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Episode 516: Tom Junod Wrote One of the Best Memoirs You’ll Ever Read
587 Plays3 days ago
"A book is not a long magazine article, and it took me a long, long time to understand that, to even understand what it means. It's something that you can say, but you have to live it to understand it," says Tom Junod, author of the memoir In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to be a Man.
Wow, look who visited the digital CNF Pod HQ: It’s Tom Junod.
Listen, I don’t have all day to sing the praises and list the back-of-the-baseball-card details of Tom’s illustrious career writing for GQ, Esquire, and ESPN. He’s a two-time winner of the National Magazine Award. His piece in Esquire titled The Falling Man is a re-read for many of us around 9/11 and it takes a meditative and reportorial look at the man who had not chosen his fate, but appeared to embrace it. Tom wrote the iconic profile of Fred Rodgers that was turned a movie starring Tom Hanks. In many ways, so much of Tom’s work is writing about father figures, which of course brings us to the ultimate: In The Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to be a Man, a memoir about his father. It’s published by Double Day.
Tom can be found on Instagram @tom_junod and on the Facebooks and stuff. Google his work to read wildly ambitious stories from that particularly crazy era that was pre-internet magazine culture. Dude was in a watch ad.
In this episode:
- We talk about that watch ad
- The Mountain of writing a book
- The difference between writing a magazine story vs. a book
- The no nut-graf philosophy
- Saying yes
- Telling his life story from the work he does about other lives
- The one arrow in his quiver
- How there should be principles in journalism, but no rules
- Writing beginnings that hint at the ending
- Writing before referring to notes
- And combining love and truth telling in his memoir
Really an amazing conversation.
Promotional support: The 2026 Power of Narrative Conference. Use narrative20 at checkout for 20% off your tuition. Visit combeyond.bu.edu.
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
All right, need to start plugging this hard. ah The next live recording of the podcast will be Saturday, April 18th at 1 p.m. Gratitude Brewing in Eugene, Oregon, of course, with the mighty Lydia Yuknovich. We do this in partnership with the Northwest Review, you heard. It should be a rockin' event, and if you're in Eugene or the surrounding areas...
00:00:23
Speaker
Find the ah RSVP link in the show notes or on my various social platforms to reserve yourself a free ticket. We want to give gratitude a head count because this is going to be huge.
Live Podcast Event & Announcements
00:00:35
Speaker
ACNF versus podcast shares a promotional sponsorship with the 2026 Power of Narrative conference taking place March 27th and 28th in lovely Boston, Massachusetts. This year's keynote speakers include Ken Burns, Petrograd and Keefe, Angela Patton and Natalie Ray, Sarah Stillman and Asma Khalid.
00:00:53
Speaker
There's a handful of CNF pod alums on the total roster. So you're going to really want to take advantage. If you use the promo code narrative20 at checkout, you get 20% off your fee. That's some serious chedda.
00:01:04
Speaker
Visit combeyond.bu.edu to register. Repairing, restoring, reconnecting through true storytelling. And no, I don't get commissions or kickbacks, so I'm not doing this for the money, man.
00:01:17
Speaker
Oh, and one last podcast sponsorship. it's ah This show is sponsored by the word bitterness. Nice to see them come back. A feeling of antagonism, hostility, or resentfulness. Being a writer of terrible insecurity and pettiness leads to feelings of bitterness. Bitterness. Because you'll never grow up.
00:01:35
Speaker
Tonight, Frank Sinatra Jr. And I was like five years old. and id I'd be like, poor bastard. You know?
Podcast Milestones & Guest Introduction
00:01:50
Speaker
Oh, hey CNFers at the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. It's Friday the 13th. One week shy of the podcast's 13th birthday. That's wild. This is the show where I talk to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell. The art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Meara, with apologies. And wow, look who visited the digital CNF pod
Tom Junod's Career Highlights and Influences
00:02:13
Speaker
HQ. It's Tom Juneau.
00:02:15
Speaker
Listen, I don't have all day to sing the praises and list the back of the baseball card details of Tom's illustrious career writing for GQ, Esquire, and ESPN. He's a two-time winner of the National Magazine Award. His piece, an Esquire titled The Falling Man, is a reread for many of us around 9-11, and it takes a meditative and repertorial look at the man who had not chosen his fate but appeared to embrace it as he fell from the sky.
00:02:42
Speaker
Tom wrote the iconic profile of Fred Rogers that was later turned into a movie starring Tom Hanks. In many ways, so much of Tom's work is writing about father figures, ah which of course brings us to the ultimate. In the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man, a memoir about his father. It's published by Doubleday.
00:03:03
Speaker
I saw a post on Instagram from Right Thompson, or it might have been a comment, doesn't matter, who said Tom is the Michael Jordan of magazine writing, and the only time Wright was nervous to talk to someone, it was talking to Tom.
00:03:19
Speaker
And Wright was is someone who has profiled Michael Jordan. That should tell you everything you need to
Substack Pitch Club & Social Media Presence
00:03:26
Speaker
know about Tom. Show notes to this episode and more can be found at brendanomera.com. You may also elect to subscribe to the wildly popular subs check.
00:03:36
Speaker
don't know why laugh. The wildly popular Substack Pitch Club, where I invite primarily writers to share a winning pitch or query, the colder the better, and have them audio annotate their reasoning throughout so you can read a little and listen a little and learn a lot. With issue 10, with Pete Corrado, I started putting the transcripts of each audio clip in its own footnote. So if you can't listen for whatever reason, and there are reasons, you can still read the insight and not miss everything.
00:04:05
Speaker
thing I aim to serve even if it kills me Tom can be found on Instagram at Tom underscore Juno and don't forget the D there's a silent d at the end of Juno and on the Facebooks and stuff he's all he's all over there he's got a lot of people lot of friends lot of friends Google his work to read wildly ambitious stories from that particularly crazy era that was pre-internet magazine culture The dude had a watch ad. In this episode, we talk about that watch ad.
Transition from Magazine to Book Writing
00:04:40
Speaker
The mountain of writing a book. The difference between writing a magazine story versus a book. The no-nut graph philosophy. Saying yes whenever you can. Telling his life story from the work he does about other lives.
00:04:53
Speaker
The one arrow in his quiver. I think he's got more, but he has says he's got one. I think he has more.
00:05:00
Speaker
How there should be principles in journalism but no rules. Writing beginnings that hint at an ending. Writing before referring to notes. And combining love and truth-telling in his amazing memoir.
Writing Philosophy & Personal Reflections
00:05:14
Speaker
Really amazing conversation.
00:05:17
Speaker
I hope you'll stick around for the parting shot. It's like the after dinner chocolate. It's like the after party, but everyone is tired and kind of cranky. Here's Tom. And here's my latest CNF pod intro riff. Number 26. Yeah, I've made 26 of these things.
00:05:41
Speaker
There's this long pause and he goes, I just hear this. Oh, fuck. But you're a writer and you're supposed to be writing. Sitting down and putting in the hours is is where it's at.
