Joe Queenan's acerbic riffs on movies, sports, books, politics, and many of the least forgivable phenomena of pop culture have made him one of the most popular humorists and commentators of our time.
In Closing Time Queenan turns his sights on a more serious and personal topic: his childhood in a Philadelphia housing project in the early 1960s. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Closing Time recounts Queenan's Irish Catholic upbringing in a family dominated by his erratic father, a violent yet oddly charming emotional terrorist whose alcoholism fuels a limitless torrent of self-pity, railing, destruction, and late-night chats with the Lord Himself. This is an unforgettable account of the damage done to children by parents without futures and of the grace children find to move beyond these experiences. Joe Queenan writes about movies and music for the Guardian and is a regular contributor to Nightwaves. His work appears frequently in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, Forbes, Golf Digest, and many other publications. He has appeared on Nightly Review, Newsnight and Front Row; formerly presented Postcard from Gotham; and can regularly be heard on BBC Radio 4. He is the author of seven previous books, two collections of articles, and an anthology of the world's foremost malicious literature.
