...not just a cardboard cut-out 20th century Robin Hood, but a real human struggling to survive, to do what he's good at, and maybe find a little love.
Review written July 2014½