00:05:52
Speaker
but This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
00:06:06
Speaker
Yeah, I've been at it for so long. And there were, I mean, there were definitely, definitely times when I thought i I was going to be one of those guys that, you know, had a, you know, wrote wrote a bunch of, you know, good magazine stories and then was never quite able to come out with a book. I, i you know, I'd been signed with Penguin Random House in one form or another since like the late Yeah. And I had not delivered a book. So, I mean, this is this is i mean, there's a lot of there's a lot of pride. um
00:06:37
Speaker
There's a lot of relief built in. and And as we all know, relief is an underrated emotion. So well it's funny you bring that up. ah because When i talked to Nick Palmgarten last year at some point, and he's someone who's written a lot of just amazing profiles for The New Yorker. Right. ah He hasn't written a book either, and he's working on a memoir about like beer league hockey and everything. But he's just like, I'm just a fake writer. like I haven't written a book. And here's like Nick Pumgarner, thinking he's a fake writer and all this stuff. And ah I imagine you can maybe relate to that tension of having written so many great magazine things, but...
00:07:13
Speaker
Yeah, not having delivered the book. No, can definitely relate to it. I mean, I never thought of myself you know as a fake writer. i just I just thought of myself as maybe the guy who couldn't climb that particular mountain, you know which is the mountain. You know, and it's it's also really, really interesting is that you don't you don't really understand the difference between a magazine and a book until you write one.
Book Writing vs Magazine Writing
00:07:40
Speaker
And the the thing that is, to me, the most different about it, I mean, obviously, there's these these questions of permanence and and scope and all of these things. But, you know, a book is a book is not a a long magazine article. And it took me a long, long time to understand that and to even understand what it means. It sounds like, you know, I mean, it's something that you can say, but you almost like have to live it to understand it. But the like the really cool thing about it so far is that there's just
00:08:15
Speaker
like everybody responds to to magazine stories sort of and sort of in the way that it's intended in some, I mean, they either like them or they don't like them. And if they like them, they sort of, I mean, you even have like generally in a magazine story, you have a nut graph that's in there that basically tells you how to read it and why you're doing it.
00:08:36
Speaker
I mean, I grew up as a writer writing nut graphs. That was always like, you know, you write your lead, you write your nut graph. And you say, this is a story about, and you go on And when I was writing the book, my editor, Bill Thomas at Doubleday, was just really insistent on the no-nut graph you know philosophy. and And I didn't understand why for a long time. But now that the book is coming out, I do because people just find their own thing in it. So many people find have different reactions to books, whereas people, I think there's like a kind of a uni reaction to to magazine stories.
00:09:16
Speaker
And um they just find different things in it. I mean, I've been just surprised, like people saying, oh, if I was going to do a movie from your book, I would start here.
00:09:27
Speaker
And everybody has a different place. Yeah. Well, and with the magazine stuff, too, there's an immediacy to it. that yeah Maybe people are reading it over the course of an hour or two hours, and then and then yeah may and then you kind of move on from it. But to your point of the permanence and scope of a book, it's yeah it's there. you're like That's it.
00:09:47
Speaker
Absolutely. Absolutely. and ah Winding the clock back a little bit, my God, that's going to be a pun in in a moment. I was talking to Jonah Ogles, who um kind of co-edits the Atavist magazine with Sayward Darby. and um He's someone who, kind of like me, same age, kind of grew up and came up uh really admiring the magazine work of you in that era in particular and uh he was just like he's like was do you know it was was it true that he was in a ah watch ad and i'm like i don't know but it sounds like it's possible but were you an actual watch i was a bill blast watch ad that was it was shot in uh central park
00:10:29
Speaker
And it was a a photo of me sitting there and like looking brooding, you know, definitely I was definitely caught publicly brooding in the in the photograph. and And there were all sorts of, you know, crumpled up pieces of paper around me to sort of signify, you know, the travails of being a writer.
00:10:48
Speaker
and There was some, I forget what the copy line was. It was about obsession, though. I i remember it was about obsession. yeah what obsession had to do with Bill Blast watches. I don't know. but you know, i I think Bill Blast watches sort of went out of business not long afterwards, but I definitely had a watch out. That's incredible. I mean, what does that even say about that era of magazine journalism that like a star writer like yourself, like that would be the subject of an ad? Yeah. Right, right. it was It was really funny. You know, it was just one of those things. And and and it was it was also a signifier of a different time coming. I did the ad sort of just to sort of act on my philosophy of life, which is, you know, try to say yes when you can. you know So I was like, watch it. You know, OK, so maybe this is not the most, you know,
00:11:40
Speaker
journalistically strict thing to do, but it's an ad. So I'm going ah i'm going to sit there and and and publicly brood for a while and they're going to take my picture of me doing it.
Public Perception & Social Media
00:11:50
Speaker
I got slammed by something that was just coming and starting then, which was the blog, which was the the predecessor of today's you know plague of social media. And so I got i got slammed in you know a couple of places. I think think there was ah a blog at the time called The All, AWL.
00:12:13
Speaker
They hit me pretty hard. and But it was just it yeah it was just something it was just something to do. Now, I would i would like to say that it signifies a different time, but I have to add here, that i think that it was last year, two years ago maybe, that Patrick Radenkeith was in an ad. And he was ah he was caught publicly brooding too. and And he was not only publicly brooding, he was publicly brooding in like a trench coat. So um you know um so you know people do do what they can and do what they will Yeah.
Vulnerability in Interviews
00:12:47
Speaker
Well, and also talking with Jonah too something that he's he long admired about your work is a certain sense of vulnerability that um that you've shown on the page, but also that you're able to tease out from your subjects. And he just wanted to get a sense, and by extension me, just how you how do you report out that vulnerability so we're feeling you know that degree of emotive pulse on the page? Yeah.
00:13:11
Speaker
I've always some basically tried to work so that you could tell my life story from the work I do about other lives, you know, and I'm not talking about first person pieces. I'm talking about third person pieces or sometimes second person pieces or whatever.
00:13:31
Speaker
But if you take a look at, you know, the stories that I write, you can kind of see where I've been and where I'm going or where I'm afraid to go in in those in those
Personal Themes & Career Challenges
00:13:43
Speaker
pieces. And i mean, I think some of that is just the, is my my tendency to write about things that unsettle me.
00:13:53
Speaker
Like, you know, the you know in the in the beginning of my magazine career. it was definitely, you know, my wife and I were going through some, you know, some infertility issues and things like that. And, you know, I i i wrote about that through other people.
00:14:11
Speaker
And, know, when 9-11 around,
00:14:16
Speaker
I mean, I, like everybody else, you know realized the world had changed in a really fundamental way. And how was I going to measure that? How was I going to mark that?
00:14:31
Speaker
And you know i marked it by looking at a picture that I had the tendency and so many others had the tendency to turn away from, which was Richard Drew's photograph of what became you know known as the Falling Man.
00:14:45
Speaker
I looked at that photograph and i mean, within seconds, I knew that that's what I was going to write about one day. It just, it just was a matter of trying to to set it up. So I, I just have, I just have a, I have that instinct and i don't want to sound pretentious saying that, but I do. It's it's just been what I've been, been writing about. um I've been writing out of myself into others for a long time.
00:15:10
Speaker
Yeah, and being able to look at the uncomfortable and kind of in bed with that instead of looking away, I suspect, is you know part of the draw as well. It is definitely the draw. And it's an advantage as a writer because when you commit yourself at that level, when you feel uncomfortable, you never know what you're going to write, which is a really cool which is a really cool thing. i have to say that i mean i have i have reasons for approaching people.
