An East Falls Childhood Marred by Poverty and Abuse
Joe Queenan
By Sabina Clarke
I caught up with Joe Queenan, author of the startling memoir/autobiography Closing Time, the day after his return from Ireland where he attended the Dublin Literary Festival. Queenan’s book has attracted considerable attention because he departs from his usual humorous vein and explores a serious subject, a Dickensian childhood filled with poverty, abuse and neglect. He shares dark secrets that he feels make some readers uncomfortable, “As soon as you talk about poverty; people change the subject. People don’t like to talk about that.”
Colleagues he has known for years, never knew about his growing up in the projects, “Living in the projects is humiliating; living in the projects is like living in a concentration camp.” What reaction has surprised you the most about the book “Some people are amazed at how harsh it is but it doesn’t seem harsh to me at all. I think part of this is because I am Irish American and Irish Americans are a harsher people. They went through hell because of their history. That is why they are so good with words. They didn’t have anything but words. Namby pamby people, soft people, new age people like people from the West Coast, read this and say ‘He is so nasty; he is so mean.’ I say to them, ‘Grow-up in a Philadelphia Housing project some time and see how you come out!’”
Has he rid himself of the scars from his childhood? “I got rid of them a long time ago.” Somehow, this seems hard to believe; they seem to be simmering beneath the surface. What do his two grown children think of the book? “My daughter, who just graduated from Harvard, loved the book but my son has never talked about it. He prefers to retain his own memories of his grandfather. So, he doesn’t like hearing this. He only knew his grandfather as this kind of avuncular old chap who gave him cookies and bought him presents. He only knew Jekyll; he didn’t know Hyde.” What are his sisters’ reactions? “ My older sister read it but my two younger sisters don’t plan to read it until after my mother is gone because when you read that stuff, it is almost as if my father is in the room again and they are not ready to do this yet. Has his mother read the book? “She probably knows it exists but my mother has never been interested in my career. I think the only thing she ever read that I wrote, was a piece for Readers Digest because she got Readers Digest. No, my Mom doesn’t have any frame of reference for what I do for a living because she doesn’t really understand how you could make a living as a writer. She doesn’t understand a job where you don’t have to go to the office everyday. She has never been interested in my career as a writer. She’ll be eighty-nine in August and she lives in a nursing home. You can talk to her but she drifts in and out and has some problems with dementia. She’s been in a nursing home for a couple of years.”
SC From your description of her, your mother seems very bright
JQ She is bright but she is also very detached. She is a very bright person who is good at solving problems. When we needed to get off the project, she went back to work so that we could do that. She was good at stuff like that. But you can’t really have a conversation with my mother. She kind of disengaged from the world a long time ago. In the book, I describe a moment where the world failed her. I think that my mother, even more than my father, never really got over it when the big bands disappeared. They used to get dressed up and go to dances. Then in the 50’s, everything turned incredibly vulgar. They didn’t feel that it was their society anymore. I remember asking my mother one time, ‘When did you know when American society didn’t belong to you anymore?’ She said, ‘When I saw Elvis on the Ed Sullivan show. I knew that our moment was gone and it wasn’t coming back.’ So, she just entered into a period of nostalgia. When my parents talked about their favorite times; they never talked about us. They always talked about when they were young and used to go to see Glenn Miller. You know baby boomers have a real attachment to their children so their lives are defined by their relationship with their children. My parents’ generation didn’t have that as much. I don’t think they cared about their kids as much. I think that the Depression and the Second World War hit them so hard that they didn’t have the nurturing impulse, certainly my parents didn’t
SC I was surprised that you give your mother a pass in the book and not your father at all; particularly when she retreated to the bedroom when you and your sisters were being beaten by him
JQ I think she just didn’t know how to handle any of this stuff. I think she thought that that is what men do. That is what her father did; he beat her brother
SC In fact, your father comes across as a more sympathetic character
JQ He was sympathetic because he was an interesting man who tried to better himself. If he had lived twenty-five years later maybe he would have become a writer too. He was really bright and a really interesting guy, but dangerous. There was something wrong with him from the time he was very young. I didn’t try to find out all the details of when he was in prison in Georgia for three years for being AWOL. It doesn’t make any difference to me. I don’t care about any of that stuff. All I care about is what he did to us as children
SC What do you think it was like for your Dad when your mother told him, many times, that she didn’t love him; that had to be hard for him to deal with
JQ I could never figure out their relationship. I mean they were like creatures from another planet. That was the thing that was so strange about growing up in that house. We were always trying to imagine what a normal life would be like. When I would go to friends’ houses and their parents actually liked them, I used to be sort of spellbound. When my best friend Rob Weiss’ mother died, he changed the time of the funeral so I could attend. I had seen her three days before she died. I loved that woman because she was so nice to me. She loved her children and she loved her grandchildren in a way that is not uncommon among Jewish people
