Brian McDonald was a few years sober when he took a job as bartender at the renowned Elaine's restaurant on Second Avenue at 88th street in Manhattan. During his eleven years at Elaine's, he saw, served, and overheard many famous customers, from Woody Allen to Kurt Vonnegut to Mick Jaggar. He also developed a unique friendship with Elaine herself. Last Call At Elaine’s is an intimate look at the well-known and beloved restaurant, its owner, and its famous literary and luminary clientele.
At the same time, McDonald’s memoir is the deeply personal story of how a bartender became a writer, fell off the wagon and got back on, and found himself through the window of a very famous restaurant. Last Call at Elaine's is Brian McDonald's colorful and sensitively drawn memoir of drinking, serving, writing, and finding his way out from behind the bar.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From the Back Cover
“An earnest, gruff, celebrity-and-anecdote-rich memoir of the 11 years [McDonald] 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 and the despair he has suffered during periods of crippling addiction. [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.”--New York Times
“Rowdy, eccentric, a rambunctious primer of New York's hustle and bustle and rustle after dark, the book is colorful anecdotes of debaucherous nights, celebrities who fall off the wagon then climb back on, and the legendary characters who've filled this dynamic watering hole. Like when Mick Jagger wanted change for $20 for a tip and the then-bartender said, "Mr. Jagger doesn't need change," and stuck the whole 20 in the waiter's apron.”--New York Post
“A titillating tale of slinging drinks at the famed Upper East Side watering hole-slash-shrine.”-Black Book Magazine
“What a rich book this is - and you don't have to be a drinker to love Last Call at Elaine's. You may be weary of redemption stories - but this is different. Yes, there is a falling off the wagon and, ho hum, there is a climbing back on, but that is almost incidental to the larger narrative. The richness is in the writing: detailed, funny and with a certain barroom pungency. Elaine, herself, has been written about dozens of times but never with such insight, such tenderness. Brian McDonald has a sharp eye and an even sharper ear for New York after dark.”--Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes
“Elaine' restaurant has always been the classy center of a certain kind of New York City Glamour. This loving portrait of the place and its proprietor shows Elaine to be 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 to get clean, this story is as moving and compelling as the stories of the writers who made Elaine's their home away from home.”-Susan Cheever, author of American Bloomsbury and My Name is Bill
“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, author of The Good Rat: A True Story
“Last Call at Elaine’s is a grand read. If you need to find out what the famous, the great and the literati do for fun, this is your book. This is a rambunctious story full of self-deprecating humor, addiction, tragedy, outbreak, lies, rowdy nights and laughter. At times, I thought I was reading artfully written and imaginative fiction, but personal knowledge told me otherwise. Sit down, read this book, and once you start, it’s unlikely you’ll stir until you finish. There will never be a last call at Elaine’s.”--Malachy McCourt, author of A Monk Swimming
“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, 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 to telling you to."-- Christopher Kennedy Lawford, author of Symptoms of Withdrawal: A Memoir of Snapshots and Redemption
About the Author
BRIAN McDONALD was born in the Bronx and grew up in Rockland County, New York. He is a graduate of Fordham University and the Columbia School of Journalism, contributes frequently to New York City newspapers, including The New York Times, and teaches writing and journalism at several schools, including Fordham University. He is the author of the nonfiction works My Father's Gun, Indian Summer, and Safe Harbor: A Murder in Nantucket. He lives in Manhattan.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brian McDonald Just Tells The Story,
This review is from: Last Call at Elaine's: A Journey from One Side of the Bar to the Other (Hardcover)
Mr. McDonald vividly describes the unique world of Elaine's, an iconic bar and restaurant in the Big Apple. But that's not all he describes in this hard to categorize Memoir. The book is a redemption story. And it's a celebration of a place that will probably never be equaled for its longevity and its sheer glamor. In addition, Mr. McDonald has written a most sensitive and compelling portrait of Elaine Kaufman. Ms Kaufman has always been enigmatic even to the people closest to her and the people that have previously written about her. McDonald enables us to see the strength, fragility and vulnerability of this complex and enormously successful "Queen of New York." She is just human after all. However, the most significant aspect of 'Last Call at Elaine's' is the author's portrayal of his own alcoholism and the concomitant and destructive denial that all alcoholics must have in abundance to keep doing what they do. There is nothing trite, maudlin or sensational about the way McDonald describes this insidious disease. I feel richly rewarded for the sleep I lost staying up to read this book. I am glad McDonald took Elaine's advice to 'Just tell the Story.'
