The Tender Bar

The Tender Bar
A Memoir
J.R. Moehringer
Hyperion $23.95
370 pp
A memoir is a memoir is a memoir. Too often of late memoirs amount to nothing more than tell all books or page upon page of braggadocio involving sexual conquests and illicit drug use. After awhile you stop caring about the protagonist.
Then along comes J.R. Moehringer with his memoir “The Tender Bar”, and let me tell you this… if you’re not inclined toward memoirs, this one will change your mind.
Mr. Moehringer writes with a simple and earthy eloquence and honesty that entices you into the story, almost allowing that you’re there or wishing you were.
“The Tender Bar” is as Long Island as Long Island gets. While many perceive the island as either the weekend getaway for rich New York City dwellers or the Gold Coast of Gatsby the reality is that much of the island is populated by the hard working middle class. This is their story.
Quite simply it’s a love story. Unconditional love…between the hard drinking men that seem to live the “Tender Bar” and the young boy they ‘adopt’ as one of their own; nursing him through the difficult and slowly developing realization that his father has abandoned him, encouraging him in his forays into love, and picking up the pieces when love was elusive.
While each real life character has their own demons to face, collectively they offer each other strength and a hand to guide each other through tough times. There are some who may suggest that these men were merely deluding themselves, blinding themselves to reality through over indulgence in alcohol, or maybe they merely established an alternate reality in the bar. I was reminded of a M*A*S*H episode wherein the surgeons rebel and declare Rosie’s Bar a sovereign nation… a refuge as it were from the horror of the war. OK so growing up and working on Long Island doesn’t equate with war, but the bar as refuge certainly is a truism.
Moehringer’s opening sentence is “We went there for everything we needed.”… It is not a careless statement. For a young man desperate for a lifeline it WAS everything. That he eventually has to face his own alcoholism may seem like an inevitability, but it isn’t presented as a condemnation of the bar, rather it is offered as a part of the continual growth of Mr. Moehringer.
If it’s true that one can’t go home again, then it is also true that home is not necessarily an actual edifice; instead it is a feeling which one carries close to his heart. More than anything Moehringer drives that point home, ultimately returning the love he received by putting in print his memoir.
If you’ve ever spent time in a bar, if you’ve ever leaned on someone for emotional support, and if you’ve ever wondered what a well written memoir should be then “The Tender Bar” is a must read.