THE TENDER BAR

Buy Now

iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Mac

Free Delivery Worldwide

Delivery in Australia & NZ

Kindle

We went there for everything we needed. We went there when thirsty, of course, and when hungry and when dead tired. We went there when happy, to celebrate and when sad to sulk. We went there after weddings and funerals for something to settle our nerves and always for a shot of courage just before. We went there when we didn't know what we needed, hoping someone might tell us. We went there when looking for love or sex or trouble or for someone who had gone missing because sooner or later everyong turned up there. Most of all we went there when we needed to be found.

Interviewed for National Public Radio in the US, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist J.R. Moehringer said of his memoir The Tender Bar, which centers on his youth in his hometown pub in Manhasset, Long Island:

In ancient Greece, there were amphitheaters, you know, and there was plenty of wine served at amphitheaters. There needs to be a place where people come together, freed from their possessions and temporarily free of their houses and their identities to some extent and where they can be in semidarkness and tell the old stories. This is the very place where I decided that I wanted to find a way to tell stories for a living, and it's also the place where I first saw a man give his memoir. It was at this bar where I didn't know what it was at the time but I saw a guy tell his life story. And when he was done, he felt better about his life.

J.R. Moehringer says now that he's told his story, he feels better about his life, too:

"Well, it's a hell of a day when you cross `write a book' off your list of things to do 'cause it had been on that list for more than 20 years. So it feels like a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders."

Buy Now

iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Mac

Free Delivery Worldwide

Delivery in Australia & NZ

Kindle