Choice Hops and Bottled Self-Esteem

Last night, I completed the reading of a novel recommended by a good friend. The Tender Bar is a memoir of a journalist/author who grew up fatherless in Manhasset, New York. To provide a bit of information, the author JR Moehringer grows up in a dysfunctional household of extended family but no father. After making both internal and external promises to make something of his life for his mother's sake, he spins a beautiful wordcraft of prose both celebrating and demonizing the rites of passage during his life's journey. A local bar, Dickens turned Publicans, serves as the emotional and physical anchor JR uses to cope with the setbacks thrown at him.

This blog entry is not concerned with the novel as a whole but rather to illuminate Mr. Moehringer's penchant for touching on integral parts of the human condition. The author grapples with themes such as love, success, and death in the memoir. Themes that are as common as any in most great American novels. His style is far more concise and eloquent than I could ever hope for, which makes the reader sympathize with him while feeling twangs of jealousy.

After Sidney, and several failed attempts at replacing Sidney, I wasn't sure I believed in romantic love anymore. My only objective with women was to avoid being fooled again, which meant remaining aloof, noncommital, like Sidney herself.

This passage from page 307 of The Tender Bar is completely unassuming and uncomplicated yet when I read it, it resonated in my head like a bolt of lightning. This isn't the time for sob stories about my past, but suffice it to say I think we all have nostalgic symptoms from Cupid's goddamn arrows stored away somewhere. With two sentences, JR Moehringer was able to tap directly into my psyche and make me immediately relate to him.

There's nothing I love more in a novel than finding a line that strikes home for me upon first reading. The Tender Bar was packed with such revelations. I found myself relating to the main character with every turn of a page and I have little doubt most other readers would feel the same. It takes a special literary talent to zing that emotional link through mere black letters on white pieces of paper. Just don't ask me to describe the plot any further. As JR says in his memoir:

I hate when people ask what a book is about. People who read for plot, people who suck out the story like the cream filling in an Oreo, should stick to comic strips and soap operas. What's it about? Every book worth a damn is about emotions and love and death and pain. It's about words. It's about a man dealing with life. Okay?

Read The Tender Bar for any reason you wish. Read it because you like drinking. Read it because you like Yale. Read it because you like the Mets. Any of those reasons would suffice and I'm sure even casual fans of those reasons will find themselves completely immersed in the novel. If someone were to ask me why they should read it, I would answer that they should read it to learn more about themselves. That's the greatest gift a novel can give to its reader, and what a rare gift it is.