Matthew Quick & Lori Gottlieb Live at Zibby's Bookshop!
[0:00]All right, well, thank you all for being here.
[0:05]I think I should just start by telling exactly what she said.
[0:09]How did we get here?
[0:12]I was at a meeting at my publishing house in New York.
[0:15]And I had seen that they had this book on their website.
[0:21]This is Matthew's forthcoming memoir.
[0:23]And I said, oh, I could use something to read on the plane.
[0:26]Maybe I'll take that one.
[0:28]And so his editor handed me the book.
[0:31]And I didn't even know I was on an airplane.
[0:36]I could not put it down.
[0:39]I was so affected by this.
[0:41]You can see, for those of you who can see,
[0:43]look almost every page is dog-eared in all the writing and everything.
[0:49]It blew me away.
[0:50]It was one of the most powerful memoirs I have ever read.
[0:52]And I'm a person who reads a lot of memoirs.
[0:54]So I told his editor how moved I was by this book.
[1:02]And I said, if he's going to do anything in LA,
[1:08]and he doesn't already have a moderator,
[1:09]I would be happy to do it.
[1:11]So that is how we ended up here tonight.
[1:13]And since then, Matthew and I have had several conversations
[1:16]and back and forth.
[1:17]And it's been a really lovely turn of events
[1:22]from just wanting something to read on the plane.
[1:25]So it was mentioned in your bio that you
[1:29]wrote the Silver Linux Playbook and many other novels.
[1:34]So this is your first non-fiction book.
[1:38]And the interesting thing about this book
[1:41]is that it's written as a letter to your father
[1:45]who was diagnosed with dementia
[1:47]and who probably will not be able to ever read or comprehend
[1:51]this book.
[1:52]Can you talk a little bit about why you decided
[1:55]to write this book and why then?
[1:58]Yeah, so I've always had a really complicated relationship
[2:02]with my father.
[2:02]And if you read the memoir, you'll see that plainly.
[2:07]I was really empathetic kid.
[2:10]I could have felt things very strongly.
[2:12]And my father was the complete opposite of that.
[2:15]He had strong emotions.
[2:16]But he just didn't have an emotional intelligence
[2:20]to engage with people on that level.
[2:22]I was just so desperate for an older man
[2:25]to take an interest in me in that way.
[2:28]And I had that with my World War II grandfather,
[2:31]World War II vet grandfather and my Vietnam vet,
[2:34]Uncle, who were also somewhat limited
[2:37]in their ability to engage in emotional things.
[2:40]But at least love me a little bit better than my father did.
[2:43]My father did not have a really good relationship
[2:45]with his father or his older brother.
[2:47]So that created a lot of friction.
[2:50]It created this triangle.
[2:51]My father didn't get me what I wanted.
[2:53]I went to my uncle, my grandfather.
[2:55]And then my father punished me for doing that.
[2:57]So it was this kind of cycle that went on and on.
[3:01]I tried to earn my father's love by doing extraordinary things.
[3:07]It became the engine for writing.
[3:10]My father very famously, when I told him
[3:13]I wanted to be a writer.
[3:14]I was going to quit a 10-year-in-high school teaching position
[3:18]at one of the best schools in South Jersey.
[3:20]He screamed at me and called me an idiot.
[3:22]And he screamed he would not pay for my dental over and over.
[3:25]And it was a weird moment because I was telling him
[3:29]I was having mental health problems.
[3:31]Like, this is my dream.
[3:32]And the thing he was really worried about was my teeth.
[3:35]It was so bizarre.
[3:37]And the great joke, the great punchline
[3:40]is that for the next three Christmases,
[3:42]my mother gave me a trip to the dentist.
[3:44]So my father actually did pay for my dental over 30 years.
[3:48]It was a great irony.
[3:50]But as I got more and more successful,
[3:53]that also was very threatening to my father as well.
[3:56]And so every time I brought something home,
[4:01]that wounded little five-year-old boy was holding up his prize.
[4:05]Like, is this going to be the thing that
[4:07]allows me to find the door knob to my father's soul?
[4:10]Is this going to be the thing?
[4:13]And of course, it never was.
[4:14]Each accolade was met with, in retrospect,
[4:20]the only word I can come up with is cruelty.
[4:22]I remember when I had a movie deal and a book deal
[4:25]and I had this huge, I was living in my in-laws
[4:28]and I had no money and I was working in their basement.
[4:31]And I finally had this career opportunity.
[4:33]And my father said, you know you have to pay taxes on that.
[4:38]And then he said, I'm going to write a book someday.
[4:40]So that was kind of the level.
[4:42]And so I think the question was why now, right?
[4:46]I just want to say there's a scene in the book
[4:48]where you finally buy this beautiful house.
[4:51]You've been struggling for years and years and years.
[4:53]And then you have the success.
[4:55]And you buy this beautiful house and your family
[4:57]comes to see it and your mom is going to-
[5:00]oohing and eyeing over the house, and your father will not say one word and is just sulking.
[5:08]And then you overhear him later on the phone talking to one of his clients saying,
[5:13]the house is gorgeous, my son has this beautiful house, it's huge, right?
[5:18]You're soft, he just threw himself down on the couch and just wouldn't talk to anyone.
[5:22]And he kept saying they had to go home to see the dog, you know, that was the thing.
[5:27]I think it was just really threatening to my father, my success was really threatening.
[5:31]And I think he worked long and hard in the banking industry and he didn't have a lot of success early on
[5:38]because his social skills were too poor. He was a genius with numbers. He may have been on the spectrum.
[5:46]So that was complicated. So why now, right? My father was diagnosed with dementia right
[5:53]another time that I got sober. And that's really, you know, some synchronicity there.
[5:59]I got sober in a couple months after I officially got sober, my dad, that was the first time
[6:04]he ever told me he loved me. And it was hard not to think, maybe I was contributing to some of this,
[6:11]you know, ill will as well. You know, when I was five, of course not, you know, when I was 10,
[6:14]of course not, when I was 15, maybe a little, you know, when I was 40 probably a little bit too.
[6:20]And so getting sober and then going into Jungian analysis was a really humbling thing for me.
