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The Last Fine Time
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."
209 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
10 people are currently reading
216 people want to read
About the author
Verlyn Klinkenborg
44 books114 followersVerlyn Klinkenborg is a member of the editorial board of The New York Times. His previous books include Making Hay, The Last Fine Time, and The Rural Life. He lives in upstate New York.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
July 3, 2014
"The Last Fine Time" has actually been sitting in my To Read pile for 3 years, ever since I read about in one of Peter Egan's essays, which are generally about motorcycles but which frequently touch on cool books and places that Egan has encountered. A few days ago, I was in the mood to read something different so I plucked it out of the pile and opened it up....
It struck me as I was reading The Last Fine Time that some books are written simply, like movies. "First this happened then that happened and finally this big thing happened." That isn't too surprising, given the hectic, action-oriented nature of our culture these days.
But a lot of the books I enjoy are written as if for a different medium. For example, Virginia Woolf crafted "To The Lighthouse" and to read it you have to follow her brush strokes as they swirl around a sentence, like a painter placing a dollop of oil paint onto a painting and moving bits of it around an area, cajoling it into being part of a broader picture. The Last Fine Time is a little like that and also a little like an artfully framed photograph from the mid-1950s, from the time period that this book primarily views. This is a very well-written and enjoyable book!
In fact, I find it surprising that Verlyn Klinkenborg is not from Western New York because this book reads in many ways like a love letter to the area. Certainly it also shows the warts in Buffalo/Niagara's portrait but it is clearly written with the intention of evoking a feeling of warmth and affection for the area and for many of the people who have lived there.
And I am profoundly grateful for this. I grew up in that area, with my life intersecting with some of the time period covered in Last Fine Time, although I was never actually near George & Eddie's. I was living in Niagara Falls and not Buffalo and I was about 10 when the bar was sold and then condemned.
But the author nailed so many things about living the Buffalo area that it is uncanny. The ethnic communities and their experience. What a snowstorm in Buffalo is like. The whole boomtown mentality, fading after the second world war as Buffalo tried desperately to reinvent itself. Having fish fry on Friday. The wildness of the Niagara River.
Reading this book brought up a lot of old feelings and impressions for me. It's as if, somehow, an author selected some classic photographs from the area's golden era and, through some sort of alchemy, breathed life into the photos so that they became motion pictures of a place that was a great place to grow up and which I still miss.
Going forward, this will be my go-to book for revisiting places that I remember and times that I can only imagine.
It struck me as I was reading The Last Fine Time that some books are written simply, like movies. "First this happened then that happened and finally this big thing happened." That isn't too surprising, given the hectic, action-oriented nature of our culture these days.
But a lot of the books I enjoy are written as if for a different medium. For example, Virginia Woolf crafted "To The Lighthouse" and to read it you have to follow her brush strokes as they swirl around a sentence, like a painter placing a dollop of oil paint onto a painting and moving bits of it around an area, cajoling it into being part of a broader picture. The Last Fine Time is a little like that and also a little like an artfully framed photograph from the mid-1950s, from the time period that this book primarily views. This is a very well-written and enjoyable book!
In fact, I find it surprising that Verlyn Klinkenborg is not from Western New York because this book reads in many ways like a love letter to the area. Certainly it also shows the warts in Buffalo/Niagara's portrait but it is clearly written with the intention of evoking a feeling of warmth and affection for the area and for many of the people who have lived there.
And I am profoundly grateful for this. I grew up in that area, with my life intersecting with some of the time period covered in Last Fine Time, although I was never actually near George & Eddie's. I was living in Niagara Falls and not Buffalo and I was about 10 when the bar was sold and then condemned.
But the author nailed so many things about living the Buffalo area that it is uncanny. The ethnic communities and their experience. What a snowstorm in Buffalo is like. The whole boomtown mentality, fading after the second world war as Buffalo tried desperately to reinvent itself. Having fish fry on Friday. The wildness of the Niagara River.
Reading this book brought up a lot of old feelings and impressions for me. It's as if, somehow, an author selected some classic photographs from the area's golden era and, through some sort of alchemy, breathed life into the photos so that they became motion pictures of a place that was a great place to grow up and which I still miss.
Going forward, this will be my go-to book for revisiting places that I remember and times that I can only imagine.
