This was a breakthrough piece for me. Trained as a philosopher, I’d learned to leave my personal life out of my writing. It’s astounding to me now that I wrote a book about women’s bodies and only mentioned my own struggles with weight once—and obliquely. But by the time I wrote my next book—on the male body—I was ready to break that rule.
Wow!! You are such a damn good writer, first off. Second: Have you read Winter Journal, the second-person memoir coming from the perspective of the body through decades, by Paul Auster? My guess is you have. I love your raw honesty in describing your father, what you have and haven’t seen. Beautiful. It makes me think of my own father, loving but clinically distant all my life. I remember seeing him naked smoking a Marlboro in the bathroom once when I was a boy, how it shocked me. We need more writers like you.
Wow!! You are such a damn good writer, first off. Second: Have you read Winter Journal, the second-person memoir coming from the perspective of the body through decades, by Paul Auster? My guess is you have. I love your raw honesty in describing your father, what you have and haven’t seen. Beautiful. It makes me think of my own father, loving but clinically distant all my life. I remember seeing him naked smoking a Marlboro in the bathroom once when I was a boy, how it shocked me. We need more writers like you.
Michael Mohr
‘Sincere American Writing’
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/