00:15:41
Speaker
But it's, you know, a lot of the times those things are abandoned once you get on the page because, you you know, you have an experience with that person or that thing that surprises you and in its way either comforts you or unsettles you. And then, you you know, you write about that.
00:15:59
Speaker
You know, Fred Rogers was um somebody who surprised me by comforting me. Other stories, you know, they surprised me by keeping me unsettled.
00:16:09
Speaker
Yeah, and you've already alluded to it. And it's a question I like asking of people who have been doing a lot of, you know profile writing for years or feature writing. Is that like, what ah what are the subjects that you're drawn to, you know, say about you in particular?
00:16:27
Speaker
Well, I mean, to to bring it around to where we are now, ah they definitely say that I'm a guy with daddy issues. There's there's no doubt
Supportive Editorial Relationships
00:16:39
Speaker
about that. I mean, the you know, the first, the first, you know, when I,
00:16:44
Speaker
you know My big break as a magazine writer was um the day that David Granger called me up when I was sort of at the end of like a like a brief run that I had with Sports Illustrated.
00:16:57
Speaker
and that that was not you know that was not a lucky one for me. i was i had trouble getting a lot of my pieces past the editor-in-chief there named Mark Mulvoy. He just didn't like it, basically. He just didn't like what I was doing. And um and i had trouble I had trouble with that, and I was really kind of wondering what was going to happen next.
00:17:19
Speaker
And David Granger called me from here. He had just gotten the job at GQ. And he had he um pulled something off the um off the kill pile. I had written a piece for ah a guy named Elliot Kaplan, who had left GQ to go to Philly Mag. And he had you know bought a piece and killed a piece. And it was about oysters. And David read it and liked it. And i was kind of immediately signed up to his thing. And then David.
00:17:50
Speaker
you know, gave me, know, the greatest gift a writer can have, which is a really long leash. And
Family, Storytelling, and Journalism Today
00:17:56
Speaker
um so right away, I just started writing stuff that was meant a lot to me. And a lot of them happened to be stories about fathers, sons, and so on. The first story, I mean, not the first story I wrote for David, but the second story, the story that i really sort of,
00:18:13
Speaker
He was like, you can write about anything you want to. What do you want to write about? I was like, Frank Sinatra Jr. And he was like, why do you want to write about Frank Sinatra Jr.? And I said, because when I was a kid, there was a ah restaurant right near where I grew up in Long Island called the Sunrise Village.
00:18:28
Speaker
And it used to have... every once in a while there'd be a big sign out in front saying like, tonight, Frank Sinatra Jr. And I was like five years old and I'd be like poor bastard. So, I mean, that was one of the first things I wrote. And then and then i went and wrote um a story on Tony Curtis, because he was not my dad, but he was a person very much like my dad. And out of that era of, you know, fathers who took it as part of their parental dossier, complete license, you know, so, and so he was that guy. And then I wound up writing my father's fashion tips for David and GQ, which was really the sort of the first time I, i
00:19:14
Speaker
confronted, you know, my dad squarely, but kept his secrets there. I mean, my father, when I, when I met my father for my father's fashion tips, he wound up telling me a lot of his secrets and i didn't, you know, I didn't share them on the page. I shared his secrets about like turtlenecks and white shirts and cuffs and cleaning your navel and all those kinds of things. But I did not go on and talk about his secrets until now.
00:19:43
Speaker
Yeah. That that moment of ah yeah being at SI and a a bit of a watershed moment for you there, you know, not getting pieces, you know, published, just your taste not aligning up with the taste of the ultimate, the ultimate. yeah Mark Mulvoy, you know, Mark Mulvoy, you know, thought I was a Gary Smith knockoff.
00:20:04
Speaker
ah He was like, we have one, Gary Smith. We don't need another. Yeah. What does that do for you in your headspace and your confidence at the time? You know, I am i have of sort of
00:20:23
Speaker
arrow in my quiver that works for me and that I just don't, I just don't give up. I just don't. And I, you know, I write about that in the, in the book. I just, I'm just a determined person. And when somebody says no, i am very, very, very much more interested in in proving that I, that I can do it. It's, it's a it's a It's a character trait that could be considered a flaw on some occasions, I think, and probably most. But at the same time, as a magazine writer, it's been, or as a writer, it's been extremely helpful to me. Yeah. And a conversation you had with ah Pamela Koloff a bunch of years ago at this point, god I think it was 2013, I found just some break of some pieces from that transcript on Neiman. And ah you know he said this is ah particularly insightful and something that really resonated with me is like, the great vice of journalism in the age of social media is not its recklessness, but rather its headlong rush for respectability, its self-conscious desire to please an audience of peers rather than an audience of readers.
00:21:28
Speaker
And I think that that really, yeah. Cool. Yeah. And that really strikes me too, as someone who's like always desperately wanted to kind of be on the in crowd and in one way or another, you know, I think sometimes, you know, our, maybe our motivations are a little skewed. Like, yeah, we want to impress our our peers, but we're forgetting we're ultimately in service of readers. And I just really love that insight you shared.
00:21:52
Speaker
Well, I think that i think that it you know it it just gets at the the great paradox of social media and our time. you know Social media was and
00:22:08
Speaker
was intended to be, you know, the greatest experiment in free speech of all time, but it's it's turned out to be a weapon of censorship and both both censorship by crowd, by mob and censorship ah by the individual. People have become, i believe, more censorious of themselves in the age of social media. You don't really find you know, journalistic experimentation anymore. You just don't. yeah And I think that my understanding is that Elizabeth Brunig at, um at the Atlantic, you know she wrote a second person piece about, you know, dying of, ah of measles. This is how you die of measles, I believe is, is the piece. And my understanding is that she's been attacked for that. Yeah.
00:22:58
Speaker
What? That is crazy. what what is you know what is going What is going on? I mean, the great thing about journalism is that there's, I mean, I would say that there are principles, but there shouldn't be rules.
00:23:13
Speaker
And um yeah. You know, I mean, i mean try to be you try to be fair and of course you you you have to be factual. But beyond that, I mean, the great thing about journalism, at least the great thing about journalism in the the the heyday of magazine journal is that you could you could kind of try anything.
00:23:31
Speaker
And and you didn't you didn't have to answer to anybody but readers or um your editor. Now you have to answer to this seething, invisible mob. Yeah.
00:23:43
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And a seething, invisible mob who lacks the courage to go out on the edge and to experiment and to push those boundaries and even swing back to the norm if it doesn't work. But at least you're doing something. I mean, there's there's a zillion different ways to write a magazine story. And I think I've done like ah every single one of them. If I'm not at mistaken, for good and for ill. I mean, you know, i i mean I think that I've written a lot of, you know, really, really good stories, but I've definitely done some things that haven't worked. And, you know, you take your beating and you and you go on. But um but the the idea that that you have, you've like messed with the the journalism gods by writing a story in second person is insane. Yeah.
00:24:23
Speaker
And ah in that same conversation with Pamela, yeah you also ah you guys were talking about structure, I think, and and John McPhee at The New Yorker. And ah you you said his argument for outlining was one of the most definitive arguments against outlining I've ever ever read.
00:24:39
Speaker
I said that? Yeah. oh Well, so so I have i have the, um you know, once like once again, it's a weakness that, you know, I just by sheer refusal to say no, um have turned into a little bit of a strength and that I am intensely unorganized.