May 6, 2021
I bought this book to learn about Buffalo. I hope to visit the Burchfield-Penny museum one day. Oh, and the Albright Knox and the campus of Roycroft. I expected to read about a bar in the ‘50’s but got so much more. Along with a memoir about his in-laws bar, I was rewarded with a much larger picture of the birth of Buffalo and subsequent growth and decay. Musing about the author’s talent, I looked him up. Whoa, Klinkenborg is certainly the author I thought he might be.
June 1, 2019
I read this a few years ago.It is non-fiction abt the East side of Buffalo,NY during the 40's,50's and slow demise in the 1960's. The old bars and restaurants and shops.My Gran grew up in this neighborhood and lived in it from 1897-1988.I spent many happy memories there.It was always predominantly Polish and German Neighborhood. The details were so vivid that I swear I could smell the old familiar foods cooking and hear the laughter,etc.It brought back so many memories of a once lovely and proud neighborhood. I give it as gifts for former Buffalonians when I can. Memorable and filled with memories of times long gone.
July 16, 2012
I went to college in Buffalo during the last years that this book encompasses. Since I was a student, my life and the lives of the people written about in The Last Fine Time didn't really overlap. The book is a well written remembrance of a time and a milieu that have passed and exist only in the memories of those who lived it and are still alive. For that reason, it's a good thing that Verlyn Klinkenborg mined those memories and wrote this book, and that it's available for anyone who takes the time to read it. I'm glad that I did.
January 11, 2026
Well written study of the Polish community in Buffalo using the story of the Wenzek family.
August 13, 2008
This is sort of a book-length prose poem that happens to be about a real person, place, and time. I have no idea how Klinkenborg hit upon the idea of writing about Eddie Wenzek and his bar, but it works...except that one is never given a particular reason why this book is about Eddie Wenzek and his bar. Where a more straightforward work of nonfiction would introduce the subject and explain why we should be interested, Klinkenborg introduces the subject by describing how snow falls in Buffalo. It's all rather beautifully done, and touches upon some really big ideas--I found the chapter about the atomic bomb especially memorable:
"If, like President Truman, one thanked God 'that it has come to us instead of to our enemies,' one recognized that at a time of dire need God had given the bomb to the Right Country--a nation of just motives and purity of heart. But was that providential argument strengthened or weakened when the Right Country chose to drop it?"
--but it wasn't until the very end that I felt this was a story, and then only because it had an ending. It's a poignant ending, though. This and Timothy, by the same author, both quite puzzled me, but I suspect I'll come back to his work sometime; I'm still trying to figure it out.
"If, like President Truman, one thanked God 'that it has come to us instead of to our enemies,' one recognized that at a time of dire need God had given the bomb to the Right Country--a nation of just motives and purity of heart. But was that providential argument strengthened or weakened when the Right Country chose to drop it?"
--but it wasn't until the very end that I felt this was a story, and then only because it had an ending. It's a poignant ending, though. This and Timothy, by the same author, both quite puzzled me, but I suspect I'll come back to his work sometime; I'm still trying to figure it out.
Want to read
January 9, 2008have been "reading" this since 2005...
June 28, 2017
I'm at sixes and sevens on this one. It's a work of non-fiction that reads like literary fiction somehow. The author chronicles his father-in-law and grandfather-in-law's "life: story in Buffalo through the turn of the last century until the early 1980s. It's interesting for a native Buffalonian to read the names and places of days gone by. In places the book is very well-written and fascinating. In other places, it's ponderous and over-written, and easy to skim past. I read that the author received NEA funding to work on the book, so it's not so much a memoir of family love than it was an academic pursuit. If you enjoy Buffalo and stories of the East Side, definitely read it. If you embrace today's re-emerging Buffalo and will be turned off by his vague and ominous predictions, leave this one the shelf where it was languished since 1991.
August 3, 2021
A very good read that ties in the history of a small tavern on Buffalo's East Side with the history of Polish immigrants to America and the changing demographics of the neighborhood. The book can ramble a little bit, but I think it does a good job of addressing a wide range of Buffalo history through the lens of an average bar and its owners.
March 16, 2023
Read this many years ago. One of the finest short novels I've read. Beautiful prose -- not a wasted sentence. And easily the finest novel about Buffalo NY. It treads that line between poetry and prose.
August 6, 2023
I wanted to read about Buffalo history. This book tells about drinking in a Polish neighborhood in East Buffalo from which the Polish immigrants were forced to move out. Did not like the long winded sentences, not easy to follow. Recognized many street names and surrounding places.
