He spent a year at a Maryknoll seminary, even though he quickly realized he had no religious vocation.A couple hundred pages in, Queenan explains and defends his particular writing style, saying: "I had already decided I wanted to be a writer when I grew up, but I did not want to write like Ernest Hemingway, if only because everyone else did." No fear, Joe. He worked part-time jobs from the time he was eight years old, gaining some experience of the world and how it works in the process. Or maybe better, by the tops of his ragged off-brand sneakers. Desperately poor, mostly due to his father's alcoholism and inability to hold a job, Joe Queenan is indeed one of those success stories who quite literally pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. He credits the solid educational grounding he got in the Catholic school system from the nuns who taught him, as well as a couple somewhat questionable male role models. And it turns out he probably has good reason, considering how far he's come from his impoverished roots in the Philly housing projects. Queenan's style seemed florid, overwrought, and maybe just a bit too, well, he seemed to be showing off how well-read and educated he was. Not because it had such an edgy undertone of anger and bitterness, which it does, and with good reason, but because of his writing style. Read moreĪt first I found Joe Queenan's memoir, CLOSING TIME, just a bit off-putting. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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.
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