[6:26]And in analysis, my analyst, what I call Zeus in the book, he really, he really pushed back on
[6:34]this narrative of my, me saying my father was this awful person and, you know, I'd gone no
[6:40]contact for a while with him. You know, I can just dismiss him because he did X, Y, and Z,
[6:45]and that means I don't have to care about him anymore. And one of the things that you said to
[6:50]me is that if you, if you hate your father, you're going to hate 50% of who you are because that's
[6:55]half your DNA. And more importantly, one of the things we worked on was redeeming the father archetype,
[7:02]the archetype of the good father. And so there's a scene in the book where Zeus asked me to
[7:08]list the things that my father did for me in a first and say, he didn't do anything for me,
[7:14]nothing. Every time he failed me, he was emotionally and psychologically abusive. And I remember
[7:19]he said to me, you know, when you were one, you know, when you were one, did you go out and get a job and
[7:24]earn money for diapers and food? And I said, you know, like everybody's dad does it, he's not true,
[7:30]you know, not everyone's dad does that, you know. So we worked really hard on, you know, trying to
[7:36]find ways to redeem the father. And this is also when all the me too stuff was going on. And
[7:43]just sort of this kind of anti-patriarchy movement in the culture and the zeitgeist. And
[7:47]as someone who worked very closely with Harvey Weinstein, like I realized that that was the thing
[7:51]we needed to do, right? As important conversation for us to have. But I think we got kind of swept
[7:57]up in this, you know, patriarchy bad, father's bad, men bad. And I think that I internalized a lot
[8:04]of that. And the work that my analysts and I did so hard was to reclaim positive masculinity. We
[8:12]hear so much about toxic masculinity. But we never talk about positive masculinity or even just
[8:17]healthy masculinity. We never define that. And so that's really what we tried to do. And, you know,
[8:23]in that conversation with Zeus, he said to me, you know, you really need to find a way to love
[8:29]your father before he dies. And I rage and said, that's not my responsibility. Like he's the father
[8:34]on the son, you know. And I said, why should I have to do this? And he said, because you're not a
[8:40]little boy anymore. And that was this, this moment. And in the book really became this examination
[8:46]about abandoning the needy son mentality to finally take on in my late 40s, the giving father
[8:55]mentality. And so my father got dementia. Two things happened. This window closed on, you know,
[9:02]am I going to be able to intellectually engage with my father because, you know, his mind was
[9:06]deteriorating. And also he became very childlike. And so this man who never smiled once in the
[9:12]50 years, I knew him. The man who is always screaming and yelling suddenly we'd be out and he
[9:17]would be freaking out about the color of an azale bush. Like it's so beautiful. Like look a cloud or
[9:24]he would say a turtle. And it was like amazing because my father had turned into this six-year-old
[9:29]little boy. And I found in those moments, I would just I would be overwhelmingly called to just
[9:36]kiss him on the forehead. And I would kiss him and hug him the way I do my young nieces and nephews.
[9:41]And when I was doing these things, it was just so healing. It would bring tears to my eyes.
[9:45]And I realized that my father had this humanity in him this whole time that had been perverted
[9:52]by his upbringing and whatever, you know, the rules of the day were about masculinity. And the
[9:58]the fact that he never got treated.
[10:00]in for his mental health issues.
[10:02]And so I realized that this was the time
[10:05]to really start thinking about this.
[10:07]And when Jofie came, I had her, Jofie came to me and said,
[10:09]I want to, you'd write a memoir.
[10:12]It was a difficult time because I had written a novel
[10:14]and he said, I don't think this is what you should publish.
[10:16]I think you should write a memoir about your alcoholism,
[10:19]your Jungian analysis, and your father.
[10:21]And I said, so you want me to write about all my deepest,
[10:23]darkest secrets.
[10:25]And then give them to the writers and say, yes, that's the move.
[10:29]So that's what I did, yeah.
[10:32]It's interesting, your sessions with Zeus,
[10:35]and there's a reason that he's called that in the book.
[10:40]One of the first things that he says to you is,
[10:43]he says I love you, and you cannot tolerate that.
[10:47]No, it was excruciating.
[10:49]Yeah, and there were two things that happened.
[10:51]One was you wore a black t-shirt
[10:55]because you wanted him to know how depressed you were
[10:59]and you wanted him to notice.
[11:01]And he never said a word.
[11:03]And one day you wore a mint green shirt
[11:06]and he didn't notice and you were so upset
[11:08]that he just did not pay attention.
[11:10]But the bigger thing was, and we find out in the book
[11:14]sort of how that plays out, the t-shirt thing.
[11:17]But the bigger thing was that he was saying to you,
[11:21]I'm going to give you a model of a healthy father.
[11:24]Yeah, yeah.
[11:25]And that's so powerfully done in this book.
[11:28]Like you have all the reactions to him
[11:31]that you never got a lot of those things from your father.
[11:33]And then when you got them from him,
[11:35]they were just so foreign to you and so threatening to you.
[11:40]Yeah, and analysis we really talked about through poverty
[11:45]and war that this sickness, this virus,
[11:49]psychological virus got into my grandfather
[11:52]that he passed onto my father.
[11:54]And I didn't realize how that I had been colonized by that.
[11:58]You know, I always thought, oh, it's my grandfather
[12:00]and my father's not me, right?
[12:02]Like I'm this empathetic writer and you know, it's not me.
[12:04]But when Zeus told me he loved me in the first session,
[12:08]it was just moment, he said to me,
[12:11]I'm going to tell you something and you're not going to wake it.
[12:13]And I was like, well, is this going to be, you know?
[12:16]And he just looked at my eyes and said, I love you.
[12:18]And my instant reaction was like, fuck you.
[12:21]Like, don't mess with me like that.
[12:24]And he just kept saying it over and over.
[12:27]I didn't say that allowed to him,
[12:29]but my hands were clenched and I felt anxious.
[12:32]And it was just so foreign to me.
[12:34]And it reminded me of the way my father was growing up.
[12:38]If I tried to hug him, he would punch the back of my back
[12:41]until I let go.
[12:42]And particularly in my uncle Pete who dressed in camouflage
[12:47]and had a closet full of guns and carried a switchblade on him.