December 9, 2025
A time and place in a Buffalo neighborhood. Well researched, great name dropping of streets, businesses, etc.
July 4, 2011
The Last Fine Time is about a bar called George & Eddie's, which was an institution on the east side of Buffalo for 23 years, from 1947-1970. My grandparents on my father's side were regular customers, and good friends with the owner, Eddie Wenzek (they are twice mentioned by name in the book). As a child, my father spent a lot of time playing the bar's back room while his parents and their friends caught up and played pool in the main room.
The book is written in an overly schmaltzy tone that gets sentimental over literally every singly aspect of working and middle class life in the late 1940's and early 1950's Rust Belt. Also, it is overwritten - one adjective rarely suffices when three could be used; snow doesn't fall, it falls on the rooftops, well-kept yards, brims of fedora hats, the dye and coke and steel factories, the freight train cars carrying pig iron up from Pittsburgh . . . and on and on. The East Side wasn't full of Polish-American families -- oh no, that would be too simple. Instead, it was inhabitted by families with names like Chlebowy, Switula, Oleksiak, Kuzniarck, Weclowski, Zajak, Kiffman, Augustyniak, Kuberacka, Wojtowicz . . . and on like that for seven - SEVEN!! - lines of text. He does the same thing for other . . . categories of stuff, including neighborhood business, regular customers, etc. It is tiring. Stop writing, Verlyn. Just stop. We get it.
The book interested me, because it was about my grandparents's close friends, and, in equal measure, about my city, when it was still in its prime, and one of the largest cities in the country. But I don't see much reason why anybody who doesn't have a deep connection to the City of Buffalo would want to read it.
The book is written in an overly schmaltzy tone that gets sentimental over literally every singly aspect of working and middle class life in the late 1940's and early 1950's Rust Belt. Also, it is overwritten - one adjective rarely suffices when three could be used; snow doesn't fall, it falls on the rooftops, well-kept yards, brims of fedora hats, the dye and coke and steel factories, the freight train cars carrying pig iron up from Pittsburgh . . . and on and on. The East Side wasn't full of Polish-American families -- oh no, that would be too simple. Instead, it was inhabitted by families with names like Chlebowy, Switula, Oleksiak, Kuzniarck, Weclowski, Zajak, Kiffman, Augustyniak, Kuberacka, Wojtowicz . . . and on like that for seven - SEVEN!! - lines of text. He does the same thing for other . . . categories of stuff, including neighborhood business, regular customers, etc. It is tiring. Stop writing, Verlyn. Just stop. We get it.
The book interested me, because it was about my grandparents's close friends, and, in equal measure, about my city, when it was still in its prime, and one of the largest cities in the country. But I don't see much reason why anybody who doesn't have a deep connection to the City of Buffalo would want to read it.
January 5, 2012
I heard so many good things I expected to love this book and can't wonder if my luke warm reaction was the result of too much build up. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone unfamiliar with Buffalo, NY, though I would for locals with a couple of caveats. Much of the book's charm is the incessant name dropping (to the point of distraction) of local landmarks, foods and long defunct businesses. While such a stroll down our community memory lane will appeal to anyone from Buffalo, the greatest challenge I found was a lack of a real narrative. It seemed to me to be neither history nor memoir, rather a verbal painting of what Buffalo, particularly the polish community in the east side, felt like to residents with more emphasis on capturing and conveying local flavor then on readability.
The lengths the author goes to document local norms, customs and businesses are impressive and he does so while intermingling the history of one local family. After a couple chapters, the author makes a jump to a more traditional historical narrative of the city's history and then jump's back to the focus on the post WWII years, again through the lens of a family.
In spite of the above criticism, the author's gift for prose is substantial and that shines through in some of the descriptions and analogies of Buffalo's rise and decline (i.e. drawing out the irony of Fillmore's optimistic comparison's of Buffalo's rise to the past's great center's of learning and culture such as Vienna and Alexandria). Distractions and reservations aside, I enjoyed the book and think anyone who's lived in Buffalo or is familiar with the city and it's customs would find it charming.
The lengths the author goes to document local norms, customs and businesses are impressive and he does so while intermingling the history of one local family. After a couple chapters, the author makes a jump to a more traditional historical narrative of the city's history and then jump's back to the focus on the post WWII years, again through the lens of a family.
