Tender Bar (Gekürzte Fassung)

interesting, enlightening

Really enjoyed this book. Well written and quite the life story. Author did a great job reading it also. Highly recommend.

Self-indulgent crap.

good read; interesting characters; a little whiney; what happened to uncle?

I enjoyed this book but wasn't particularly impressed by it. The pacing was odd to me--dragging over parts when I wanted a faster pace and skipping over what seemed noteworthy. I think there was too much stuff which kept the focus from shining through as clearly as it might have. Much dialogue was terrible and towards the end, the amount of exposition became unbearable.

This episodic memoir of a boy becoming a man in the 70s and 80s, centered on his hometown bar and its characters, is deeply confessional and almost always engaging. It has humor, it has heartbreak--probably more of the latter--and it has a tremendous amount of truth in it as the young writer struggles to find his way in life. At times, it lags, and midway through, it lacks the momentum to keep the reader turning pages into the night, but as the author begins to realize and address his shortcomings, the pace picks up and the book comes to a memorable--and sad--conclusion with an epilogue that takes place right after 911. In addition to his relationships with the men at the bar, his relationship with his mother is well described, and the epiphany he comes to near the book's conclusion is unforgettable. His relationship with his troubled father--both at a distance and later, occasionally, in person--is also fascinating. All in all, this a memoir unlike any other I have read. Like the best such books, it makes us reflect upon our own relationships.

As a transplant to Utah, I am often confronted by lifetime nondrinkers who can't fathom the various nuances and attractions of traditional bar culture. The next time I am asked to explain the urge of drinkers to regularly band together in old taverns, I will recommend this book.

I really appreciate autobiography that reads like good fiction (or is that good fiction that reads like autobiography?). Anyway, this was a fantastic great read. And I love the wordplay in the title!

I absolutely loved this book. Before I knew it, I was finished with it, but sad that it ended. I truly felt like I knew J.R and was a close friend of his while reading this book. This book gave made a huge impact on me and it also made me wish I knew people this well in my "real" life. A wonderful, wonderful well written memoir.

I think this book would be appealing to men looking for a real life "Catcher in the Rye" story. Set, primarily, on Long Island, this memoir is about the life of a boy/man growing up in a world heavily influenced by men who work and frequent a bar in Manhasset, Long Island.

The neighborhood bar, and the men in it had as much to do with the way the author, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, was raised as did his often less-than-stable family. His mother was loving but not always able to provide for her son on her own. His father was mostly absent, and when not, probably should have been. The boys in the bar taught invaluable lessons., not always gently but mostly with love. Some of the most touching moments came in the epilogue, in the post-9/11 world. This story is, as the title reflects, a tender memoir. It is a pleasant read, or in my case, a pleasant listen. Despite occasionally having a bit of a nasal tone to his voice, the reader, Adam Grupper, did a fabulous job with the various voices in the story.

Really a terrific listening experience and yes, as other reviews have mentioned, the epilogue was heartbreaking but did so much in pulling everything into a meaningful sort of giant hug---finding out what had happened to this interesting/fascinating collection of people. Moehringer has such a wonderful way of writing. I need so look up some of his writing in newspapers such as the LA Times.

A great book to listen to, you really get caught up in his story...

Just love a good bar book, esp.one set in and around NYC. Loved this book!!

After reading the first couple of pages, I was worried The Tender Bar would not be my cup of tea. I usually don't like memoirs about boys and men. Typically these tales center too much on sexual exploits and violent episodes for my liking.But as I read along, I grew to love The Tender Bar more and more. J.R. longed for his AWOL father and sought out surrogate dads wherever he went. He was most successful in finding pseudo-dadness at the neighborhood bar. There were some sexual exploits and lots of violence and acres and acres of heavy drinking, but all of these felt like a genuine part of J.R.'s growing up experience, not a bragfest. This is a book I'd never have read, left on my own, but I'm happy I did.

the first 1/3 or so is a bit whiny, but then the book gets a bit better. Over all i liked it.I really hate how every book published after 9/11 lets you know its published after 9/11 by devoting atleast a chapter to that subject.Despite my mothers promises that there was no hidden agenda in sending me this book, I did notice that the main character's mother was held in very high regard through out the book. The author also spends a substantial amount of time taking about realizing his potential and nonsense along those lines. Frankly, I don't enjoy reading about peoples feelings and emotions that much.

I can't remember the last time a book made me laugh out loud so often and I am only about one-third of the way through. The people are so vivid and real, the suburban East-Coast setting so well drawn, that many readers will feel unexpectedly at home in Manhasset, Long Island, even if they have never set foot there.This is a story of non-traditional families, of substitutes fathers, of extended families taking care of their own the best way they know how. None of the people that formed the J. R. Moehringer's "family" was perfect--their faults are lovingly recorded and acknowledged--but each and every one of them earned his or her place in the man the boy became. I know these people that I've never met and I thank J. R. Moehringer for introducing me to all of them.

Excellent! I loved this book. It was well written.

another book about father and sons. and a bar.

This is a very well written memoir, one that reads like fiction. It's about the life of a boy as he grows up to be a man, and what influences he found along the journey. It's the story of an ordinary person but is very engaging made me both laugh and cry. I can't pinpoint what it was about the book that I enjoyed so much but I would recommend it to just about anyone.