[12:51]If I tried to hug him, he would hit me hard.
[12:53]And I remember there was this one Christmas
[12:56]when I was maybe in my 20s.
[12:58]And I was just in a funny, festive mood.
[13:00]And I said to Pete, I said, you know, by the end of the day,
[13:04]I'm going to like really hug you.
[13:05]Like, I'm going to hug you.
[13:06]Like, I love you.
[13:07]This is your father's older brother.
[13:08]Yeah, Pete and my uncle Pete.
[13:10]And he's like, he said a lot of awful things
[13:12]that I can't repeat in this room without getting canceled.
[13:15]But he's like, you know, basically like, if you hug me,
[13:17]I'm going to kill you.
[13:19]Like, I'm going to get my gun.
[13:20]Like, he was like, you will not hug me, you know?
[13:22]And I'm going to hug you, Pete.
[13:23]And at the end of Christmas, I went up to him
[13:25]and I just grabbed him from behind and held on.
[13:27]And he just kept punching in my back.
[13:29]And I was like, riding a wild animal.
[13:31]Like a bronco.
[13:32]And he just kept punching.
[13:34]And the punches got lesser and lesser.
[13:36]And then suddenly he just broke out in a huge smile.
[13:39]And I felt like it was one of the greatest victories
[13:41]of my entire life.
[13:42]You know, it was just this wonderful moment.
[13:45]I didn't think that that was really
[13:46]possible with my father.
[13:49]It was more complicated.
[13:51]And so when Zeus kind of did that to me,
[13:54]it really took me back to this young place
[13:57]where I didn't have control because it
[14:00]conjured such powerful emotions in me
[14:03]and such powerful need in me.
[14:05]But it took me to those fragile places
[14:07]that I had avoided going for so long.
[14:11]And it was the beginning of feeling
[14:13]all of the pain of the trauma that I had avoided feeling
[14:17]for 40 some years through dissociation.
[14:21]And alcohol use and drug use, just to function.
[14:27]You talk about dissociation.
[14:29]Your other uncle, Uncle John, you interview him.
[14:33]You interview a lot of family members and people
[14:35]for this book.
[14:36]And I think that's so interesting because everybody
[14:38]has their own memories.
[14:41]And the scene where you ask Uncle John,
[14:45]the younger brother of your father, about their childhood,
[14:50]you know something went really, really wrong there.
[14:54]And there are different scenes where you're like,
[14:55]you start to come to this conclusion that,
[14:57]oh, my dad, he's not inherently evil.
[15:00]He's a product of this very painful household that he grew up and even though his father, your grandfather, was lovely to you.
[15:08]Yeah.
[15:09]And you only have like, it was one time where he kind of crossed the line, but that was it.
[15:14]And so it was interesting to your father probably had a lot of feelings about that, that his own father, who was terrible to him, was so loving to you.
[15:22]Michael John was, could not answer any of your even basic questions about what happened in their childhood. He was like blocked or couldn't go there.
[15:31]And so he tells you about, then all of a sudden we realized why, because he tells you about the stadium.
[15:36]Yeah.
[15:37]Yes. So I was interviewing Michael John and, you know, basically, and I was like, did my grandfather beat you? I knew he did.
[15:43]And he's like, I can't remember, you know, I knew my grandfather used to refer to my father's name as Michael. He used to call Michelle a lot.
[15:50]And I said, do you remember that? And he's like, I don't remember. And then finally he just said, you know, at some point, I started to think of the family as a football game.
[16:02]And everybody was out on the field and I just climbed up to the top of the stadium.
[16:07]And sometimes I would look down at the field and say, oh, that was an interesting play.
[16:11]And then I would just stop paying attention. I would just look up at the sky.
[16:15]And it was this perfect metaphor for dissociation. He, I don't think he knew what dissociation was.
[16:21]I just was his brain came up with this coping mechanism for this metaphor, this medicine in story to really protect him.
[16:31]And the interesting thing is that I had somewhat lost touch with his three daughters and through interviewing him and writing the memoir, which they've all read.
[16:41]We've become back in contact, two of them were at my event in Princeton, New Jersey.
[16:46]And they said when they read that scene, they're like, you nailed my dad.
[16:51]And like we never knew any of this stuff about the family because he never tells us anything, you know.
[16:57]And so my grandfather and my uncle Pete told me a lot of things because I was the first born male.
[17:02]And so there was that was really important in my family.
[17:05]But they would never tell anything to, you know, the nicest or the women in the family because there was just kind of this gender line, you know, that you didn't cross in my family.
[17:15]But what's interesting is that, so your father and uncle John grew up in the same house.
[17:21]Your father responded to you in this way that, you know, it was just really, really painful.
[17:28]And John, maybe because he had dissociated, he was a loving father to his children and to his grandchildren.
[17:39]Yeah, in his own way, you know, and talking to his daughters, I've learned that that ability to dissociate having a father dissociated a lot was was painful in other ways.
[17:54]Very confusing to them.
[17:56]You know, they never had the experience of, you know, their father physically attacking them, which I had, you know, they never had the, the humiliating talk, the grabbing.
[18:08]So, you know, in that way, maybe they, they got off a little easier if you want to, you know, compare apples to oranges.
[18:15]He had this ability to be loving. He's much less aggressive.
[18:22]He wasn't a careerist, like my father was, you know, my father was, he had the rise to the top of the bank and that was really the only thing that mattered.
[18:32]Where my uncle was, you know, he would, he would take joy in, you know, the dance recitals or things like that.
[18:39]You know, not that I'm recommending dissociation, but it seemed to be a little bit more healthy than, you know, my father's project and rage technique, you know, so.
[18:52]Yeah, I want to talk for a second about sort of how you wrote this memoir.
[18:57]Yeah.
[18:58]So your dad has dementia and you're, you decide at some point you have a dream.
[19:04]Yeah.
[19:05]And you decide that you are going to, and you're not writing the book at that point and you decide you're going to move to where your parents are.
[19:14]And in fact, you had been sort of blocked, right?
[19:17]And you're going to move and you're going to take care of your father who had abused your whole life as he goes through this dementia.
