Recounts the author's Irish-Catholic upbringing in a 1960s Philadelphia housing project, a youth marked by his alcoholic father's volatile temper, a series of mentors and surrogate fathers, and the author's struggles to forge a more promising future through his love for books and music. In his review for the New York Times Book Review, James McManus wrote that Closing Time is likely to intensify whatever opinion readers already hold about Joe Queenan. This seemed true for critics, too, who were sharply divided about the book. Some saw it as unflinchingly honest—a memoir of Irish life in America on par with Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes (which, curiously, Queenan panned). But others saw it as a hopelessly cynical, unforgiving, and indulgent memoir—self-pitying in just the way Queenan says the rest of Americans have come to be. Indeed, on the basis of these divergent reactions, the main reason to read Closing Time might not be to enjoy it but to find out if you are the type of person who can. Copyright 2009 Bookmarks Publishing LLC After eviscerating everyone from filmmakers to sports fans, cultural critic and humorist Queenan takes the hatchet to himself in this memoir of growing up poor in Philadelphia. The book is dominated by Queenan’s Irish Catholic father, the “lunatic-in-chief” who routinely loses several jobs per year and takes out his frustrations with copious amounts of booze and violent strappings of his brood. It is this relationship that frames the rest of Queenan’s youth, from the part-time job supervisors who become surrogate fathers to the misguided stab at seminary school as a means to escape the belt. Along the way, Queenan catalogs poverty with a specificity that is nearly exhausting; there’s no romance here, only the banal and frequently hilarious chronicling of the indignity of off-brand Fig Newtons and generic versions of hit records. Queenan never met a synonym he didn’t like (in under three pages, a jail is a hoosegow, calaboose, slammer, and pokey), but this loquaciousness evokes the ludicrous nature of his upbringing while providing humor few others could bring to such dark material. As is often the case with memoirs, Queenan’s latter years are less riveting, but his adolescence will have readers crying tears of both sorrow and hilarity. --Daniel Kraus Joe Queenan is the author of seven books and a regular contributor to The New York Times , Barron’s and The Los Angeles Times , a columnist for Chief Executive , and writes about movies and music for Great Britain’s The Guardian . Formerly an editor at Forbes and Spy , television critic at People , and a columnist at TV Guide , GQ , Smart Money , Men’s Health , Barron’s Online and Movieline , his stories have appeared in scores of national publications, including The New Republic , Time , Newsweek , the Wall Street Journal , the Washington Post , the Los Angeles Times , the New York Daily News , the New York Observer , Playboy , Rolling Stone , Us , Golf Digest , The Weekly Standard , Cosmopolitan , Esquire , Vogue , Town & Country , Allure , and New York . His work has appeared overseas in The Independent , The Spectator , The Toronto Globe & Mail , the Times of London , and Bon . Queenan has been a guest on "The Late Show with David Letterman", "The Daily Show", "Today", "Good Morning, America", "Charlie Rose" and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien", a frequent guest on "Imus in the Morning", and appeared more than two-dozen times on "Politically Incorrect". He regularly writes and hosts radio features for the BBC, and for three years was host of the BBC weekly radio program "Postcard from Gotham". In 2005, he won a Sports Emmy for his work on HBO’s "Inside the NFL". He is married, with two children, and lives in Tarrytown, N.Y. From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Jonathan Yardley As a 13-year-old student, Joe Queenan fell under the tutelage of a priest who was "the first person in my life to describe me as a cynic, an observation I may have incorrectly interpreted as praise." By the time he was ready to enter college in his native Philadelphia, he had determined that "my dream was to make a living by ridiculing people," a dream he has richly fulfilled as journalist, essayist, talking head and, in general, caustic commentator on just about everything. Now in his late 50s, Queenan has lived long enough and done enough interesting things to have earned the right to write his memoirs, which he has done with skill, subtlety and an honest self-awareness. "Closing Time" tells us that Queenan comes by his cynicism honestly. He learned at the feet of a master, and he has all the bruises to show for it. His childhood and adolescence were tough, at times brutally so, yet there isn't a whisper of whine here, only a determination to face the truth as squarely as he can and to describe it without self-pity or sentimentality. From his birth in 1950, Queenan was dealt a tricky h