The Starting Gate: A Cocktail of Working, Drinking, Family, and Zen - Softcover

Mullin, Paul A

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0997074736 ISBN 13: 9780997074734

Publisher: Sweet Air Publishing, 2016

Synopsis

In thirteen chapters Paul Mullin mixes up a potent cocktail of working, drinking, family and Zen.It all starts—where else?—at the Starting Gate: a country bar in Northern Maryland where the author first started working at the age of thirteen, and where his boss once shot a man dead for trying to rob the local drug store. Other jobs follow, like when he works as the only white kid on an all black labor crew at the National Archives, or the years he spends as a high-rise window cleaner in Manhattan. An essential primer for anyone interested in Zen and/or cocktails, or for anyone who enjoys a good story as if told from the next barstool over....I’m at the Starting Gate scooping ice. When this shopping cart is full I’m gonna wheel it through the bar and through the liquor store and fill the bin in the parking lot. I know what I am supposed to be doing and I am doing it. I am happy....***“You? . . . You’re a Zen Buddhist?”“Yes.”“You are?”“Yes.”“Mr. Angry Pants? Mr. Be-Careful-of-Daddy’s-Martini? Mr. Picks-a-Fight-with-You-Cuz-He-Likes-You? . . . You’re a Zen Buddhist?”“Yes.”

About this title

About the Author

Paul Mullin is a playwright, screenwriter, poet, and teacher, recognized by Seattle's The Stranger as a “Theater Genius”. His plays have been produced across the U.S., exploring subjects ranging from personal nuclear catastrophe to the uncelebrated underbelly of American History. He lives with his wife and two sons in Seattle. Go to www.paulmulllin.org to learn more about Paul Mullin’s works and ideas.

Review

Paul Mullin enters sacred territory in American Letters, the Temple of the Tavern wherein both grace and alcohol are dispensed. Like its successful predecessors, FALLING THROUGH THE EARTH, THE LIARS CLUB, and THE TENDER BAR. Mullin s entertaining memoir is an attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable, to explain the mystery of the now with a Drunkard s Walk through his past of hard manual labor, art, and Zen Buddhism. It s funny and moving, and Mullin s chapter on how to properly appreciate a bar should be required reading for all those coming of age. --Robert Schenkkan, Tony Award-winning author of All the Way

Playwright Paul Mullin deploys his gift for vivid storytelling in this lively memoir of work, play and apprentice barkeeping. --Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Do you want to know how to behave in a bar? Do you want to know how to live? Maybe they're not so different. Paul Mullin finds a real honor and wisdom in the messy practice of a life, and he makes me wish I too had learned how to work as a kid at a little country tavern in Maryland called the Starting Gate even on Taco Night. How am I suddenly nostalgic for a life that wasn't even my own? --Tom Nissley, Jeopardy Champion and author of A Reader s Book of Days

Edition details

• Publisher: Sweet Air Publishing
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0997074736
• ISBN 13: 9780997074734
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 276