[19:26]And you write it as a letter to him.
[19:29]And it's so well crafted that you know he's probably never going to read this because of the dementia.
[19:37]And yet you're telling him all the things and there's, there's a, can you talk about the scene where his father when he was dying,
[19:45]said, why is Michael so mad at me all the time?
[19:48]Yeah.
[19:49]Your dad, and your dad would not tell him and left him dying sort of confused about that.
[19:55]Yeah.
[19:56]So, you know, the memoir starts out with my grandfather telling me that he's decided.
[20:00]and he was 91 and he wasn't diagnosed with anything.
[20:05]He just was really tired, you know,
[20:07]and one of the things that happened was my grandfather
[20:10]fancied himself a Frank Sinatra singer, you know.
[20:14]He claims that had been famous in Paris during the war,
[20:16]you know, and they painted a mural of him
[20:18]and he had this whole story and he sang in the church
[20:21]and he thought he was really good.
[20:24]And so he would film himself
[20:29]and he'd make people watch and he,
[20:31]at one point he called me, you know,
[20:32]with this scheme he was going to get rich
[20:33]by selling a CD, he wanted to know how to make a CD.
[20:36]And, you know, and so it was, it was cute
[20:40]if you could tolerate it, but I think my grandfather
[20:43]had these narcissistic fantasies to kind of cope
[20:46]with the shame of what he did in the war,
[20:48]the shame of growing up poor, and he really confided in me a lot.
[20:53]So I knew him and I didn't realize
[20:56]that it was probably somewhat inappropriate, you know,
[21:01]that I was in somewhat of a codependent relationship
[21:03]with my grandfather.
[21:05]I just really thought that my grandfather was this older man
[21:08]and he paid attention to me.
[21:10]So if he needed narcissistic supply,
[21:12]that was a good trade, you know, I give him all he needed.
[21:15]And so at the end of his life he said, you know,
[21:17]I don't know why your father hates me
[21:18]and I want to fix this before I die, you know.
[21:20]Can you get him to come?
[21:22]And at the time my father was working at the spank
[21:24]and lit its Pennsylvania, every day it was about five minutes
[21:27]away from his father, but he never would go.
[21:29]And so I asked my father to go and he was very angry,
[21:32]I'd stay out of it, you know, and finally he broke down
[21:35]and went and my grandfather and tried to ask him,
[21:39]you know, what was wrong and my dad wouldn't tell him
[21:41]and then my grandfather and attempt to make peace,
[21:44]said, you know, Michael, with your brains
[21:48]and if you had my personality, we would have ruled the world,
[21:51]you know, which was like such a kind of backhanded compliment.
[21:57]I don't think my grandfather meant it that way
[21:58]but it enraged my father and he just left
[22:02]and he just never spoke to his father again.
[22:05]And he died, you know, a few months later, a few weeks later
[22:08]and you know, my dad for the rest of his life,
[22:11]every time we would talk about my grandfather,
[22:13]he said, I wish I told my dad why I was so angry with him.
[22:16]I wish I told my dad.
[22:17]And so this was the kind of mantra that he was saying
[22:20]over and over and it felt like the universe saying,
[22:23]tell your dad why you're angry with him before he dies.
[22:27]But it was complicated because of the way my father's
[22:31]psychologically built.
[22:32]I don't think he would have been able to tolerate
[22:34]that conversation.
[22:37]My father's relationship, my relationship with my father,
[22:41]ever since I was five was I was his psychologist,
[22:44]you know, he would come and just download all
[22:46]of his worst thoughts, all his worst feelings.
[22:48]He would lecture me when I was seven about why the people
[22:51]at the bank didn't understand how smart he was, you know,
[22:54]and I learned to listen, you know,
[22:57]and I learned to be a vessel for that.
[22:59]I didn't realize that that was abusive, you know,
[23:02]when I was seven, you know, looking back now,
[23:04]I know that it was.
[23:06]And so to flip that script,
[23:09]I knew that wouldn't take us to a very good place.
[23:12]But every time my father said this to me,
[23:14]I also realized how important it was for me
[23:16]to process all of these things.
[23:18]And telling Zeus about all of that was helpful.
[23:22]But there was a part of me that realized
[23:24]I was holding this secret, you know,
[23:26]and I needed to let it out.
[23:29]And the way that I justified doing that was originally,
[23:33]I thought, well, maybe there are other men
[23:35]that would be helped by their other people, you know,
[23:37]because a lot of women have told me it's been very helpful
[23:39]to read the memoir too.
[23:41]And I thought, well, I'll do it for the other people
[23:43]because I didn't have enough love for myself.
[23:48]I guess I'd do it for myself.
[23:49]So I became this thing where this,
[23:51]the memoir was this mechanism of doing this thing
[23:54]under the guise of doing it for other people
[23:58]to finally do the work of coming out
[24:01]and telling these secrets that I've been holding for so long.
[24:05]It was terrifying, you know?
[24:06]And if you grew up in a family that is dysfunctional
[24:11]and the way that it survives is by keeping secrets,
[24:14]to be the truth teller is to risk being, you know,
[24:19]kicked out of that family.
[24:21]It's to risk everything.
[24:22]And so it was very, very scary.
[24:24]And it took me, you know, almost 50 years
[24:26]to get up the courage to do this.
[24:29]So...
[24:30]What's interesting is that it's so meta in the book.
[24:33]Not only are you writing to your father
[24:34]and you say you a lot to your father,
[24:38]but you also will say, you know,
[24:40]and then I went, and then I'm gonna put this scene
[24:42]in the memoir, like you'll tell the people
[24:43]you're talking to at the time,
[24:45]you'll say, is it okay if I put this scene in the memoir?
[24:47]Yeah, and then you go and you do it.
[24:51]So it's kind of like we're there with you
[24:53]as you're going through both the healing process
[24:56]and the kind of reckoning process.
[24:59]And...
[25:00]the writing process and therapy process
[25:03]and dealing with all the various family members
[25:06]as you bring them into the story.
[25:09]Yeah, yeah.
[25:10]And I think that for me,
[25:12]it was, I was so immersed in the experience of this.