In spite of the above criticism, the author's gift for prose is substantial and that shines through in some of the descriptions and analogies of Buffalo's rise and decline (i.e. drawing out the irony of Fillmore's optimistic comparison's of Buffalo's rise to the past's great center's of learning and culture such as Vienna and Alexandria). Distractions and reservations aside, I enjoyed the book and think anyone who's lived in Buffalo or is familiar with the city and it's customs would find it charming.
September 22, 2012
My dad has a minor obsession with this book, which comes as close to depicting his upbringing as most anything I will ever come across. I found the reading itself a bit slow going, partly because my dad had already told me much of the plot points long before I had read it so I was a bit impatient. That said, there were a few descriptions of the blue collar worker experience in the first half of the 20th century that really hit home for me and have helped my frame of reference for years to come. When I drove along the Ohio River with my dad heading east/north from Pittsburgh, the small towns and their bars echoed what this book talked about, both in terms of the standard experience, but also in terms of the desire of the family in this book to build a state-of-the-art postwar establishment.
June 4, 2007
A friend gave me this book because she knows I love my Buffalo roots. It's an account of Buffalo's boom and fall around the '40s, through the experience of one central character - bar owner Eddie Wenzek - and his family. It's interesting in that it gives a lot of neat information about The Buff, mentioning neighborhoods and places that I know. I enjoyed thinking about my grandparents going to the entertainment venues Klinkenborg lists, back in their heyday. All the same, you could cut out about 2/3 of Klinkenborg's flowery prose (it's stuffed with what my high school English teacher called "10-point words") and you'd still get the same story.
October 21, 2011
A remarkable sustained reverie on a time and a place--George and Eddie's in Buffalo, NY circa 1947--that no longer exists but that lives on in Klinkenborg's brilliant prose. At times Klinkenborg wanders a little too far afield and his energy seems to flag, but when he comes back to Eddie and his father Tom and the bar itself, all is well again, and by the end, I wanted nothing more than a chance to have one last drink with Eddie as together we watch the evening sun set over the Thruway on-ramp behind his house. Thanks to my friend and former high school English teacher, Bill Grogan for this one!
January 8, 2012
One of my all-time favorite books. I was born in a Polish neighborhood of Milwaukee, and though we moved to the suburbs when I was very young, we returned often to places much like the Buffalo eating/drinking establishment described by Klinkenborg in this book. To my eyes, ears and memory, Klingenborg perfectly captures a time and place that I have carried with me all my life. Absolutely wonderful. Highly recommended for anyone of Polish-American heritage, or for that matter, for anyone who grew up in places like Buffalo, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Chicago.
July 28, 2011
This is a gentle and delightful community history of Buffalo's East Side Polish community in the period after WW2, told through the lives of people who frequent a restaurant-come-bar. It is a community memoir of hope and loss, of change and what was, written in a poetic and engaging style. Quite gorgeous.
August 17, 2013
Static images and historical digressions, minutely described in stately sentences - Klinkenborg covers nearly a century's worth of activity without you ever realizing that a minute has passed. And isn't that the way that time works? Smart and nostalgic. Less about the family, and more about the decline of Buffalo. This one reminded me how much I love this stinkin' town - nay, ache for it.
December 25, 2025
Didn't love it as much the second time. Thoroughly enjoyed the sections that related to George and Eddie's bar and the neighborhood around it, although it takes place the year I was born but is written in the present tense. Not so much the rest.
June 28, 2007
a wonderful history about a family and bar in the unplucked gem of a city, buffalo, new york.
June 22, 2017
Lovely meditative read about Buffalo, urban flight, emigration, and family. Especially enjoyable because I have family from Buffalo.
February 25, 2011
Klinkenborg's writing is indulgent; intimate. It is your uncle telling you a story.
February 14, 2013
Great book about the Buffalo of the past.
Read
August 8, 2016I love Klinkenborg when he's writing about dusk on the farm with the horses shuffling in their fields. This book? I just couldn't get into it.
January 27, 2016
Uneven account of a working-class bar in Buffalo, just after WWII. Has its moments, just not enough of them.
May 25, 2013
Beautiful.
Read
October 18, 2018lovely, bittersweet story of buffalo and america and the world...before and after the second world war...some passages are too thick in words for ease of reading but generally it's beautiful and evocative.
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews