Literary Event Honors Prominent Local Author

Tarrytown’s own Joe Queenan is among the highly accomplished writers who have been selected by a panel from the Westchester Library Association for special recognition. 

Queenan’s memoir, Closing Time, is the story of his survival of a nightmarish childhood.  Dark humor mixes with raw pain in Queenan’s book.  His father was an alcoholic, often unemployed, and often abusive.  He would take a job and be happy for a while, lauding his co-workers as “princes among men” with “salt-of-the-earth” qualities, but it didn’t take long for something to upset him.  After that,

the next thing we knew, he would be out on the street, cursing the day his confreres, now unmasked as degenerates, and his ignoble superiors, no longer the lights in the piazza, were born.

“My father got broken when he was young, and he never got fixed,” Queenan says in the book.  His father could be the life of the party outside the home, and family members often made excuses for him.  The author recalls that his father often came home drunk and “spoiling for a fight with whoever crossed him first,” beating his children in a way that he describes: “they scream and plead and bleed and stay marked for days and wish both you and they were dead.”

How did Joe Queenan not only survive but go on to achieve so much?  He credits the Catholic Church, the generosity of a few loyal relatives, and the public library.  The church, he says, whose positive social role he believes is being under-acknowledged today, offered financial assistance, the inspiration of “pageantry-laden rituals,” and “the superb education we received from the nuns at Saint Bridget’s Elementary School”: 

When we were hungry children, wearing tatty clothes, living in a crummy neighborhood, the only way we could make ourselves feel special was by excelling at school.  So we studied hard, and we excelled.

He really did.  He went on to write nine books before his memoir and has been a regular contributor to The New York Times, Barron’s and The Los Angeles Times, as well as The Times of London and many other publications.  He has appeared on “The Late Show with David Letterman,” “The Daily Show,” Charlie Rose,” and many other TV and radio shows.  Queenan’s memoir, Closing Time, which was also one of The New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2009, was published by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group, USA, and more information is available on their website.

So Joe Queenan triumphed over abuse and misery, and his happy ending is not only a career as celebrated as one could ever hope for, but also a genuinely lovely family of his own.

Other authors who are almost as local who received awards include Marilyn Johnson of Briarcliff for her nonfiction This Book is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All, Stefanie Pintoff of Hastings for her  detective novel In the Shadow of Gotham, Joseph Wallace of Pleasantville for his baseball novel Diamond Ruby about a girl with a “golden throwing arm,” Don Delillo of Yonkers for Point Omega, “a meditation on the nature of time and war,” Cynthia Ozick of New Rochelle for Foreign Bodies, which takes place in post-World War II Paris and New York, and Wendy Corsi Staub of Katonah for her chiller Scared to Death.  Equally recommended are the works by Peter Quinn, Jonathan Tropper, James Bradley, Vincent Cannato, Francesco Clark, Seth Godin, James Kaplan, Scott L. Malcolmson, and Jeff Pearlman.   For details on the complete list and links for each author, see the website of the Westchester Library Association, www.westchesterlibraryassociation.org.

Their books were rated highest in the biennial search for works with “readability, literary quality, and wide general appeal" by the Westchester Library Association.  Several of the award winning authors will speak at the Doubletree Hotel in Tarrytown on Friday afternoon.

The Awards ceremony is open to all; pre-registration is required.  Tickets are still available at $10.  For information phone Jessica Tagliaferro at 914-606-6808, or e-mail westchesterlibraryassociation@gmail.com.  It takes place on Friday, May 13, 2011, at the Doubletree Hotel in Tarrytown, 455 S. Broadway, from 2:00-4:00 p.m.  Storyteller Jonathan Kruk will “bring Washington Irving to life.”  Speakers include novelists Stefanie Pintoff, Wendy Corsi Staub, Jonathan Tropper and Joe Wallace; and nonfiction writers Joe Queenan, Vincent Cannato, Francesco Clark, James Kaplan, Marilyn Johnson, Scott Malcolmson, and Jeff Pearlman.