[25:16]And to be honest, while I was writing it,
[25:18]I wasn't really thinking about the commercial liability
[25:21]of it.
[25:22]I was just sobbing at my computer every day for months, you know?
[25:25]And then later when I turned it into my editor,
[25:29]they said, oh, this is like 700 pages.
[25:31]Maybe we should make it shorter.
[25:33]And so we edited it down and tried to work on the form.
[25:36]But I do think it was this thing
[25:38]that just kind of organically came out of me.
[25:41]And I think that it was churning and forming
[25:44]for all of these years.
[25:46]And so, you know, to me, it was really alive
[25:50]and happening in the moment.
[25:51]And I think that there's a certain engine in the book
[25:55]that feels very, I feel like you can feel the book rumbling
[25:58]as you read it.
[25:59]You know, it's alive for that reason.
[26:03]I think it's a really intense read.
[26:06]It's really honest read.
[26:08]And it's a read that I think will take readers
[26:11]to places that maybe they need to go,
[26:13]but maybe have been a little bit afraid of going.
[26:16]And that is very much for me.
[26:18]That was the analytic journey.
[26:20]You know, when I first went into analysis,
[26:22]Zeus, you know, I said to Zeus and I'm blocked.
[26:25]You know, I need to start writing again.
[26:27]My career stalled.
[26:28]How long is this going to take?
[26:30]You think we could do it in a month, you know?
[26:32]And he said to me, he's like,
[26:34]well, that's really interesting that you think
[26:36]you can do this in a month.
[26:38]You know, it usually takes a little longer.
[26:39]And I remember, you know, all analysts have to go
[26:43]through analysis.
[26:43]So I said, well, how long did it take you?
[26:45]You know, you went through analysis.
[26:46]He said, for me, it was pretty quick.
[26:49]I said, well, how long was it?
[26:51]And he said 20 years.
[26:52]And I said, oh.
[26:54]And then he said to me, you know,
[26:56]listen, Jungian analysis isn't a place you go
[26:59]to feel better in, you know, fast.
[27:02]You know, I'm not going to give you a pill.
[27:03]I'm not going to take it.
[27:04]In fact, he said, Jung famously advised
[27:08]that people should try everything,
[27:10]everything before you go into Jungian analysis
[27:12]because it's about going toward the pain.
[27:16]And one of the things that Zeus and I talked a lot about
[27:19]was this idea of needing story to handle the pain
[27:24]and myth.
[27:26]And so we talked a lot about Greek mythology,
[27:28]which is one of the reasons why I call him Zeus.
[27:31]But he also knew I'd grown up in a fundamentalist
[27:34]Christian church and I had a lot of what he would call,
[27:38]had a very large religious complex is what he would say.
[27:42]And I was shocked when he said, we have to mine
[27:44]the stories of your youth, the myths of your youth
[27:47]because they're so alive and you're soul.
[27:49]And he's not a practicing Christian.
[27:51]So it was like confusing to me.
[27:52]I said, you're not afraid.
[27:54]You have to think symbolically.
[27:55]Like these stories have been around for a long time
[27:59]because they have such rich psychological truth in them.
[28:02]And any religion has that.
[28:04]Any myth has that.
[28:06]And so he said to me, you've been worshiping Dionysus.
[28:10]And he said, if you keep doing that, you're going to die.
[28:13]And he said, you need a better God.
[28:16]You need a God to beat the God.
[28:18]And I was shocked.
[28:18]He said, you need the other God of wine.
[28:20]The other God with long flowing hair
[28:22]that is wine, that's what Jesus like.
[28:25]We're going to, this is what we're doing here.
[28:26]And he said, he said, yeah, because you need to be crucified.
[28:30]And he said, you need to willingly submit to crucify.
[28:33]You need to put yourself in so much pain.
[28:36]And he said, because you need to crucify
[28:38]the needy's son mentality out of you
[28:40]so that you can resurrect again
[28:42]and take on the giving father mentality
[28:44]so that you will be useful to other people.
[28:47]And that was such a powerful reframing of my childhood.
[28:52]The miss I had heard that was just so alive in me.
[28:55]And it was just really diving into symbolic thinking.
[29:01]It was extremely medicinal.
[29:04]And so things that I was not able to tolerate
[29:07]for 30 years without abusing clonnopin
[29:10]or drinking seven scotches or whatever,
[29:15]I was suddenly able to tolerate them
[29:16]by using myth and story.
[29:19]And I remember there was a moment too
[29:21]where I kept saying, can myth really, really, is this real?
[29:25]And he said, you're a storyteller
[29:27]and you don't believe in the power of symbolism.
[29:29]No wonder you're blocked, right?
[29:31]No wonder you can't write.
[29:33]And so it was almost like I had to relearn all of these things
[29:38]again without Dionysus and the creative high
[29:43]of drinking and drugs and all of that.
[29:45]And the alcohol was quicker, I think,
[29:49]but the analysis and the myth is much more profound.
[29:55]It will take you to more human places.
[30:00]You see that in the book where you go from rage to compassion and part of it is because
[30:07]your father is becoming more childlike and more loving and says all kinds of things
[30:13]to you that he never would have said when he was, when you were growing up and yeah.
[30:18]And this question of sort of like is that really his essence that, that was damaged in
[30:24]his own household when he was growing up.
[30:28]What's beautiful is how you structure the book because we go from this place of these
[30:34]first of all, you take us through, you kind of bring us in and we know things are, you
[30:40]know, you tell us sort of progressively things that are really, really intense.
[30:44]And you save at the very end for these like two very intense things that happen.
[30:49]But in between them is this juxtaposition of there's this one really intense story.
[30:56]And you say to your dad, you're like, dad, we have to talk about this.
[30:59]And as a reader, we think, oh my gosh, we've heard so much, what is this going to be?
[31:04]And you tell it and it's unforgettable.
[31:07]And then you go into this beautiful scene of you and your father taking the trash to the
[31:11]dump.
[31:13]And you want to talk about the dump scene?
[31:15]It's just, it's, I love it so much and it's this beautiful scene of like the two of you
[31:22]almost like he's your child.
[31:24]Yeah.
[31:25]Yeah.
