![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Queenan never forgave her for her silence and passivity. His three sisters were not spared from their father's violent alcoholic rages, while their mother sequestered herself upstairs, neither helping them nor partaking in the madness. He was often beaten senseless by his tyrannical drunken father, who used to pull the boy from his bed at night and make him sit and listen to him rant about everything from the passing of the era of Kennedy's "Camelot" to the new dictates of the Catholic Church. ![]() Queenan bravely but cautiously drops the cool, sarcastic, funnyman persona in this shocking new memoir and looks back on his horrific childhood in Philadelphia. Tenderness and vulnerability were never his strong suit. A few years ago, overwhelmed by a momentarily lapse of Irish guilt, he set up a Web site to apologize to everyone whom he had mercilessly parodied, except for Geraldo Rivera, whom he deemed beyond forgiveness, but soon abandoned the project. Queenan, 59, has spent decades cultivating a successful career as an author and somewhat cantankerous cultural critic, known for his scathing mockeries of figures as diverse as Madonna and Prince and Hillary Rodham Clinton. He doesn't know any other way of being for this tough guy, it has been his survival mechanism - and for the most part, it has worked pretty well. Joe Queenan has been avoiding indulging in self-pity his entire life. A Memoir By Joe Queenan (Viking 338 pages $26.95) ![]()
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