How astounding, for instance, to learn 10 pages from the end of the book that his mother “had a wonderful sense of humor.” Since when? we can’t help but ask, knowing her only as bitterly disappointed and detached.Įqually strange that a usually incisive critic would choose to repeat himself - in content and form - as much as Queenan does. In the meantime, he pays particular attention to a cast of peripheral characters - family, friends and Philadelphia herself - but as richly as Queenan describes those people and places, he shortchanges us about others. In 12 chapters and an epilogue, the author takes the reader from elementary school in the 1950s all the way to the triumph of his own daughter’s acceptance to Harvard in 2001. The third of four children and the only boy, Queenan was raised in rundown neighborhoods by a violent alcoholic and his mostly indifferent wife, who holed herself up in an adjacent room with the newspaper when one of her children took a beating. Partly a coming-of-age story, the memoir is mostly a rant - justified - against poverty, and especially against the father Queenan learned to despise well before his 10th birthday.
“Closing Time” is a tale of survival, full of the requisite twists and turns, but there’s no question that the author will prevail - it’s only a matter of how. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, more than two-thirds of the way through this book, Queenan’s eventual escape - from family, class and the City of Brotherly Love to boot - is a foregone conclusion.
to make a living by ridiculing people, and it didn’t seem to matter all that much where I got my degree, as you couldn’t major in satire or invective.” Tongue-in-cheek maybe, but Queenan, the author of nine books, is best known today as a humorist and cultural critic, a contributor to publications that include the New York Times, GQ and Rolling Stone.īy the time he matriculates to St. In “Closing Time,” Joe Queenan’s new memoir, the author was none too pleased with his high school girlfriend when she told him that “she had big plans for her life, and that none of them included me.” She was on her way to study music at Catholic University (out of state, that is), while Joe would be only a few blocks from home, his “dream.
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