[31:26]It's the gifts of the dump right, you know, so in the island I live on in South Carolina,
[31:31]they don't have a recycle pickup, they have a trash pickup, you have to pay for it.
[31:36]So there's a community dump where you take everything.
[31:39]And for whatever reason, this was my father's favorite place to go.
[31:44]He loved going to the dump and there was this woman, when you go to the dump on my iPhone,
[31:49]you have a little pass, you have to scan and the woman that scanned it, she was just,
[31:54]I felt like she was an angel, she was, she was about my age, she was just so warm.
[32:00]And she very quickly caught on to what was going on with my dad and myself and for the
[32:05]first couple months, she would just watch us.
[32:08]And so going to the dump would be, you know, we go to the dump, I'm like, okay dad, like
[32:12]we have to get out of the car.
[32:14]It starts there.
[32:15]Like you have to pull the handle, you know, so we pull the hand and then we get all
[32:19]of the bags out of the back and, you know, we go to the, you know, the tin can't, all
[32:24]right, let's dump them, don't put the bag into the bags in, we got to reach in, take
[32:27]it out, you know, so it's step by step process.
[32:30]And this woman would just watch, she would just watch us and she would smile.
[32:34]And then she would come over after a couple months and she would say, she would say to
[32:39]my dad, you know, you're really lucky to have such a good son taking care of you.
[32:44]And I was like almost in tears when she said that the first time, I just wanted to hug
[32:47]her.
[32:48]And my dad said, yeah, I know, I know, I love the dump and we would do the river cycle.
[32:53]You know, and when we finished, it was always cardboard last, right?
[32:56]And my dad would throw on the cardboard and he'd look at me like, I can't score to touch
[33:00]down, you know, and I was like, good job dad, high five, you know, and he's, I love
[33:03]the dump, it's great.
[33:04]And he's, his women had to dump, would just laugh, they would just take so much joy.
[33:08]And there was this one moment, this is not in the book, it was last January, we're one
[33:14]of these women, I hadn't seen it for a while.
[33:16]And I was in, you know, the Rite Aid and all of a sudden this woman comes up and just
[33:21]wraps her arms around me and hugs me and, you know, out of context, I didn't realize
[33:25]what, well, I just thought it was a stranger hugging me.
[33:27]And then she said, how's your father, I'm just watching her, I realize it's the woman
[33:30]from the dump and there's just so much love.
[33:34]And my father, I think because I took the time to really walk him through all of that
[33:41]and to make him feel confident and feel like he could do it that he wasn't afraid.
[33:47]It was just really beautiful thing.
[33:50]My mother would always say, you know, you're so good with your father, how do you know
[33:54]how to be so good with him?
[33:56]I said, it's easier, I just do all the things that never differ me.
[33:58]Like all the things that I wanted when I was six that he never did, I know exactly what
[34:02]there's are.
[34:03]I just do them for him, you know?
[34:04]And sometimes in the way home, I've daddy did a great job and when I go get a peach smoothie
[34:08]and he'd be like, yeah, let's do that.
[34:11]And he loved peats, he wrote, he was like a little boy, like, I love peats, I want a
[34:15]different piece of it, yeah.
[34:17]But there's also this scene and I think whether you have a difficult relationship with
[34:21]a parent or not, where your mom gets sick one morning and your dad has to go for some
[34:26]tests and he has to do a urine sample.
[34:29]And you know, like this role reversal of having to take care of your aging parents in
[34:35]this way where he needs help and this is the person who could not really do anything
[34:42]for you growing up or be kind or patient or calm or reassuring.
[34:48]You're always like, you got this dad and because he was so concerned about being able
[34:52]to pee into the cup and then you describe it in the book where you tell it.
[35:00]Yeah, so I had to take my dad to get a Jordan sample and
[35:05]Yeah, my mom was sick and I went over to the house and she's she's on the couch with a bucket and my dad is
[35:11]Running around naked the house like I can't get dressed and he's screaming. I screwed it up
[35:15]I was supposed to pee in the cup, but I peed in the toilet and I don't know what to do and it's ruined and he's naked
[35:21]And I'm like that. Okay. Well, let's put some underwear on first. You know, that's step one and
[35:25]You know, I put his hoodie on he takes it off when I turn around
[35:28]You know, it's just like this whole thing. It's like getting a two-year-old ready. Yeah, it's exactly it and
[35:34]and then we went to
[35:37]You know the place where you give the urine sample and he just gets quiet, you know, and he's
[35:42]He's sitting down and I'm standing because there's no seats and he just keeps tapping me. You know
[35:46]Did you check me? You know, I'm like, yeah, that we're good. We're good. And so finally we go back and you know
[35:52]He's blood drawn and the woman asks for the urine sample my dad's hangs his head and shame, you know
[35:59]Okay, mr. Quick, you know, you can do it now, you know, it's I don't think I can and
[36:03]So I'm like all right here we go right so I go into the bathroom with him
[36:06]You know, I turn the water on I do that trick, you know, and my dad's standing there like squeezing all of his muscles
[36:11]And he starts to pee and he's just it's like this just trying it's like he hit a home run, you know
[36:16]He's like, it's like I'm filming up like I did it and
[36:19]And so afterwards she's like does this mean I get an oatmeal race and cookie and I'm like that I think it does, you know
[36:26]And so we have these wonderful moments in there they're they're really beautiful, but they're
[36:32]also
[36:34]juxtaposed right in the memoir juxtaposed them to all the awful scenes from my childhood
[36:39]But just last week I went to memory care
[36:42]And this story's been crushing at every stop, so I hope it crushes here
[36:46]I went to memory care of my dad. I walk in my dad's like there's a bomb in the building
[36:50]We got to get out of here my dad. There's no bomb, you know
[36:53]He's got he's got someone else's shoes on there seven sizes to big rooms
[36:57]He's like tripping and walks. I change his shoes. He's not shaved
[37:00]So I give him a bath. I shave him. I talk him down
[37:04]I massage him for a half hour
[37:06]I take him to the parkers
[37:07]Which is the convenience store and it gets his USA Gatorade as he likes the USA
[37:12]Big USA Gatorade, so we have that and I get him in his room and he's all calm
[37:16]And everything's like lovey-dovey now, you know
[37:18]It's great. I'm just about to leave feeling like the good accomplished son
[37:22]And my dad says to me. He's like you ever talked to Matthew anymore
[37:26]And and I realized that he thinks I'm his older brother Peter because I kind of look like him and you know
[37:32]He my father always resented that my grandfather loved the eldest son
[37:37]Best and then I was the eldest son so my grandfather loved me best so that we were linked in his mind
[37:43]But I said yeah, I played alone. Yeah, dad. I talked I talked to Matthew
[37:46]You have a message for me. He said yeah, I need you to tell him something
[37:49]I'm thinking, you know, oh wow, he's gonna say thanks for being a good son or I love you or so
[37:54]I said that what would you like to tell Matthew? He said tell him this
[37:58]I will always beat him and I said you always you always beat him like what do you mean by that?