00:25:01
Speaker
I am intensely unorganized. And so when i when i and so when i when I am forced into the stance of organization, say when being asked to like promote a book, which I've never done before, but you have to be more organized than I usually am in order to do this, it's it's hard for me. um i am i am definitely a person who figures out story stories, not even on the fly, But at 5.30 in the morning when I wake up and you know I'm not able to go back to sleep and I start obsessing and then a lot of you know a lot of times you know structures just reveal themselves to me at that time. I don't know why that is. It's just the way my brain is is wired. yeah But the the idea of of having everything sort of laid out
00:25:56
Speaker
um in front of you where you're just sort of executing a plan. i just, I personally can't do it. yeah And mean there are some people who are meant to do it. John john McPhee clearly was meant to do it. I mean, I've i've read his story, Travels in Georgia, 50 times. you know I mean, i love I love that story. I love the structure of it.
00:26:17
Speaker
But I couldn't do that. Yeah. And ah this kind of gets to interviewing, but it's and actually a little passage ah from from your book um about ah about saying, I grow nervous before every call, same, ah wondering what right I have to make it. you know Sometimes they overcome my trepidation by telling myself that I'm providing the people on the other end of the line a chance to tell their stories. And you go on a little bit, but it's um but this idea of of interviewing is at the crux of you know what we do. sure And ah yeah, just what's your typical you know approach to interviewing people? So, you know, you get the the best out of the best out of them.
00:26:53
Speaker
Well, number one, so I, you know, the book hardly has anything in about my career in it. There's very, there's very, very little in there about my, you know, my, my work as ah as a journalist and it's, you know, it's designed as such, but, you know, so I was, I was nervous, particularly nervous in that situation for that call, because I was calling a woman that I believe was my cousin. I, I, discover in this book, I discover long lost family members. I, I found,
00:27:23
Speaker
three first cousins in in in the course of writing this book. which you know And their existence and their proximity to me in the in the the yeah family tree definition of family. so i had I had a good reason to be nervous when I was you know when i was doing when i was doing that. But you know when I did get in touch with my cousin Vicky and my cousin Steve and my cousin Ralph, I mean, i try to do I try to do the interviews the same way. I try to be true to what put me on the phone in the first place.
00:28:08
Speaker
i I don't go in with a list of questions. I go in with a feeling of what I was curious about. Like, I'm on the phone for a reason. What is the reason I'm on the phone? Well, it's because I'm curious about this. or And so i just try i just try to have them a conversation with people.
00:28:30
Speaker
about what I'm curious about and or what I'm interested in. And it that really works for me. Yeah. And you said you're ah yeah disorganized by nature. Same.
00:28:41
Speaker
yeah but how ah you know I'm talking to you while I'm in the car. That just gives me gives me and it gives you and a total understanding of how disorganized I am. I love it.
00:28:52
Speaker
but and And how do you you, know, wrangle your research and transcripts and and all that stuff when when you do sit down to write and the the conditions under which, you know, you're you're composing?
00:29:04
Speaker
Well, I mean, you know, i am I am definitely of the feeling that, you know, I write, i sit there and I do it and I write a first sentence, you know, and there's ah there's a certain kind of thing that I'm looking for. it's i like it i like a sentence that sort of doesn't It's not about the ending, but has like a ah ah presentiment of the ending in it that is sort of neutral.
00:29:35
Speaker
And that is sort of a provocation at the same time. Neutral, ah a neutrally provocative sentence, I think, is is really what I'm looking for. And, you know, i organize stuff sentence by sentence.
00:29:49
Speaker
And... I write before i refer to notes. um And i don't mean i don't mean that I write the piece and then I refer to the notes, but as I write, it becomes clear to me that, oh, I need to hear from a person here. You know, i don't want people to get...
00:30:09
Speaker
I don't want to squash people's voices because people's voices are really, really interesting. There was a time, especially when I was, I think, at GQ, I used to um to go and and sort of try to write stories without without quotes, you know, sort of you have this you know the yeah the quotes be sort of part of the of the telling, sort of absorbed into the telling.
00:30:33
Speaker
But I sort of don't really do that as much anymore because, you know, generally the quotes are are they bring life to the story in a way. And and I think that they're they're ultimately more fair than me sort of speaking for somebody. So, i you know, I have a I keep on writing until I need a quote and then i then I go find it. And once again, it's a really poorly organized way of doing it, but it's how I do it. Yeah. and A moment ago, too, you said ah how much you appreciated, ah you know, Granger giving you the the long leash.
00:31:04
Speaker
Granger's Granger's long leash was definitely not when it came to like. getting to work because there there the leash was a daily eight o'clock in the morning call. Like, okay what do you got? What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you writing? What are you what are you what are you doing?
00:31:21
Speaker
why Why haven't you done anything? you know So i mean it wasn't it was a pretty short leash on on that level. yeah the The long leash was that David expected me to try to write, you know, out outside the the rules of accepted magazine journalism. i mean, that was that was our deal.
00:31:39
Speaker
You know, i was I was going to try to be provocative. I was going to try to do things, you know, differently. You know, I wrote a story for David on a profile of Michael Stipe that was half fiction, and he did not know was coming.
00:31:51
Speaker
And so when read it,
00:31:55
Speaker
um and so when i when i read it I sent it, you know, I wrote it and i sent it to him and um I got this call back and he's like, I was all excited. He's like, what? what this this This is amazing. He was like, you you told me you didn't get anything from this guy. And I said, what ah what would you do if I told you I made half of it up?
00:32:18
Speaker
There's this long pause and he goes, I just hear this, oh, fuck. yeah so But that was the relationship that David and I had. I mean, i mean who would have printed that? Nobody else but David. so Oh, my God. That's that is hilarious. Yeah, I can just picture like some like something of the color draining out of his face in that moment.
00:32:40
Speaker
ah ah So with with the memoir, you know, it's a book that, you know, you've kind of like essentially said that you've been writing all your life, but you spent the better part of 10 years really, you know, cracking, you know, getting ah getting a wiggle on with it, so to speak. What?
00:32:56
Speaker
I know you've written upwards of 230,000 words of this and scrapped it. had an abandoned massive – I wouldn't call it a draft, but it was an abandoned mess of pages that had – I think I'm sure that there were good parts in there, and I'm sure that it set me up for what the book eventually was able to do.
00:33:21
Speaker
But um it had it had a real fundamental problem in that like it was 230,000 words, and there were many of the main characters of the book who hadn't even been introduced yet. and So it was just you know it was just writing.
00:33:35
Speaker
yeah you know i mean, you've been there. I've been there. There's times when you're you're writing because you're desperate and you can't stop and you know that you have to keep on going.
00:33:46
Speaker
but you're not at it, you're not in it, and you know it. And that's that's what I felt like. And when i when I finally looked around and looked at what I was doing and realized that there was like characters who were essential essential to the story who were not even had not even been mentioned yet.
00:34:05
Speaker
And I realized then that I was i was gonna be i was heading for in a million-word draft. There was just no question about that. Yeah. And, you know, of course, an and a million word draft is, is It sounds impressive. It's really not. It's a failure, right? So that's why I abandoned that.
00:34:27
Speaker
And the the thing that really and enabled me to to start over again, and I didn't, i at that point, I did not know whether I was going to be able to finish this book or not. I had already, I had just completed the leave and the leave was, you know, in intended to finish the book.