Moehringer is a born storyteller, the sort of fellow whose yarns I'd listen to all night long. This memoir, ostensibly about a Manhasset bar but really about fathers and sons, mothers and sons, love, memory, writing and what it means to become and to be a man, is full of fantastic characters and hilarious dialogue. This is quite a feat, considering the characters are often dysfunctional alcoholics (are their any other kind?) and his broken, battered, impoverished and sometimes desperate relatives. As someone with over seventeen years sobriety I approached this book cautiously, since I'm not interested in reading glamorized accounts of bar-life, having witnessed the horrific truth of that life. And Moehringer does flirt dangerously close, I think, to the line between painting a gritty, realistic portrait of lives drowned in liquor and painting it with a gloss of fairy-dust. But he manages it, and every time I found myself shifting uncomfortably in my seat, concerned about the tidal wave of alcohol flowing over the pages toward me, he masterfully turned the narrative back to the struggle for human dignity, belonging and love. In the end, the author himself is sober, although he doesn't linger on why or how, but I felt he was able to do whatever was necessary in terms of his own sobriety without damning or judging those people in his past who made different choices. It's quite lovely.A book about dysfunctional families and colorful bar folk may sound formulaic, and perhaps it is. But the heart of the work comes from the stories Moehringer tells, and from the author's keeping a broad literary perspective. The bar is called Dickens (later changed to Publicans) and the patrons, who are undeniably Dickensian, love to talk about books and writers. F. Scott Fitzgerald looms large, especially since Manhasset is the setting for "Great Gatsby". One of the funniest moments is when two of the patrons -- mentors to the author -- discover, to their horror that this budding writer (Kid's a scribbler) has never read it. In fact there are many laugh-out-loud moments in the book. Pay particular attention to a character called "Fuckembabe" because that's the only understandable thing he says: "This must be the migwag with the wugga mugsy," he (Fuckembabe)said, shaking my hand and smiling, a becoming smile despite his dry lips and cardboard teeth. "Chas," he said, "I ain't gonna let him legweg my nugga fugga smack jack. I'll tell you that, fuck 'em, babe, fuck'em haw haw haw." I looked to Uncle Charlie for help, but he was laughing, telling Fuckembabe that this was true, so true. Fuckembabe then turned to me and asked me a question. "What's the biggerish thing you and your fucking muncle ever did wip the nee nonny moniker doody flipper?"Snort. And then there's his Uncle Charlie, a somewhat mysterious and sad character who's adopted Bogarts mannerisms ("lips never wider than a cigarette), who tends bar at Publicans and likes to use big words but then apologizes for them, "Isn't this mellifluous!" Uncle Charlie would say, "You don't mind if I say 'mellifluous' do you?" or "The whole town's inebriated. You don't mind if I say 'inebriated' do you?"Along with the levity, there are also many heart breaking moments -- some when we watch the narrator get his heart broken by a decidedly Daisy Buchanan-like girl, and certainly those when the narrator listens to the voice of his absent father, who's an announcer, over the radio night after night.It's very hard to write a book that's funny, poignant and utterly entertaining, but Moehringer's managed it. I didn't want it to end.

"Suspenseful, wrenching, and achingly funny. 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."I had to quote the cover as I could not say it better myselg.

An easy read, enjoyed this one.

Great read. Love memoirs and this one was especially touching, as his childhood reminded me somewhat of my own.

read it in German, cannot say whether that made me like the book better or less... it somehow reminded me of forrest gump. why? there was plenty of cross-refernce to what was going on at the time, and it is a story of a boy growing up... that is about it. an enjoyable, but not a memorable read, obviously.

Memoir and non-fiction aren't my favorites anyway, but I didn't like this book at all. Most striking to me was the voice in the memory scenes, which did not sound authentic as it was filtered through the author's adult experience.

So well written, brilliant characterisations, absorbing memoir.

If you enjoy memoirs and stories about unconventional lives, you'll LOVE this book! My mom had raved about it for years and when I finally got around to reading it, I kicked myself for not picking it up it earlier. It's the story of a young man who comes from an ecclectic family and how he is influenced by several men from the neighborhood bar- sounds strange but really, really a good story. I love his mother's dream of his going to Yale; she is really a strong woman. Enjoy!

I'm on the fence about this book. It's very well written, and provides lots of food for thought about life, its disapointments, and human nature in general. Some parts were deeply engrossing, and others were so boring that I found myself wanting to abandon the book for good. I stuck through and am glad I finished it, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it.

You know those handful of books in a lifetime that truly have an impact?Not the ones with decent enough stories that keep you coming back just to find out what happens, but the ones that you start over again as soon as your done and give out as presents to everybody you know, well this book was definitely one of those. It hit home in such a way that it had me in an emotional limbo stuck between tears and laughter until I finished then it abandoned me , leaving me alone with nothing but the sadness that the book was finished and I would never be able to take that journey for the first time ever again. I truly dont know what it was perhaps the writing, nothing spectacular but poignant just the same, maybe the story of a child without a father and the void that it leaves, I truly dont know. So yes read this book, if you have ever read hemmingway and yearned to be jake just for a day, if you have every seriously wished you could be thrown into the madness of the great gatsby, if you grew up without a father, if you have ever felt like you just didnt belong, if you have ever that intense need to prove your worth, hell if youve ever laughed , loved, or even breathed please read this book