The Tender Bar : A Memoir

基本信息

Edited by：J R Moehringer

Publisher：Sceptre

Published：7 Sep 2006

Language：English

Format Paperback：384 pages

ISBN-10 : 0340828838

ISBN-13 : 978-0340828830

Weight：261 g

Dimensions：130 x 25 x 199（mm）

頁面參數僅供參考，具體以實物為準

書籍簡介

JR Moehringer從小就聽着一種聲音長大，那是他失蹤的父親的聲音，他的父親是一位唱片騎師，在JR開口説話之前就失蹤了。小時候，JR會把耳朵貼在一個破舊的時鐘收音機上，努力想從那個共鳴的聲音中聽到身份和男性的祕密。當那聲音消失後，JR在街角的酒吧裏找到了新的聲音。那是一間宏偉的紐約老酒館，酒吧是各種男人的避難所--警察和詩人、演員和律師、賭徒和流浪漢。酒吧一帶的花花公子們教導JR，照顧他，並提供一種委員會的父親身份。JR在對母親的愛和酒吧的誘惑之間徘徊，他在中間的某處鑄就了一個少年時代。

當他要離開家的時候，酒吧成了一個驛站--從JR進入耶魯大學，在那裏他作為一個獎學金學生一籌莫展；到Lord & Taylor，在那裏他度過了一段卑微的兜售家庭用品的時間；到紐約時報，在那裏他成了一台龐大機器中的一個故障齒輪。酒吧為他提供了避開失敗、避開拒絕、最終避開現實的庇護，直到最後酒吧將JR拒之門外。

在關於自我創新的暢銷回憶錄中，《THE TENDER BAR》的傳統是引人入勝、令人感動和令人痛心的搞笑。這是一個男孩為成為一個男人而奮鬥的令人回味的肖像，它也是一個感人的描述，説明一些男人如何仍然是迷失的男孩。

JR Moehringer grew up listening for a voice, the voice of his missing father, a disc jockey who disappeared before JR spoke his first words. As a boy, JR would press his ear to a battered clock radio, straining to hear in that resonant voice the secrets of identity and masculinity. When the voice disappeared, JR found new voices in the bar on the corner. A grand old New York saloon, the bar was a sanctuary for all sorts of men -- cops and poets, actors and lawyers, gamblers and stumblebums. The flamboyant characters along the bar taught JR, tended him, and provided a kind of fatherhood by committee. Torn between his love for his mother and the lure of the bar, JR forged a boyhood somewhere in the middle.

When the time came to leave home, the bar became a way station -- from JR's entrance to Yale, where he floundered as a scholarship student; to Lord & Taylor, where he spent a humbling stint peddling housewares; to the New York Times, where he became a faulty cog in a vast machine. The bar offered shelter from failure, from rejection, and eventually from reality, until at last the bar turned JR away.

In the rich tradition of bestselling memoirs about self-invention, THE TENDER BAR is by turns riveting, moving, and achingly funny. An evocative portrait of one boy's struggle to become a man, it's also a touching depiction of how some men remain lost boys.

作者簡介

J.R. Moehringer是2000年普利策特寫獎的獲得者，他是《洛杉磯時報》的國家通訊員，曾是哈佛大學的尼曼研究員。他住在科羅拉多州丹佛市。

J.R. Moehringer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2000, is a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and a former Niemann Fellow at Harvard University. He lives in Denver, Colorado.