Dear J.R. Moehringer,
As a teenager, I was terrified of drinking alcohol. My parents told me stories of peers
who failed school, cars that crashed, and men who foundered in front of pretty women. I was
anxious that my brainstem would swell and tear like a well-used shoelace, that all my pent-up
anger would let loose. To drink, I thought, was to become someone else. It meant letting go of
the known world to take swigs of Smirnoff Ice in the middle of the woods.
Your memoir, The Tender Bar, is astounding. It drew me in and kept me under. After
reading decades of pain and wonder distilled into 368 pages, my words seem to fall flat in
describing yours.
I thought it would be clever, at first, to describe your characters as different drinks: Uncle
Charlie a glass of Scotch, your lover Sydney a bottle of red wine, cousin Mcgraw a Miller Light.
They all had their own texture and flavor, burning and warming, real as tomorrow’s hangover.
You, of course, would have been the bartender.
Yet such an alcoholic description of your book wouldn’t have been fair. Drunk is what
you get when thinking slows and strength seems to double. The Tender Bar, on the other hand,
felt a lot like sobering up.
Your narration reveals the deepest insights with immediacy and lucidity, “My father was
a man of many talents, but his one true genius was disappearing” (p18), “She was an inspired
liar, a brilliant liar, and she was also lying to herself,” (p345). These revelations inform larger
themes such as manhood and parenthood while also adding tension to your dialogue.
Your chapters begin like a splash of water to the face, vivid and shocking, “Two shots to
the chest at point-blank range, and then the faceless culprit ran away.” (p123), “There were
jagged cuts on her face and clumps of matter blood in her hair” (p137). Such lines spur the
reader onwards, coloring your prose with unexpected language.
Your illustration of character depicts a full, complex image within one or two sentences,
as evident in the depiction of your grandfather’s daily visits to the local train station, “As
commuters stepped onto the platform and discarded their final-edition newspapers, Grandpa
would dive into the garbage cans and fish a newspaper out, intent on saving himself a few cents.
Seeing him with his legs sticking out of a garbage can, no commuter could have imagined why
that poor old hobo wanted that final edition in the first place—to check the closing price on his
sizable portfolio of stocks and bonds.” (p30). In fact, one of the hardest parts of this review was
choosing which description of character to use, as you provide so many brilliant examples.
As captivating as it is heartbreaking, The Tender Bar reveals the beauty and fragility of a
boy’s changing world, each chapter a new personality, a new adventure. Devouring pages well
past my bedtime, I got the same sensation as one from years ago. That night, I’d had my first
beer and then some, chatting with friends for hours, eventually strolling a mile and a half back to
my house. On an empty road, I could see things clearer. Not because of the alcohol, but because
fear had stopped controlling me.
Thanks,
Elijah