SC It is amazing that you did so well in school-growing up as you did in that environment
JQ I was born smart. I keep telling people that if I had been born dumb, I wouldn’t be writing books or attending the Dublin Literary Festival or be on the Bill Maher show. I would be collecting trash somewhere. If you are born dumb and middle class, Daddy will get you a job
SC What drove you to take the pill overdose when you were a teenager
JQ I think I was just fed up with these guys. Also, my uncle whom I had lionized when I was young, turned into this very bitter, vindictive man; he even voted for George Wallace in 1972
SC You talk about your father being jealous of you; why do you think he was jealous of you
JQ I think this is a very common trait among Irish Americans. They see it as –so, you think you are better . I think my father saw his life going down the drain. He saw that his children might get the life that he really, really wanted. He had no concept of the idea that maybe, if you played your cards right, maybe your kids would take care of you when you are an old person. My three sisters and I have taken care of my mother for a long time. None of us are particularly close to her but we have a strong sense of duty. She has four children who have been really supportive of her. My Dad could have had the same thing but he made life miserable for us. My Dad was capable of the meanest things; he didn’t come to my graduation from St. Joseph’s University. What a son of a bitch! It was all because, ‘Oh, you’re a college boy, you think you are better than me.’ Instead of saying, ‘Wow, he’s the first person from my family to graduate from college; imagine that. He saw someone else getting a life that he would have liked to have
SC Overall, how would you describe your childhood
JQ I had a very interesting childhood. If you talk to people who grew up in poor places and survive it, like Colin Powell who grew up in the South Bronx; he had a much more interesting childhood than people who grew up in the suburbs. Middle-class people shield their children from eccentrics and wacos. I saw them everywhere; these people are interesting to me
SC Were your parents interested in the Troubles in Northern Ireland
JQ No, they had their own problems. They didn’t care about Ireland; it meant nothing to them. The fascination with Ireland is a middle- class thing. My grandparents never talked about Ireland; they couldn’t wait to get away. They died really young; they had hard lives and my parents had hard lives. They never talked about it; they didn’t feel connected to Ireland. I think that whole thing about being connected to an Irish past started in the 1970’s and 1980’s. I think that when people had some money, they became interested in their ethnic background. What fascinates me most when I go to Ireland is that the Irish love writing and the Irish love words. And that is what Irish Americans have retained. Irish Americans are fantastic storytellers. Every time I go to Ireland, I am reminded that it came from here. If my ancestors were German or Russian, I would be a completely different person. I don’t have any particular connection to the country but I do have a connection to the Irish mindset: it is very mercurial and full of passion; jumping back and forth between dark and light and seeing humor in everything. I like the Irish very much
SC How did your sisters feel about your father
JQ They were afraid he was going to burn the house down because he was always drunk and always smoking. I was actually more afraid that he was going to come in and kill me. He was a dangerous man; there was something wrong with him, I think the three years he was in prison in Georgia, for going AWOL in the Army, were horrifying. He was probably brutalized by other men and so he brutalized his children
SC How about the people outside the family who thought your father was a great guy
JQ He was a charmer, ‘charming Billy.’ He had that classic ability to walk into a room and beguile everybody. He was funny and had a big smile and told great stories. He was a very convivial guy but behind closed doors he turned into a monster. He was the most interesting person that I have ever met
SC Do you have any sympathy at all for him
JQ I admire his attempts to better himself and for his attempts to clean up his act at the end of his life, but it didn’t change. He took our childhood away and that is unforgivable
SC Will you ever bury his memory completely
JQ Of course not; I look like him. I take photographs the same way he did; I just look at the camera and say. ‘just take the #### picture, ####.’ I have so many of his features, so many of his traits. He made quick decisions about everything and so do I. If I don’t like you now, I don’t like you for good. There are people that I just don’t like because I don’t like their face. I didn’t like Jimmy Carter from the first time I saw him because I hated that stupid grin
SC Was this a hard book to write
JQ From a technical point of view it was because I had never before written anything serious for a sustained length of time. Everything I had written before was funny. Emotionally, it wasn’t hard to write because I’m not a particularly emotional person; I’m a lot like my mother. People who read the book think that it must be like touching naked nerve endings; it wasn’t, I just turned it into stories. I have an emotional detachment from all that happened. To me, it’s just a very interesting story
SC How do you get to that
JQ I guess it is self-preservation and scar tissue over your heart. You say to yourself, ‘I’ve got to get through this and move on. There is no time for sentiment or for whining. I think that even as a little kid, I come across as very cunning. By the time I am eight, I am already looking for another father