JOE QUEENAN’S MASTERFUL MEMOIR

I’d never read the memoir of anyone I actually know until I read Closing Time, the account of my friend Joe Queenan of his upbringing in Philadelphia. Joe, for those of you who don’t know, is a very funny writer who contributed many wonderful articles to Spy and other magazines (including a hilarious piece for me at Playboy about driving across America eating only at Hooters) and who has also written many funny books (his book about Dan Quayle, Imperial Caddy, came out the same time as Mr. Stupid Goes to Washington) and a lot of smart book reviews. It’s not exactly a miracle that Joe ended up in this field, but it’s an unusual achievement in this era. Most writers I have met during my career have come from middle class backgrounds (or better), and have had, at least to the degree that I am aware, a solid upbringing by parents who cared about their development. But as I read in the often harrowing Closing Time, Joe grew up in poverty with an alcoholic father. His family lived in a housing project in Philadelphia and throughout his whole youth suffered real hardship, including a lack of food, when his father was out of work, which was common, or drank up what money was available, which happened frequently. Joe writes eloquently about his experiences:

“Poverty goes far beyond not having money for food. Poverty means that when you do have money and food, the money gets spent unwisely and the food is not nutritious. Poverty is not simply a matter of not being able to buy certain things; it’s about buying the wrong things, or the things nobody else wants. It’s about off-brand shoes, off-brand underwear, off-brand socks, off-brand ice cream, off-brand appliances, off-brand roach killer. It’s about sneakers that fall apart the third time you drive to the basket, shoes held together with adhesive tape, shirts that start off as XLs but that end up as Mediums the first time they’re laundered. . . .It’s about bad diets, bad teeth, bad feet, bad playgrounds, bad parents, bad housing, bad attitudes.’’

Joe’s father was mean drunk who frequently beat his kids, and it’s sobering (to say the least) to read Joe’s memories of these moments. But the book is not altogether grim. Joe’s memories of people who helped him over the years are rich and warm and gracious, and as you would hope and expect from a Joe Queenan book, often very funny. Joe, like me, and my wife, is a graduate of the Summer Program of the Fleer Bubble Gum Factory (that is to say, we all had summer jobs there), and I especially enjoyed reading about his experience at our shared alma mater. (Joe also almost went to La Salle College, which Ginny and I attended, but the school was in his neighborhood, and he preferred to go across town to the more exotic Jesuit college on the Main Line, St. Joseph’s.) The book’s great strength is that Joe manages to walk a very tricky line; he stares down his harsh, difficult past with an unsparing, unflinching eye, but he refuses to pity himself or act the victim. He manages to remember the boy who possessed enough spirit to overcome the obstacles in front of him, and to acknowledge those who helped him. Well done, Joe!