Customer Reviews

The Last Fine Time

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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!

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.

The story of a Polish-American family running a business at Sycamore and Herman Streets, Buffalo, NY in 1947. A brilliantly written record of time and place, describing the unprecedented cultural transformation of Post WW II America. Probably one of my 10 favorite books I've ever written.

As many of the other comments have noted, this is, overall, a beautifully written book. There is a particularly sharp sequence describing how Eddie--a young, successful, good-looking, 2nd generation Polish pub owner--was seen by the east Buffalo community as a type of fulfillment of the immigrant dream (even though, as they lamented, he did not speak the mother tongue). Klinkenborg's reverie on the matter is masterful, as his roving eye and fine ear cherry-pick details out of this largely imagined past, telling how all the mothers and daughters were eager to put their unmarried daughters on display whenever the promising young man came around.

I wish the famous "decline" of Buffalo, however, had been as well-dramatized. We do get one great chapter comparing the era to a man with one pant leg stuck in his sock--a little disheveled, trying its best to maintain appearances, secretly somehow aware of the crash that was just around the corner (the image of Niagara Falls is used similarly, as a metaphor for lurking doom, and even a certain nihilism: the Niagara River's waters flow past Buffalo, and in a sense they carry a part of Buffalo into a white abyss every second of every day). These images are wonderful as far as they go, but there must be an interesting story there to tell, about how the old Polish and young black communities struggled to co-exist on the East Side. All this--including the race riots on Buffalo's East side in the late 60s--is glossed over in a few pages. Or maybe the Poles and the blacks didn't "struggle" so much to co-exist at all: maybe there was simple hatred all around. One gets the sense reading the brief treatment of the subject that there was much about Eddie's feelings that could not be said with the decorum with which Klinkenborg feels at ease (Eddie is the author's real-life father-in-law).

This rich story is a tapastry of who we are as a nation. It is our history. This book can teach us a lot about how to make our cities live again.

I started to (re-)read this book just one day before the untimely death of Tim Russert, which only made it more poignant.
I was born in that very section of Buffalo myself (near Williams St. and S. Ogden - my mother was born on Lovejoy in the Sloan neighborhood), in the '50s, close enough to the era that I recognize the author got it exactly right. My father could have been Eddie, and his father, a Polish immigrant, could have been Tom, so to me this book is more than just a history.

And from the very first line - "Snow starts as a rumor in Buffalo..." - to the end, it told honest truths.

I love this book.The author writes this story as if he lived this life in Buffalo's Polonia neighborhood.I have fond memories of this neighborhood and he just has the "feeling" for the neighborhood.He pays homage to those that built the neighborhood into the strong,safe hardworking neighborhood it used to be.If you have any connection to Buffalo, NY read this book.If you have any German or Polish ancestors that lived in Buffalo,NY READ THIS BOOK. It is all gone now,nothing but a gang and drug infested war zone. So very sad to see what so many built out of sweat and hard work is just obliterated from the earth.Well written and worth the time to read! Love this book.

Nowhere have I read a better, more poetic, or more accurate description of a Western New York snowfall than in the opening pages of The Last Fine Time. Although the book gets somewhat bogged down in the generations, like a car gets bogged down slogging through a few feet of freshly fallen snow, and the ending becomes a sad metaphor for the downfall of a city once called (before Paris) the City of Light, this opening is a brilliant handful of pages worth the price of the whole book.

Klinkenborg has written an entertaining look back at the glory days of Buffalo's old Polish east side neighborhood through the eyes of Eddie Wenzek, the son of Polish immigrants, and owner of George and Eddie's at 722 Sycamore Street. There were rollicking good times to be had at the tavern with great food, highballs, music, and socializing before the age of television.

Alas, in a few years the Poles fled to the suburb of Cheektowaga, leaving their neighborhood with its corner bars and mammoth churches behind. Drive down Sycamore Street today, if you dare, and at #722 you'll find a glass-strewn, vacant lot.

Great book; a look at the journey from immigrant to American from a Polish-American perspective.