00:34:46
Speaker
And And instead, I abandoned the book at the end of the leave. And so that's ah that's a pretty bad you know position to be in. It's pretty scary. yeah And the thing that the thing that saved the the book is that it was the summer 2020, and got sick.
00:35:01
Speaker
and i got sick I got sick and i to this day, I don't know exactly what I have. it was it was It was identified as Lyme disease, but I was so sick that I couldn't even, for the first time in, I don't know, years, I couldn't even think of writing. You know, i write, I'm i'm a i'm a pretty much a daily writer. I you know i keep a journal and et cetera, et cetera, and I couldn't i couldn't write.
00:35:29
Speaker
And so what i what i did was take a look at very old journals and start reading through them. And and i i read the the sections about me and my dad, and i I understood that I had been in a contest with this overwhelming man since I was a child. And I'm talking about three years old. I'm talking about a child.
00:35:56
Speaker
And that the book had to be true to that. It wasn't just a history of my dad. It wasn't just the story of my dad. It was the story of my dad and me and how I responded to him.
00:36:09
Speaker
And that's how the book, that's how the book, um, was reborn as that. When did the, the shape of it start to reveal itself to you? It's true shape.
00:36:20
Speaker
um I can tell you right now, i when i when i wrote the section that begins with me waking up in the morning or being awakened in the morning by the sound of my father's ankles, that's wheres that's where that's where it all happened. Because all of a sudden, all of a sudden i was in there not as as a ah writer you know of you know, with decades of experience trying to write his first book, that that was gone.
00:36:50
Speaker
That was gone with the 230,000 words. um The thing that was there was a kid, a little kid trying to understand this man and trying to understand, you know, why, to you know to put it bluntly, why I was so frightened of him that, you know, with that the um the sound of his ankles in the morning, which he would call the an old war wound, which is true. um Why that, why that would wake me up as if, you know, an alarm had gone off.
00:37:21
Speaker
And that's what the book was and, and remained for, you know, really until the very end. Yeah, and the way you write about his speech, the ellipses that give a sense of the cadence of his speech, it never got old to me in the book. like i just I loved it. I could hear the way he spoke that slight pause before the emphatic final end to the clause every time. that i mean like it was you know So I went and did – one of the things that i just did recently was do the – I narrated the audio book.
00:37:54
Speaker
which was, you know, new for me. yeah i and I'd never done anything like that, but i I was determined to do it because I didn't think that anybody else, like, i and I don't care if they had gotten, you know, Laurence Olivier to do it. um He would not be able, no actor would be able to capture um the sound of my father and the the way that he spoke.
00:38:25
Speaker
And so I did it. And i i mean, I did, I do his voice the whole, the whole reading. And it just turned out to be a really, really powerful thing for me, a really emotional thing.
00:38:39
Speaker
I sort of experienced the first, the book for the first time while doing the audio book. It was intense. I mean, I wrote, I mean, I read, wrote, I read a I don't know, a quarter of the book on the edge of tears, you know? And then when i did a reading at KGB in downtown New York a few weeks ago,
00:39:01
Speaker
you know And I did my dad. And it was just wild because people just got it right away. it was just such a... it was I felt like I was taking like a big risk, but the minute minute I did it it, was like people were just you know in the book. And that's what that's what i I really um tried to get at. and What I think the book sort of succeeds in, it really puts you with my dad. And doesn't it doesn't offer you any avenue of escape. There's no analysis. There's no...
00:39:28
Speaker
No, for me, pulling back on the you know a discussion of toxic masculinity, which is, you know thank heaven, a a term that never appears in the book. Even though it's everywhere, of course, in the book. It's everywhere and nowhere in the book. yeah um But I i really you know worked hard at that. and And I'm happy that my father's diction, which is, I think, one of the things that made me a writer,
00:39:58
Speaker
is in the book and is alive in the book. Yeah. Well, there early, early on too, you wrote, you know, for when he is home, the house is divided. The very day is divided, like an occupied city in the war movies I watch on TV. And that's something that struck, struck me in the house I grew up in. It's just like my dad has little sanctuary in the basement. You know, my mom was in the living room. My sister was in her room and 10 years between us and I would float between the three typically staying with my mom. So and in a lot of ways, I, I really resonated with young Tom in this book, right? It's just, that sense of house division and no unity was, it really struck a chord with me for sure. Right.
00:40:36
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, and, you know, but the thing about my dad was, is that wherever my dad was, was his place, whether he was, you know, in the basement, you know, at the bar, he's not, he was not a workshop kind of guy Yeah. ah But he, you know, had a bar down in the basement. And if he was at the bar or he was washing the car or he was, know,
00:40:57
Speaker
I mean whatever wherever he was, he commanded that at room to discomfort of of all of us, I think. I mean, I think we we totally respected his power. yeah We had no choice but to respect his power. But at the same time, I think it...
00:41:14
Speaker
I don't think it was any, I look back on it, I don't think it was easy for any of us in the house. It's hard it's hard being in the presence of something that's so much more powerful than you for the first 18 years of your life. Oh, yeah. And that sense of ah of fear that can be imposed on the entire unit without any physical abuse. But there is a palpable sense of of menace and malice when, you know, a certain patriarchal figure just enters the room. I experienced that myself, too, before my parents split up. It was just the an essence. And, you know, you write about that particularly well, too. It's It was just an essence. I mean, to this day, when people say, well, why were you so afraid of your father?
00:42:04
Speaker
i mean, I don't really have the answer. He used to get he used to get all upset about it um because he would he would sort of kind of tease me, you know, at the dinner table when I was like wasn't eating my steak. you know You know, and he would be he would be sort of play acting. Tommy.
00:42:22
Speaker
What's wrong with the steak? And then i would just i would begin you know just shaking. And and he would he would get all frustrated because he was like, look at this kid. it Looks like he acts like I'm going to murder him.
00:42:35
Speaker
But I never even laid a hand on him. And he didn't until much later. He hits me once, but it's much, much later. Yeah, oh for sure. And I love how you write about your your mother as well and kind of the bond that you share of this, the shared kind of the shared fear of your father. too And I love that bond that you have. And she's such a ah wonderful like presence in this book that... ostensibly honors and kind of details your father's life and your, uh, you know, your, your love of him and revering of him. But, you know, your mom is very, very present in a, in a, in a welcome energy in this book.
00:43:14
Speaker
Well, I i definitely i definitely um wrote the book to give her mom her my mom her fair shake. um yeah After i wrote my father's fashion tips for um GQ, the only person, I mean, it's it's it was a really popular story.
00:43:32
Speaker
And the only person who didn't call me about it was my mom. Yeah. So, you know, I knew. i knew that she she didn't like it.
00:43:43
Speaker
I called her about a week after it came out. I said, Mom, so did you read the story? Yeah, I read the story. ah i said, well, what did you think? you know And there was a long pause.
00:43:56
Speaker
And my mom goes, don't forget who raised you, kid. And that was it. That was the only thing she ever had to say ah about about that story. And I definitely wrote this book in part to...
