Independent Student Newspaper Since 1969

The Badger Herald

Independent Student Newspaper Since 1969

The Badger Herald

Independent Student Newspaper Since 1969

The Badger Herald

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Memoir teaches life lessons

The lessons we learn at the University of Wisconsin are not confined to the classroom. An incredible number of our college experiences are rooted in our relationships with friends and weekend acquaintances. And sometimes the hardest and most important lessons are from the intoxicated times we struggle to recall. For many college students, the bar can become a home away from home, and for many compelling reasons, which J.R. Moehringer realizes in his captivating, best-selling memoir "The Tender Bar."

The book has been named book of the year by The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times Book Review and USA Today, among others. This, of course, isn't reason enough to pick it up. What makes the book noteworthy is the way it renders the intricate and moving lessons that can be learned from immature college weekend "mistakes" — mistakes that most find pointless and, well, immature.

"The Tender Bar" follows Moehringer's life as it relates to Publicans — the central bar of his hometown — from kindergarten in the early '70s to the present. He is a fatherless child who seeks what he is missing in the bar, even if he isn't able to drink there, legally, for the first 190 pages.

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Against his mother's wishes, Moehringer finds role models and friends among the men of the corner bar. He yearns to be a part of their world and understand why the bar plays such a central role in their lives. In the description of his childhood and adolescent years, Moehringer demonstrates what his life ambitions were and how they were related to Publicans. In his compelling description of the college experience, he shows how his youthful aspirations were lost because of Publicans.

As a seasoned barstool loiterer, Moehringer doesn't just describe the woes that Publicans brought him — how he nearly flunked out of school or how he lost the love of his life several times — but instead illustrates for the reader lessons to be gathered from the drinking culture that encapsulates the early twenties and the years spent studying at a university.

This is a memoir that reads much more like a novel than non-fiction. Moehringer deftly carves out characters that are distinct yet somehow reminiscent of one's own friends and family. He tracks idiosyncrasies that abruptly emerge chapters later and bring readers right back to the earlier part of the book, while at the same time using the inherent meaning of the quirk to make his audience really the point at hand — a craft most non-fiction does not often render, because most people don't cognitively recognize the quirks of those in their surroundings enough to write them into their own self-understanding.

It isn't drinking that defines Moehringer's "The Tender Bar," but instead the community that a bar creates. He states later in the book that until the end, when he finally had to quit the most important place in his life, that he never drank to get drunk. Instead, he understood his bar experience as something more. "The Tender Bar" doesn't so much hand out lessons as they were learned by Moehringer — this isn't chapter by chapter analysis of why the author no longer drinks — but instead redefines the bar experience in a way that allows the readers to understand how his lessons apply to their own experiences.

Moehringer's memoir expounds how bar culture changes his life through very personal reflections on many facets of his coming of age. Even as he sinks deeper into the bottle during the middle stretch of the book, he still provides a bold elucidation of how it wasn't truly the drinking that was changing him but Publicans and the ethos it embodied. In the end, it wasn't the heavy drinking and the postponement of responsibility that defined him but instead the experiences that he could relive and retell meaningfully and thoughtfully. "The Tender Bar" lovingly maps out a life defined by the quintessential adult meeting place, where many college students really do grow up.

Grade: 4 out of 5

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