The Last Fine Time [Paperback]

Verlyn Klinkenborg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2004

By turns, an elegy, a celebration, and a social history, The Last Fine Time is a tour de force of lyrical style. Verlyn Klinkenborg chronicles the life of a family-owned restaurant in Buffalo, New York, from its days as a prewar Polish tavern to its reincarnation as George & Eddie's, a swank nightspot serving highballs and French-fried shrimp to a generation of optimistic and prosperous Americans. In the inevitable dimming of the neon sign outside the restaurant, we see both the passing of an old world way of life and the end to the postwar exuberance that was Eddie Wenzek's "last fine time."

(20051101)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From its deft first sentence ("Snow begins as a rumor in Buffalo, New York"), this detailed, wistfully affectionate re-creation of the immigrant experience clarifies the human cost of the disappearance of once-distinctive ethnic neighborhoods. Klinkenborg ( Making Hay ) tells the story of a tavern in Polish-American East Buffalo that his father-in-law, Eddie Wenzek, inherited in 1947 at age 27. Originally purchased by his father in 1922 during Prohibition, the workingman's bar was transformed by Eddie into a fashionable late-night spot. The flowing narrative evokes a time and place where streetcars clattered, where advertising had not yet molded a consumerist culture in a postwar America "beating its swords into appliances." The Wenzels sold the tavern in 1970 and moved to the suburbs. Klinkenborg links the bar's fortunes to the gradual erosion of Buffalo's sense of destiny, "a sad tale of unknotting."
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Klinkenborg ( Making Hay, Lyons & Burford, 1986) has written the history of a bar that flourished on the East Side of Buffalo from the 1920s to 1970. He also portrays two generations of the Wenzek family, the Polish Americans who ran and lived above "George and Eddie's" until the bar closed down. Yet, his incredibly moving book is much more than the history of a declining neighborhood bar and a city in transition. Klinkenborg's writing is superb; his sensitivity to the story is extraordinary; and his ability to capture a watershed period in the transition of American cities in one tiny institution like "George and Eddie's" is unique. Recommended for most public and academic libraries for its historical and sociological insights. This book deserves a wide readership.
- Anne H. Sullivan, Tompkins Cortland Community Coll. Lib., Dryden, N.Y.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (April 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226443353
• ISBN-13: 978-0226443355
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #809,716 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A touching story about a truly American place, November 7, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Last Fine Time (Paperback)

It has become almost cliche to say that modern writers make a character of the settings of their novels. But in this book, the author truly vitalizes Buffalo, N.Y. Through the novelized true story of his wife's Polish immigrant parents and details plucked from two centuries of municipal history, he weaves a story about a place that is arguably the most American of cities. Situated on a Great Lake, with the belching prosperity of smokestacks and a miraculous curtain of snow as backdrops, he tells the story of a family that finds a home in industrial America. Gritty urban scenes give way to a confrontation between the races which ends in a flight to the suburbs. In "The Last Fine Time" we find the story of a family, and of a once-great city, that is a fable about American life. He answers the question of how, in 100 years, puritanical farmers became the empowered factory workers that became alienated, shell-shocked suburbanites on the edge of the 21st century.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Work About A Special and Forgotten Place and Time, March 2, 2004

By 

T. Rothrock "irgtom" (Centennial, Colorado USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Last Fine Time (Paperback)

I'm happy to see this fine work back in print. I'd strongly recommend it to anyone with an interest in post WWII America; the contributions of the working class; the decline in the U.S. industrial economy; the urban to suburban shift or anyone with an appreciation of what a thriving place Buffalo was in the post WWII period. Klinkenborg does a masterful job of weaving all of these themes together and from this reader's standpoint it's as if he was there. get your copy before it disappears from print again!

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A battered queen, January 17, 2002

By 

T. Thompson "tthomp1182" (Minneapolis, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Last Fine Time (Paperback)

This is the best book ever written about Buffalo, the best book, fiction or nonfiction, that uses Buffalo as background. The decline of a proud city, enabled by its matter of fact certainty about destiny and greatness, is recounted with intelligence and a generous style. The sadness of change is inescapable, but people's memories, especially those of Polish Americans, create a light that still shines in the city's shadows.