The Last Fine Time - Softcover

Klinkenborg, Verlyn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226443353 ISBN 13: 9780226443355

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2004

Synopsis

The Last Fine Time The chronicle of a family-owned restaurant in Buffalo, this book recalls the pre-war days when 'George and Eddie's' was a Polish tavern, through the swinging forties when it became a swank nightspot, to its eventual demise amid the changing social scene of modern America.

About this title

Review:

"[Klinkenborg] has wrapped a profound social history around, of all things, a family-owned taproom in Buffalo, NY. Researching both the city and the family . . . Klinkenborg sensitively addresses the shifts in consciousness with passing generations. Men and women born during the baby-boom years will recognize their own parents in this poignant social portrait."--Joseph F. Keppler "Seattle Times "

"[A] lovingly poetic and gitty portrait of his father-in-law's bar just outside Buffalo, before its death by thoroughway and sprawl."--Reamy Jansen"Bloomsbury Review" (11/01/2005)

"The Wenzeks' history joins what is finally the great American story, that of how the old world came to, and changed, the new. It's a worthy subject for a writer of Klinkenborg's talent, and he does it justice."--Robert Wilson "USA Today "

"Brings an era to life. . . . All at once, a small, bygone portion of America becomes so real that we seem to be not so much reading about it as drawing it forth from our own memories."
--Anne Tyler "Boston Globe "

"Wittily lyrical. . . . The shining prose of The Last Fine Time radiates both in space and in time."
--Christopher Lehmann-Haupt "New York Times "

The Wenzeks history joins what is finally the great American story, that of how the old world came to, and changed, the new. It s a worthy subject for a writer of Klinkenborg s talent, and he does it justice. --Robert Wilson "USA Today ""

[Klinkenborg] has wrapped a profound social history around, of all things, a family-owned taproom in Buffalo, NY. Researching both the city and the family . . . Klinkenborg sensitively addresses the shifts in consciousness with passing generations. Men and women born during the baby-boom years will recognize their own parents in this poignant social portrait. --Joseph F. Keppler "Seattle Times ""

Synopsis:

Verlyn Klinkenborg's The Last Fine Time sensitively chronicles the life of a family-owned restaurant in Buffalo, New York, from its days before WWII as a Polish tavern to 1947, when it became a swank nightspot serving highballs and Frenchfried shrimp to a generation of servicemen. In the inevitable disappearance of George & Eddie's, as narrated by Klinkenborg, we see the passing of both an Old World way of life and the end of the postwar exuberance that was Eddie Wenzek's "last fine time." A loving portrait of an era and place, The Last Fine Time is, by turns, an elegy, a celebration, a social history, and a tour de force of lyrical style.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0226443353
• ISBN 13: 9780226443355
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 216