NOW A MAJOR FILM DIRECTED BY GEORGE CLOONEY AND STARRING BEN AFFLECK''Highly entertaining . . . constructed as skilfully as a drink mixed by the author''s Uncle Charlie'' New York Times''Moehringer writes with a survivor''s wisdom . . . The Tender Bar is a memoir, but has the texture of a novel'' Sunday TelegraphIn 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.JR Moehringer grew up listening for a voice, the voice of his missing father, a DJ 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.''A wonderful book . . . everyone in it is incredibly alive, everyone shines, and every vice is transformed into something glorious'' James SalterJ.R. Moehringer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2000, is a former national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and a former Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. Moehringer is the author of the memoir The Tender Bar and the bestselling novel Sutton, and co-author of Open by Andre Agassi, Shoedog by Phil Knight and Spare by Prince Harry.
