Closing Time

Joe Queenan’s new book is like all his others: rude, cynical, bombastic, and brutal. Add one more adjective to this smoldering cauldron: funny. Queenan is one of the best essayists around and I tread carefully using the word humorist to describe him. “Humorist” of the Lewis Grizzard and Garrison Keillor stripe tend to be unfunny old coots that largely appeal to the 60 Minutes crowd. David Sedaris is another whose following is large and unfathomable. This man is neither funny nor interesting no matter what the New Yorker says. But Queenan is a comic writer gifted with that rare quality given from on high: wisdom. His “Balsamic Dreams” is a find and if you enjoy a skewering of the pretentious cognoscenti this book is for you. Queenan’s acid words about the 60’s flower children who became 90’s politicians is fun. Reading it, I felt like I was sitting with the Count of Monte Cristo himself on the balcony as he shot his contemptuous glances down below. His “Unkindest Cut,” takes a shot at “important” indie film directors who ignore audience taste in favor of nobler purposes. You wince at his barbs but you have to laugh. In fact, you will laugh a lot. When I see the name “Joe Queenan” when I pick up the LA Times, New York Times, or GQ, I’m all in. I read the article and sometimes even cut it out for a co-worker, another Queenan fan. The book “True Believer” is a book about his sports teams breaking his heart, year after year: the Eagles, Phillies, and 76ers tend to do that. (Although the Phillies ended the drought with a World Series win last year).
With “Closing Time,” Queenan takes aim at a new subject: his father. This is a tough memoir about his hardscrabble Irish American upbringing and the alcoholic father who would beat the stuffing out of him. His father, Joe, Sr., was a blue collar worker, WW2 vet, and a church-going Catholic. He was also a conman, a bully, a narcissist, and an all-around domestic terrorist. But the description Queenan prefers for him is at the heart of this bio: a drunk. His dad was a blithering drunk prone to his worst fits of rage when imbibing on the demon sauce. The younger Queenan found himself down on the floor bloodied and often. His father was a man who fought the Nazis but terrorized his family. He befriended strangers with huge embraces but struck his own son with the metallic part of the belt. There’s an old saying that God invented whiskey so that the Irish wouldn’t rule the world. On the East Coast, Irish drunkenness became a punch line for groups like Jews and Italians as they passed poor Irish Americans on the social ladder. But make no mistake. There were some victims here. It’s hard to believe that this court jester of wry social observation withstood such ugly abuse, verbal and physical. But it’s here, ugly and raw. But Queenan survives with his humor intact. Some would say it’s dark humor, but hey, it’s still humor. Yes, the old cliché about the Irish and whiskey is popular but not as true as the one about keeping a good man down: you can’t.