00:44:17
Speaker
to say I didn't forget who raised me, cause she did because she did. There's just no question about that. you know i was I was alone with my my my dad traveled for god God knows whatever reasons he traveled. And i was alone with my mom a lot. my My brother and my sister, like like yours, are both you they're both 10 years older than I am. So when they went to college, I became an only child. And it was me and my my mom. And it was me and my mom both terrified of my dad, this one you know was one person in the house. and and She, weren't, you know, really strong enough to protect each other, but we, we definitely, you know, loved each other and protected the essence of each other. And there's a, you know, there's some scenes in the book with my mom that I just, they're the things that I wanted more than anything else when I set about writing the book and then rewriting the book.
00:45:09
Speaker
Yeah. What did, you know, idolizing your father ah due to your mother? Hmm. I think it was a source of great pain to her.
00:45:20
Speaker
And I know it was a source of great pain to her because, you know, there's a a moment, it's in the book, but it's also in the heart right now, um when my mom was 83 years old and was but about the next day when she was going to undergo open heart surgery. she She was scheduled for a triple or quadruple bypass. And at 83, that's almost like a 50-50 proposition. yeah So i went down to see her and to be with her for the operation. I went down to visit my parents' condo in Florida.
00:46:00
Speaker
and it was late at night and I was sitting on the balcony, ah you know kind of taking in the Florida air. And my mother came out to the balcony. And the minute she opened and closed the door,
00:46:13
Speaker
i I knew what she was out there for. I knew that she believed that she might die and wanted to give me some words, give me some words to live by, say say her piece.
00:46:28
Speaker
And so she sat next to me and she goes, I know you idolize him.
00:46:35
Speaker
And i you know i so I began right away, no, Ma, I don't idolize him. She goes, and she raised her hand, you know not to hit me, but just stop me. She said, no, I know. And it's it's all right. He's your father, but you need to know something.
00:46:48
Speaker
And what she said was, He's a mean, nasty, little man and no one to idolize.
00:46:59
Speaker
So she actually couldn't have been more clear ah about about how she felt about my idolization of my dad. As a kid too, you start you know your your curiosity drives you to to root around and in your you know your father's basement and you and then you become privy to a certain measure of of secrets. And a lot of this book too is about, you know you you have ah this knowledge that using essentially to protect other people, but it's just like, so this book, there's a pulse of like the weight of those secrets that you're shouldering throughout you know your entire adolescence into adulthood.
00:47:35
Speaker
Yeah, i mean, I i began, you know, finding out my dad's secrets when I was really, really, really young. yeah You know, I mean, my dad was when I was three years old, my dad had an affair with with one of my best friend's mothers or my best friend's mother.
00:47:51
Speaker
um The night of the green dress. Yeah, the woman in the green dress. I mean, and I was i was aware of it. yeah How do I know I was aware of it? Because many, many years later when I did my father's fashion tips, I asked about her. i was like, because I knew something had gone on. it wasn't And it was never talked about. It wasn't like my mom you know told me about it. It wasn't like my brother told me about it or my sister. It was just there. It was just such ah such a big thing that happened in my family.
00:48:18
Speaker
So I knew, and then, you know, you know later later on when I was in high school, you know, I began actively investigating my dad and, you know, doing things that were at once shameful to me and and necessary to me, which in this in this case happened to do with, like, getting the combination of my father's briefcase and opening it. And then just being, you know, at once, you know, shocked by what was inside and then bringing in a weird way, relieved by what was inside because at least I wasn't crazy.
00:48:52
Speaker
At least I wasn't making this shit up. You know, I knew it. I just knew it. And, you know, it was a good training um to be a journalist, but it was a really, really tough job.
00:49:03
Speaker
thing to carry around. And one of the things i I try to, I've tried to make this book is an account, not just of the secrets in terms of like, these are the secrets my father's had, my father had, but an account of, of what it was like and what it is like, because it's a very common experience to, to go through life with the experience of secrets. Like what's the experience? What does it feel like to, to,
00:49:32
Speaker
no stuff that if you told it, your, your, your parents' marriage would be over, over. I mean, I, I, I had, by the time I was 16, all the information I needed to destroy my parents' marriage.
00:49:48
Speaker
And it's not a comfortable thing to have. Yeah. It's a, it's a burden, but also a power in a way. it it's It was the only power I had. yeah That's why I did it.
00:49:59
Speaker
Yeah. And then as the and yeah as the book progresses and you know you get to – in part three especially is kind of what I call like ah this genealogical thriller, if yeah if you will. But there there's a sense that you're come coming in almost like a wrecking ball and ah to start to answer – trying to tie together all these loose ends of the family tree. Sure. How did you balance your desire of wanting to know and get answers with other people who might have been fine with those answers never having been you know put forth? You know, it was just a decision, i yeah i guess, that I made. i mean, it's it is um it's a it's a weird experience carrying around secrets that have obliterating power when it comes to to the health and welfare of your of your family, the people that you love the most.
00:51:00
Speaker
it does a number on you, there's no question. And, you know, I had written about my dad a bunch of times and never really dealt with those secrets, even though I think every time I did, I came a little bit closer.
00:51:15
Speaker
I wrote my father's fashion tips for GQ. I wrote a story about my father's World War II experience called The Time of Their Lives for...
00:51:28
Speaker
Esquire, and then i wrote a story about my father's gambling for ESPN, a story called The Family Vice. And all of those stories edged a little closer towards Revelation. And in in this case, it was just simply a ah matter of, i mean, it's literally now or never.
00:51:48
Speaker
If I don't find, if I don't tell this story now, I'll be silenced forever. And I just i just did not... find a way to accept that condition. had never really accepted it, I don't think. I don't think that there was kid who found out the secrets who found out the secrets I don't think ever intended to be silent about the secrets, but secrets, you know, have their own power.
00:52:14
Speaker
And so I started on the book and and I decided to just, it's time, it's time to tell the truth. And, you know, I found, I talked to people and had, and, you know, I argued with people in my family, you know, my my my brother-in-law told me something that he had not told anybody.
00:52:36
Speaker
about my dad over many, many, many years. And he told it to me and then he um retreated from that and he really didn't want me to put it in there. And, you know, we we battled over it.
00:52:51
Speaker
And finally, it just came to the point where i was like, this is your time to tell too. and he did. and I think it it was it was a a powerful moment for for everybody to the extent that when...
00:53:09
Speaker
Ronnie, my brother-in-law, when he called me after reading the book, I mean, he called me in tears and said, and said thank you you know thank you for reading it. you know I have to say that not not everybody has has had you know that that response, but i i do feel i do feel that it was the the thing that I chose to do and the thing that I had to do.
00:53:29
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. With, with Liz, the Monahan family at large and then, you know, Lizanne also, yeah, she, you know, she was like, yeah ah she says at one point, she's like, I'm just living a simple life and don't want to be a part of any book on the trauma, any lifelong old school issues. That's just not my world. I'm sorry. And she eventually comes around to help, help you solve the the puzzle, but it's, it's a, it must've been really touch and go for you at when you push and when do you,
00:53:57
Speaker
You just give the space. It because that's that it's that whole, yeah, I mean, it's it's that whole that whole question of you know, what gives me the right to wade into these, you know, people's lives and and demand truths of them. yeah it's i mean, there's a certain level of of presumption there that is, is i mean, it's overwhelming to myself, never mind them, know? You know, so um I got lucky and and, you know, and I think I got lucky because, you know, the book is the thing that I'm most proud of in the book is, you know, it's not a vindictive book. It's not a venomous book. I mean, I, I love everyone who,
00:54:44
Speaker
walks through its pages um from my dad to my mom to my brother to my sister Lizanne. ah you know i I love these people and my aunts are always in there. And these are people that, I mean, that was the great discovery of the the second go round on the book. It was just like,
00:55:03
Speaker
You know, you you love this these people. Show it. Find a way to find a way to write of the about them truthfully, you know, and lovingly at the same time. And i i think I was able to do that.
