Closing Time: A Memoir

by Joe Queenan

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Book cover for Closing Time

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A deeply funny and affecting memoir about a great escape from a childhood of poverty
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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
  • ISBN10 067002063X
  • ISBN13 9780670020638
  • Publish Date 4 May 2009 (first published 1 April 2009)
  • Publish Status Out of Print
  • Out of Print 19 July 2021
  • Publish Country US
  • Publisher Penguin Putnam Inc
  • Imprint Penguin USA
  • Format Hardcover
  • Pages 338
  • Language English