[38:04]He said yeah, whatever he does in life no matter how
[38:08]Have no matter how good he does it. I will always beat him
[38:12]This is like this is naked
[38:14]You know like complex and it said and then he just smiled at me and I thought to myself
[38:20]If I was still on alcoholic right now, this would be a real like as one over
[38:25]I just kissed him on before and I said all right dad. I'll tell him, you know, and that was that and
[38:29]And so it was this really
[38:31]Learning to accept the full spectrum of humanity within my father, you know
[38:37]It really allowed me to tolerate the full spectrum of humanity in myself
[38:41]Yeah, and we're gonna open up to questions in a minute, but there's that reminds me of
[38:46]Sing yourself in him. Um, I think gave you more compassion for him. Yeah, like there was that time where
[38:54]There was an incident at Cirque du Soleil and you can tell about that and then you lost your hat later
[39:00]And can those were you realized I am
[39:03]so much like my dad
[39:05]And it I think it gave you so much compassion for
[39:08]Why he did the things that he did not that it excused it. Yeah, but that it helped you understand
[39:14]That that place inside where it comes from do you want to tell about Cirque du Soleil in the and the hat? Yeah, so
[39:21]Why was writing the memoir my wife Alicia and I
[39:25]Went to the Buford film festival. We live in Buford, South Carolina and they have this film festival every year
[39:30]It's about 10 minutes from a house and it's fun, you know, and so we went to see a film and
[39:37]When we left I couldn't find this hat that I really love is the winter hat and I feel like it makes my cheekbones look good
[39:44]I mean silly right, but Alicia gave it to me for Christmas seven years ago and
[39:50]because of my family
[39:52]I have a complicated relationship with accepting gifts because gifts were never really gifts for my childhood
[40:00]I have to interrupt because your father, it said in the memoir, he signed his gifts to
[40:04]your mother, the paycheck.
[40:06]What did he say?
[40:07]Yeah, my dad signed all of his gifts to my mom, the paycheck, you know, that was Christmas
[40:14]morning in my house, you know, and, you know, Christmas morning in my house too is I would
[40:19]get a present and I would try to figure out why would they think that I would like this,
[40:22]you know, like it was like, but the people my family had no idea who I was.
[40:26]So I've always had a complicated relationship with accepting gifts and this was a gift
[40:31]that I really loved that my wife gave me.
[40:33]So it was very loaded with symbolism and when I lost it, I had a panic attack.
[40:38]Like it was, it was really, it's how I had for seven years.
[40:42]It's not, it was not worth any money, but I just had this panic attack and I was looking
[40:48]all over for it and I had these fantasies about people, pickpocketing me and that night
[40:52]I was lying in bed with Alicia and I said, you know, I was acting like my dad tonight
[40:58]was, I wasn't I and she said, I wasn't going to bring it up, but it did remind me of
[41:02]this one time when we took my parents to go see a Cirque de Soleil performance and my
[41:07]father grew up on the bleachers and my father dropped his wallet and it felt 40 feet
[41:12]and, you know, there are people flying around in the air and all that and the people that
[41:17]were running the show said, you know, you just have to, you know, stay still, we'll get
[41:21]the wallet and my dad just completely went mental, you know, he just, I want my wallet,
[41:25]I need it now so I'm just going to steal my money and so I realized that these kind
[41:29]of obsessive compulsive or trust issues, you know, that they were in me too, you know,
[41:38]that I wasn't above my dad's, my dad's mental illness and that his DNA was very much
[41:43]in me, you know, whether I, I'm doing the work to, to deal with that where he isn't
[41:49]or not, like that's still in me and so seeing that really gave me a little bit more
[41:54]compassion for my father, you know, I think the order I get the easier it is to have
[42:01]compassion for him because that you come up against some of the same life challenges.
[42:07]So yeah, I think that's, that was a great thing to point out, Laurie, thank you.
[42:12]Do you wish that he could read this and comprehend this?
[42:17]I very much wish that he could read it and comprehend it.
[42:19]I think if my father had read the book and said, oh, I get it and we had a 10 hour conversation
[42:26]that would probably be the most important moment of my entire life.
[42:32]But I also have come to believe that my father's inability to give me this thing that
[42:37]I very much wanted is the reason why I have a life that I have.
[42:42]I would not be a writer if it weren't for the childhood abuses.
[42:46]There's another story I'd tell too that there's something on the other, thanks, there's
[42:50]this woman I knew there and she was super lovely, like great mom, she was a librarian,
[42:54]really good community member.
[42:56]If you, if you wanted a mom, this is the mom you want, right?
[42:59]And she said to me, she said, my daughter's an eighth grade and she wants to be a writer,
[43:03]you know, and I want to do anything I can to help her become a novelist, you know, what
[43:08]do I have to do?
[43:09]In my head, I think this kid's doomed, you know, like, you're too good of a mom, like,
[43:14]you know, you have a stable family, like, what is she going to write about, you know?
[43:19]And, you know, it's funny to say that, but I do think that, you know, I think life tasks
[43:27]us with certain tasks and it presents us with certain situations.
[43:32]And I think it's really about what we do with those situations.
[43:35]And I think for the first part of my writing career, because I was drunk, I was just
[43:40]unconsciously doing these things and a lot with my teaching too.