00:55:18
Speaker
And I think that that was the great key of the book. yeah i mean, there's no there's no there's just no doubt that in my, you know, my father in some ways was an intensely destructive human being, you know, but he, he, at the same time, you know, he, he gave me, you know, so much, you know, and by the end of the book, I come right out and thank him.
00:55:45
Speaker
i believe the words are for the opportunity of being your son. And, um, I really felt that. I still feel that. There's so much. i don't think I'd be doing this right now without my dad. I mean, my mom was the person who gave me like unfailing support. you know my mom My mom was just not going to take you know a step back in her support of me.
00:56:12
Speaker
Except when I wrote my father's fashion tips. She took two steps back. She was not happy about that. But you know when I was a little kid, my poor you know brother and sister had to hear you know my mother say, Tommy poops gold.
00:56:28
Speaker
And...
00:56:31
Speaker
But, you know, that that kind of love is, is to me, um it's the it's the essential it's the essential part of the book. And I don't think I've ever been able to do that in anything I've written to combine love and truth-telling to the extent that this book enabled me to do it.
00:56:54
Speaker
and And your father, you know, he had, you know, a lot lot of extramarital affairs too. and when you, when you were writing about Fred Rogers, you know, you were reckoning with that yourself and you, you know, you write about it in the book. And I imagine just like, take us to yeah know just how hard that was to write and how you felt you really needed to convey that experience in the pages. Otherwise it wouldn't have come across as, as honest.
00:57:19
Speaker
Well, um yeah. So, yeah, we're, you know, talking about, you know, what is the what was the hardest and and, you know, and remains the hardest, you know, you know, revelation in the book. And, um you know, it happened.
00:57:34
Speaker
a long time ago. um But at the same time, it was something that had, um you know, really stayed with me forever. And and when, you know, the um when the Mr. Rogers movie came out, I I felt it was time to.
00:57:51
Speaker
you know, to tell um my own secrets, you know, that I had spent a lifetime sort of writing about other people's secrets. And, i you know, I had started a book that was about other people's secrets and it was about it was about time to tell them. And I decided to that I needed to in the book because I held i held everybody, you know.
00:58:18
Speaker
kind of
00:58:24
Speaker
unflinchingly to the standard of of sort of honesty. And i I just, I felt like I couldn't i couldn't hold people to that standard without expecting it and employing it myself.
00:58:42
Speaker
I couldn't, i like, so I went in there and, you know, asked
00:58:49
Speaker
Valerie Shockett, who was you know my father's my friends's my friend's mom and my father's girlfriend, lover, mistress, whatever you want to, however you want to term it.
00:59:00
Speaker
you know When I was three years old, I went and found her when she was in her early 80s and essentially demanded that she tell me the truth about her affair with my dad.
00:59:12
Speaker
i mean, how how can I do that without, you know, without, you know, talking about my own weaknesses and and so on? And how can how can i um
00:59:29
Speaker
how can I write a book about the power that my father had over people unless I own up to the power that he had over me? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And you wrote, you wrote, you said in the that great Esquire profile that came out like a week or two ago, you know, like, I honestly don't think I could have written the book in good conscious and not talk about, you know, my own experience, you know, for me to not have spoken about it would have implied that I was unaffected by my dad's example, that power over you that. yeah you i was I was far from unaffected.
00:59:58
Speaker
Yeah. Far from unaffected. Yeah. Well, you know, my in in in everything. I mean, my, you know, my dad, my dad walks next to me all the time. Yeah. For good and for good and for bad.
01:00:09
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And it's so hard to. well And that's the the the incredible grayness ah of the human condition that they can. These people can hold the two things at the same time and be in such tension with each other.
01:00:23
Speaker
Yeah. How can how can you love and. fear and hate and i feel an obligation towards one person all at once. It's really, it's really hard. And I think that, you know, I was, I was able, I think I'm able to do that. I mean, I think that the portrait of my dad and in this thing is, is both true, you know, and vivid, you know, my, my dad, my dad lives, lives in those pages. And that's what I wanted more than anything else, because, know, You couldn't, you know, his power over people, you know, was just not an abstract thing. it just wasn't.
01:01:06
Speaker
yeah you know you you You know, we talk about it, you know, all the time. My father would, you know, come back, you know, from from being out and in the city in New York. And he would talk about, like, all the movie stars that he saw.
01:01:20
Speaker
in, you know, clubs in New York City. Like, and he would talk about Ava Gardner and Jar Jar Gabor and all these women and say, couldn't keep her eyes off your father.
01:01:36
Speaker
and And, you know, he it sounds ridiculous. It sounds like he's a blowhard, but... I've been there. I saw it. People couldn't keep, keep their eyes off my father.
01:01:48
Speaker
we It's who he was. And so, i mean, just to try to get that on the page was the challenge. And then eventually sort of a delight. It was, you know, I can feel, you know, when I read the book for the audio book, I could feel the, the joy and the energy in the writing. It was pretty cool.
01:02:07
Speaker
Oh, for sure. Well, and that's certainly conveyed, you know, to some some schmo like me on the other end reading it. And it's ah it's an incredible book, Tom. And it's ah and such a joy to get to talk to you about, you know just writing in general and and this amazing book you've written. um as ah As I bring these conversations out for a landing, I always just love asking the guests just for a recommendation of some kind for the listeners out there. It's just like anything you're finding cool and fun that you want to share with them. So that's would just pose that to you, Tom.
01:02:34
Speaker
um Well, so i just I just recently read the two books by the Wolf Brothers, um Jeffrey and Tobias, about their dads. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And and so you know Jeffrey wrote The Duke of Deception 1979.
01:02:53
Speaker
um in ninety seventy nine And um i think it was 1979 or maybe published in 1980. And Tobias wrote ah this boy's life in 84, maybe something like that. And and so I had read This Boy's Life when it had come out. And of course, I was completely, you know, knocked on my can by it.
01:03:25
Speaker
Yeah, everybody was Yeah, just the, just the... And I mean, just the unflinching testimony of that book, because it's not really about his father, really, in this in this case, that book is mostly about his stepfather.
01:03:41
Speaker
But the first book in that series was was Jeffrey Wolf's, his brother Jeffrey Wolf's book about the father. And... I didn't read that for years because I was afraid to. I was definitely afraid to read that book.
01:03:57
Speaker
I finally did. And it's a you know it's a it's a beautiful, beautiful book. It's written with you know a sophistication you know and a power that...
01:04:09
Speaker
You don't see too much these days. You know, they're they're very different books. Tobias's books is much more plain spoken. And, you know, and and Jeffrey's book is much more eloquent in the more traditional sense of of eloquence. And both of them...
01:04:25
Speaker
are so different and yet they're all about one guy and so And so they you know they constitute a universe unto themselves and it's a great universe to be in And i don't i don't think you know you can you can you know, consider father son memoirs without taking those into account.
