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From New York Times review: LAST CALL AT ELAINE’S A Journey From One Side of the Bar to the Other. By Brian McDonald. 288 pp. St. Martin’s Press. $24.95. “Last Call at Elaine’s,” his fourth book, is an earnest, gruff, celebrity-and-anecdote-rich memoir of the 11 years he worked for Ms. Kaufman, and of his life before and after Elaine’s as an on-and-off-the-wagon alcoholic. He touchingly conveys both the intoxication he felt at interacting with the clientele he lionized (among others, Richard Price, Steve Dunleavy, Mike McAlary, Matt Dillon, Albert Finney, Keith Hernandez and Patti LuPone) and the despair he has suffered during periods of crippling addiction. Mr. McDonald’s turns of phrase can have surprising potency — Ben Gazzara has “a voice like a blender on chop”; his mother “dressed me like a couch” (in red plaid slacks); a bar friend he loses track of becomes “another shrug in my life.” But the power of this book lies not in its style, but in its sincerity, and in its tribute to a world that might have seemed larger than life to people outside the window, but behind the bar just felt like home. |
Last Call at Elaine’s: A Journey From One Side Of The Bar To The OtherFor as long as any of us can remember, Elaine’s restaurant has been the classy center of a certain kind of smart New York City glamour. This deft, loving, and very funny portrait of the place, written by a man who spent years behind Elaine’s bar, brings it all to life. At the center of this story is Elaine herself, a courageous and generous character who does her best to conceal her soft-heartedness. Woven together with [McDonald’s] struggle to become a writer and his battle with addiction, this book is a rich, moving, and compelling story told as well as it could have been by any of the writers who made Elaine’s their home away from home. --Susan Cheever, author of American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work A voyeur de force on Manhattan's most celebrated watering hole. Bracing as the third shot of Wild Turkey, satisfying as the House Special veal chop (after Elaine switched chefs). If the dearth of unflinchingly funny, insightful and humane prose is the problem, Brian McDonald is part of the solution. --Bill Scheft, writer for The Late Show with David Letterman & author of The Ringer and Time Won't Let Me McDonald writes courageously about his battle with addiction while leaving the reader in stitches with behind-the-bar tales from the famous New York writer's hangout - Elaine's. Buy this book before your friends start telling you to. –-Christopher Kennedy Lawford, author of Symptoms of Withdrawal Brian McDonald began using his writer’s ear on the Underwood that retired with his father from the 41st Detective Squad in the Bronx. The machine had recorded manslaughter and maiming and molesting. Now he was on a computer and into the great glow of Manhattan nights where he tended bar and looked and listened with a writer’s ear. He took a famous boss named Elaine and patrons like Frank Sinatra and Woody Allen, and the normal 15 rounds against alcohol, out into the world beyond Manhattan and gives us a big league book of life today. --Jimmy Breslin |
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