Quotes from book
The Tender Bar

The Tender Bar

JR Moehringer grew up listening for a voice, the voice of his missing father, a disc jockey who disappeared before JR spoke his first words. As a boy, JR would press his ear to a battered clock radio, straining to hear in that resonant voice the secrets of identity and masculinity. When the voice disappeared, JR found new voices in the bar on the corner. A grand old New York saloon, the bar was a sanctuary for all sorts of men -- cops and poets, actors and lawyers, gamblers and stumblebums. The flamboyant characters along the bar taught JR, tended him, and provided a kind of fatherhood by committee. Torn between his love for his mother and the lure of the bar, JR forged a boyhood somewhere in the middle. When the time came to leave home, the bar became a way station -- from JR's entrance to Yale, where he floundered as a scholarship student; to Lord & Taylor, where he spent a humbling stint peddling housewares; to the New York Times, where he became a faulty cog in a vast machine. The bar offered shelter from failure, from rejection, and eventually from reality, until at last the bar turned JR away. In the rich tradition of bestselling memoirs about self-invention, THE TENDER BAR is by turns riveting, moving, and achingly funny. An evocative portrait of one boy's struggle to become a man, it's also a touching depiction of how some men remain lost boys.


“Beer is amazing. Nutritional. Medicinal. A beverage, but also a meal.”

The Tender Bar, p. 108, ppb edition.

Similar authors

J. R. Moehringer photo
J. R. Moehringer 2
American journalist 1964
Marek Żukow-Karczewski photo
Marek Żukow-Karczewski 10
Polish historian, journalist and opinion journalist
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Chuck Palahniuk 555
American novelist, essayist
Marilyn Manson photo
Marilyn Manson 78
American rock musician and actor
Jenny Han photo
Jenny Han 226
American writer
Cassandra Clare photo
Cassandra Clare 2041
American author
P. C. Cast photo
P. C. Cast 136
American writer
Christopher Paolini photo
Christopher Paolini 166
American author
Patrick Rothfuss photo
Patrick Rothfuss 236
American fantasy writer
Andrew Biersack photo
Andrew Biersack 24
American singer-songwriter