01:04:47
Speaker
Oh, fantastic. Well, such a joy to talk to you, Tom. And, ah and thank you so much for the work and and the book and for carving out time to do this. This was awesome. I really enjoyed talking with you, friend really enjoyed it.
01:05:03
Speaker
I mean, come on. Yes. Awesome. Can you believe Tom Juneau agreed to talk to this fucking piece of shit loser? It proves what a guy Tom is. Don't forget about the live recording of this program Saturday, April 18th at 1 p.m. at Gratitude Brewing in Eugene with Lydia Yuknovich. Thanks also to the Power of Narrative Conference for promotional support.
01:05:26
Speaker
Visit combeyond.bu.edu. Use that Narrative 20 checkout code. You'll get 20% off your enrollment. No, I don't get kickbacks or commissions. And if I was able to go to this year, of which I can't, for one reason or another, I'd be using this code, just like you, friend.
01:05:45
Speaker
You know, and I'm trying, man. I'm trying to run out of fucks to give. I think I did a parting shot about the race to run out of fucks to give, which usually happens around 50, give or take, unless you're enlightened. Then maybe you hit it at 40. If you hit it under 40, you're full of shit. Because of the promotion I do for this show on social media, of course, in the spirit largely of celebrating the guests who so graciously spend their time and insights with the show, you know, you need to put that out there.
01:06:18
Speaker
I'd like to think that what I do is not self-indulgent, but who knows? Eye of the beholder, I guess. yeah I see a lot of writers who appear to have what I want. You know, the classic highlight reel. You know I see a certain subset of writers and hanging out together and...
01:06:33
Speaker
And I wish I was sitting at the bar with them like haranguing about these wild experiences of being able to, you know, expense out a tank of gas, you know, the big life. I remember feeling like I was outside looking in so much of um the the sports writing fraternity, of which primarily that's my and that's my backdrop.
01:06:53
Speaker
That's the main field I play on. I still am, honestly, but maybe in some small way I have like one free drink ticket to the party and I like i don't want to waste it um I kind of wrote about this in the latest Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter in that I played sports and I was quite good, but I was playing not because I thought it was fun, because it wasn't. I grew to hate what I was good at. um But because it made me kind of cool in the eyes of the people i was hoping to impress.
01:07:22
Speaker
It gave me some entree into a different subset of people that I wanted to... and impressed, I guess. Did I say impressed already? I did.
01:07:34
Speaker
In the same way of thinking, like, why do i want to write long features and write the kind of work that tends to be anthologized in years best sports writing? Is it because I love the work and desperately want to give voice to the voiceless and craft great stories that invite a greater sense of understanding and empathy? Or do I want to be seen at the cool kids table?
01:07:54
Speaker
Like, wouldn't it be cool to have that, like, New Yorker cartoon avatar that really signifies they see you as part of the staff, even if you're just a freelancer? yeah Do I do all of this to be seen as cool, to elevate my status, to be invited to speak at conferences or panels or some other bullshit?
01:08:13
Speaker
Like, those are cool and all, but if that's the reason, then you've got it all wrong, right? I'm strangely reckoning with a lot of these nasty, bitter feelings I thought I had purged a long time ago. and It's kind of like a... like a what ah What happens when ah you think the cancer's gone and it comes back?
01:08:32
Speaker
I don't want to say it's relapsing, right? Resurfaced? I don't know. Who's got a WebMD account? Anyway, they've really cropped back up in an unsettling way, and I'm not entirely sure why.
01:08:45
Speaker
Maybe it's because I've been in this post-book malaise for a while and I'm waiting on what's happening with the next one, if there is a next one. I mean, my editor for the Front Runner technically has the new proposal in 30 days or so to say no. I think he's had it for about two weeks, and I don't know if that is like a 30-day rejection window starts when he receives the proposal or when he opens it. I don't know. I don't know when the clock starts.
01:09:11
Speaker
Maybe it's because I pitched some big authors to come on the podcast, sometimes to months before their book comes out, to try to really get them before shit hits the fan. And then they tell me that they're not doing the podcast rounds, and and then I see them on the podcast rounds, and then that that really pisses me off when that happens.
01:09:30
Speaker
If I were more mature and zen about all this, I'd be like, whoa, wait a sec, B.O., look who you do get to talk to, know, Most recently, this episode, Tom Juno came on the show.
01:09:42
Speaker
Amazing. And gave the best of himself. That says something. Look at the people who actively pitched to be on the show with you. And and yet, you still feel like some kid who didn't get a valentine.
01:09:56
Speaker
You choo-choo-choose me? And there's a picture of a train? If you know, you know. I imagine certain comedians feel the same way, like, why didn't I get to be a judge on Nailed It?
01:10:09
Speaker
Thing is, we see so much of other people's accomplishments and our seeming lack of them, and we just see, like, dozens and dozens and dozens of people showing their highlight reel, and it might be, like, one highlight reel.
01:10:21
Speaker
per person per month, but we're getting bombarded with dozens of people showing that highlight. So you're just getting just smacked in the face with this bullshit, all these accomplishments and your seeming lack of them. And it just makes us primarily me. Cause I'm the shit head here.
01:10:40
Speaker
Feel shitty. You quickly forget about the opportunities and invitations that came your way because you know You're getting bombarded by hundreds of people's shit while you're waiting for the call.
01:10:52
Speaker
It comes down to, I guess, like scarcity mindset and ah abundant mindsets mindsets and a failure to account for one's own blessings and certainly limiting beliefs. A friend who knows what a piece of shit I am to myself, who knows me pretty well, sent me, well, forwarded me an email.
01:11:11
Speaker
And here's a little chunk of it from this newsletter she forwarded. A common parable in psychology goes like this. When an elephant is young, a chain is wrapped around its leg and staked into the ground. The elephant pulls, struggles, and eventually gives up, learning that escape is impossible.
01:11:26
Speaker
Years later, the elephant weighs several tons, yet the same small stake still holds it in place. One it could now rip out effortlessly, but it doesn't.
01:11:37
Speaker
Nothing is physically restraining the elephant anymore. What holds it in place is a conclusion it reached a long time ago. Many of the limits shaping our lives today were learned when our circumstances were very different and no longer apply. You fucking idiot. I added that last part.
01:11:57
Speaker
And very clearly, this is someone who really cares that I make the most of life now that it's mostly halfway done, at least halfway done, if not more than halfway done. There's always the threat of getting hit by a Lane Apex garbage truck driven by someone having a bad day or, you know, I could just get the cancer or a stroke, you know all that, all that shit.
01:12:17
Speaker
I have no advice to give other than I'm trying to be better. I'm trying to be less insufferable. But I'm also trying to be somewhat vulnerable and transparent about how I'm feeling at a certain cross-section of time. On what day is it? On March 11th, 2026 is when I'm tracking this at 2.20 p.m. PST. It's just how I'm feeling at the moment.
01:12:42
Speaker
I understand I've been lucky, and the Brendan from 15 years ago would be pretty fucking tickled by what this Brendan has accomplished. Hashtag third person. But... And the day-to-day grind of it all, it's easy to lose that perspective.
01:12:56
Speaker
The desperation is still there. It's just the desperation goalposts keep moving. Unless, you know, to bring this all back around, you have that long last run out of fucks to give.
01:13:10
Speaker
And my God, I can't wait for that day. So stay wild, C&Fers, and if you can't do, interview. ya. See ya.