Vendor
	Foundry Claire Harris
Original language
English
Categories
Memoirs

TWO AND TWO

Rafe Bartholomew

McSorley’s, My Dad, and Me

TWO AND TWO is a memoir of place--both a bar and a city--but also of the community of people who make up one of the last vestiges of a world that is quickly vanishing, and a look inside a father-son relationship that asks questions about living up to our fathers' expectations, following in their footsteps, and growing up.

McSorley's Old Ale House has been serving light and dark ale in New York City's East Village since 1854. Although a Supreme Court ruling forced them to allow women inside in the 1970s, many of the bar's quirks have been constant for over a century, down to the newspaper-covered walls, Houdini's handcuffs on display, the raw onions, and its sawdust-strewn floors.

But it's not just the decorations and attitude that stayed the same, it's the people who work and drink there. Rafe Bartholomew's father has been a bartender there for 40 years, and since he was a young boy, Rafe has considered the bar a second home, doing odd jobs and chores for the staff until he was old enough to start slinging ales himself. It became the place he and his dad mourned his mom, and it remains the place in which they're closest. The stories that he has from his years at McSorley's--and the stories he heard from his father--are touching, humorous, crude, moving, and always authentically New York.

Rafe Bartholomew is the author of Pacific Rims. His writing has appeared in Grantland, Slate, The New York Times, the Chicago Reader, Deadspin and other leading online and print publications. His stories have twice been honored in the Best American Sports Writing series.

Available products
Book Published 2017-05-09 by Little, Brown
Book Published 2017-05-09 by Little, Brown

Comments

There is no bar in New York City--perhaps even all of America--with as much history as McSorley's Old Ale House.... but for former Grantland editor Bartholomew, McSorley's was just home... The author expertly weaves together entertaining stories from his nights behind the bar... with more poignant moments between father and son.... Bartholomew does both his father and McSorley's proud with this touching, redolent memoir.

Rafe's like a brother to me. So to read this book is to discover a childhood I never knew he had (never knew any kid could have!) and a dad I can't wait to meet. Rafe presents both with enviable, high-definition affection. This is a biography of a father and the bar that became part of his soul. It's a memoir of a son the bar co-parented. It's history of New York City and a sly, considered essay on masculinity. It's a book quietly about a mythic America that simultaneously never really existed yet, obviously, totally did. Rafe's writing, his memories, his sensitivity and sweetness made me laugh. They moved me. In my years living in New York, I never thought of a bar like McSorley's as a bar for me. The hefty beauty and lasting surprise of this book is how it reminds me over and over that I was probably - maybe certainly - wrong.

Rafe Bartholomew has written a smart, moving book for the inner New Yorker (and inner barfly) in all of us. His father-not to mention Old John McSorley himself-should be damned proud.

This is more than a story about a famous speakeasy where, for the price of a beer, you can still sit at the same tables where great writers like Joseph Mitchell, Eugene O'Neill, and e.e. Cummings once sat and ruminated. This is a story about a father and son, both of whom toiled for years amidst the ghosts a hundred years past, when a group of hard working Irish Americans created one of New York's greatest institutions with nothing more than sweat, beer, liverwurst sandwiches, and an occasional punch in the nose to all spoilers and bullies."Many a day I have sat in McSorley's amidst the sawdust and beer and said to myself, 'You'd have to be a child of this place to make these ghosts speak.' And that is exactly what Rafe Bartholomew is. His is the voice of ages, the shouts of thousands of fireman, cops, soldiers, drunks, bums, wayfarers, liars, and good souls whose hard luck brought them to McSorley's, and whose good spirit still reign over the place. He hoists this wonderful piece of Americana into the air with all the humor, joy, humility and love that it deserves.

For "anyone interested in the city, beer, or the infinitely mutable ideal of 'Old New York.'"

McSorley's Old Ale House had been a Manhattan legend for more than 100 years when the author's father was hired on to work the taps. ....The nostalgia-drenched memoir makes us want to revisit the joint.

A big-hearted memoir of a lifelong romance with New York City's oldest (continuously operating) saloon... a watering hole for artists, politicians, and oddballs, a storehouse of oral tradition passed through generations of staff... [Bartholomew's] portrayal of the rough humor and blue-collar warmth feels completely earned.

Few bars in America are as storied as New York's McSorley's Old Ale House, which dates back to 1854. No matter if you've had the pleasure of enjoying a pint of its signature dark beer or not, you'll enjoy Rafe Bartholomew's memoir of his experience working at the establishment alongside his father.

In Two and Two, Rafe Bartholomew has not just lovingly crafted an homage to a singular American place of drink, but also given us a steady look into the intense realm of father and son. This memoir pulses with uncommon talent.