Joe Queenan

Joe Queenan has been avoiding indulging in self-pity his entire life। 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. Queenan was blessed with a sheer force of will and a ferocious desire to be noticed that prompted him to find a way out। He found other paternal and maternal figures to show him the way: teachers, nuns, uncles, priests and local merchants who let him work in their stores.

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। 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 bravely but cautiously drops the cool, sarcastic, funnyman persona in this shocking new memoir and looks back on his horrific childhood in Philadelphia. 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.