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
"WELL, SET 'EM UP, JOE.......",
This review is from: Last Call at Elaine's: A Journey from One Side of the Bar to the Other (Hardcover)
Remember the film The Lost Weekend, the tragic story of an alcoholic? Regrettably, this memoir reminded me of that movie as it is also, in part, a very sad story, the tale of an almost lost life, certainly a number of lost years. It is also a story of friendship as well as a love letter to Elaine Kaufman, often called "The Queen of New York City." She's the proprietress of Elaine's Restaurant, an eatery has enjoyed great fame as the place where celebs gather, thus so many names are dropped in this book that the clinks can be heard all over town.The path MacDonald would take was determined when he was young and first felt the zing of liquor in a mixture of cheap alcohol and Tang. His descent into addiction was quick and often painful. He begins his story when he was 32-years-old, had been sober for five years, and tending bar for 14 years. His definition of bartending is "a closed-end affair, a stop-gap or last resort, a profession filled with those who have run away from life or marriage, who want to stay under the IRS's radar, or who have just never fulfilled a potential." Much of that describes the author during that period. He had made unsuccessful attempts to be an actor, and a stand-up comic. His temporary sobriety was owed largely to Frank, a recovered alcoholic, who took MacDonald under his wing, and accompanied him to an AA meeting in the basement of St. Ignatius Loyola on Park Avenue. Frank called AA "the program," saying, "We're a secret society, Brian. All we're missing is the handshake." McDonald became friends with many of the program members, and he remained sober for 14 years. Woven throughout a history of his life to date the author paints a picture of Elaine, a large woman with a salty tongue and a hidden heart of gold given to wearing tent-like dresses and greeting A-List customers with either a warm hug and a wide smile or a baleful stare because of some infraction, such as eating at another restaurant. One would think they'd eat elsewhere often as the food at Elaine's is described as pretty bad. Nonetheless, McDonald treats us to a parade of anecdotes re Woody Allen, Mick Jaggar, Patty Lupone, and umpteen others. This memoir ends rather abruptly, leaving us to wonder what McDonald plans for the future. At one point when he tells Elaine of his ambition to become a writer, he worries that he cannot spell. She tells him not to worry because there are editors who do that. Regrettably, further editing is needed for this title - obvious mistakes such as "You had wait until" and "As the years when by" certainly distract. Shouldn't a phrase reading "the horrible hangovers that had come back in full horror" been red inked? Having said that the author does have a sharp eye for description, and writes with unflinching honesty. The story he tells comes from his heart. - Gail Cooke
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Last Call at Elaine's: A Journey from One Side of the Bar to the Other,
By mcdonaldfan (nyc, ny usa) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Last Call at Elaine's: A Journey from One Side of the Bar to the Other (Hardcover)
A must read for any New Yorker - surely you know one, or have been one yourself.
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IT WAS TWO O'CLOCK in the morning one night in early October 1986 when I looked into my tip cup and saw six crumpled dollar bills. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
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New York City, Red Hook, New Jersey, Second Avenue, Pearl River, Bobby Zarem, George Plimpton, Bill Hughes, Daily News, Woody Allen, Fifth Avenue, Park Avenue, Pete Hamill, Rockland County, Madison Avenue, Jackie Gleason, Washington Heights, Times Square, John Miller, South Beach, East River, Jack Maple, Ivy League, New Year's Eve, Dave Smith Browse Sample Pages:
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