[43:44]I was really, I was really good at counseling, young kids, teenagers with mental health
[43:49]issues.
[43:50]I had no training whatsoever, but I became the kind of unofficial psychologist of the
[43:55]school I worked in.
[43:57]It was just because I knew what to do, because I knew what people didn't do for me when
[44:02]I was in a household that was dysfunctional.
[44:06]And so that was a bit of a gift and a curse, you know, but I'm grateful to be doing
[44:11]the work that I'm doing.
[44:13]I would never recommend that we create empathic writers by torturing children.
[44:18]I don't recommend that, but I think that, you know, we all have a lot in life and we
[44:23]should do the best we can with it.
[44:26]Last question before we open it up.
[44:27]What does your mom think of the memoir?
[44:31]What did my mom think of the memoir?
[44:36]Yeah.
[44:37]When she read the memoir, she's really nervous about the memoir.
[44:41]And I should just say there's a scene in the book where you ask their permission.
[44:45]Yeah.
[44:46]I do ask their permission and, you know, asking my father's, my demented father first
[44:50]permission is a little, I don't think I would hold up in a court of law, but my mom did
[44:54]give me her permission and, you know, when she read it, I think it was really hard for
[44:59]her to read.
[45:00]I think she was confronted with a lot of things that she had not wanted to think about.
[45:05]I think in some ways, I think my mom dissociated in the way that my uncle John dissociated,
[45:10]but my mom created narratives and she created stories that weren't really true,
[45:14]but they were probably what were needed to keep the family together.
[45:18]And so confronting her with all of this truth on mass, I think was difficult for her.
[45:24]But we had a lunch at the words in Buford, it was actually on her birthday, which is how the
[45:29]and she told me, she said, I have a lot of feelings about this, but I think I should just say
[45:34]that I'm so sorry this happened to you and I'm going to spend the rest of my life making it up to you.
[45:40]And it was this wonderful conversation. It was really, really beautiful. And I thought, wow,
[45:44]this is this turning point with my mom. And then two months later she said, why did you write that
[45:49]memoir? I don't want my friends to read it. And so now it's out and some of our friends are reading
[45:55]it and she hasn't been ostracized from society. So she's liking it a little bit better now.
[46:00]But it's funny because I did the audiobook. I read the audiobook and she's listening to the
[46:05]audiobook now and she said, you know, the audiobook's so much better than the reading.
[46:11]I don't know what it is. It's just more palatable. It's just listening to your voice.
[46:15]And she said, I really think you should win a Grammy. And I said, all right, that sounds good,
[46:19]but I think we're on the right page again, mom. So it's been good. I think, you know, Zeus always
[46:23]tells me reality is medicinal. And I think that that's really true. You know, dysfunction thrives
[46:30]in hiding, you know, and I think bringing it out into the light is good. And I think that
[46:37]it's been really hardening to see how my cousins, my Uncle John's kids are reading this and
[46:43]it's filling in a lot of the blanks for them about the family. And, you know, my youngest cousin,
[46:48]Rachel, she was much younger than me. So I didn't even really know her that well. And now I do. She
[46:52]texts me all the time. And she always said, you nailed my dad. Like it's like totally him. And,
[46:58]you know, so it's been, it's been really healing that way. You know, and I think when you tell the
[47:03]truth, certain people will step away from you, people who aren't ready to hear the truth,
[47:07]but the people who are ready to hear the truth will step towards you. And when you put up an
[47:11]authentic flag, the people that rally around it, the people that will accept you as you really
[47:17]are. And that has been deeply healing for me. Even just tonight, like meeting Laurie, you know,
[47:23]she emailed me and she's, I get this book and I want to talk to you about it. We zoom for two hours.
[47:28]It's fantastic. You know, I never knew that was coming when I was writing the book. And there's
[47:32]been many experiences like that. So I think your family grows when you tell the truth. Maybe not
[47:37]by blood, but by association. And I think that can be really beautiful.
[47:42]Well, I want to thank you for writing this beautiful book. I think it's going to be
[47:46]so medicinal and healing for so many people, even if they grew up in stable loving families.
[47:54]I think it just says a lot about sort of parents and children and makes us think about ourselves
[47:58]and what has influenced us and and what forgiveness means and what compassion means and what
[48:04]these role reversals happen as we get older. We'd love to hear questions from the audience.
[48:10]Anybody has any before Matthew signs his memoir? No one. No question. Very sad. There you go.
[48:18]I don't know if it's a question, but for me, I love the title of your book. How did you come up with
[48:24]it? That's how I love it. Well, there's a commercial part of me that thought, you know, what
[48:29]what books everybody done well? And then I thought, well, you pray love has three words, you know,
[48:33]or is that? I have to be honest. But there was also a book I read by William Wharton wrote
[48:41]Birdie, which was made into me, but it was a book called Dad. And I read it and it's it's a novel,
[48:47]but it's very much based on his relationship with his father and also his relationship with his son.
[48:52]He's filled off your writer and he was my grandfather's age, World War II guy. And I discovered
[48:57]his work quite late in life. And I read this as I was thinking about the memoir. And I think
[49:03]was a little bit of an homage to that. You know, I kind of wanted to acknowledge that. I think he's
[49:08]a bit of a forgotten writer, but I think he was a really good and important writer. And I also
[49:13]think too, it just came to me one day. And I thought, well, dad loved me, you know, it's a letter.
[49:19]So, you know, there's dad love me, you know, the, the address, the sign, the middle. And then
[49:25]it's a plea to like dad love me. And then it's also the three things that the book is about,
[49:30]dad love me. So I was very happy because when I turned it into my editor, the last book I
[49:36]turned in, he hated the title and we had to change it. And that's usually the way it goes. But
[49:41]this time when I thought, well, I'll go with this one and then probably changes to who cares,
[49:44]right? And, and, but he came back right away, Joe, if we, I remember he wrote me a text,
[49:48]he's like, triple entendre until we get it. But wow, he got it. Like, that's a good sign. And so that
[49:53]was a happy day for me. Yeah, yeah, over here.
[50:00]I think I did it before, but I think that the writing of the book was really instrumental.
[50:18]Zeus said to me after he read it, he said, you know, we had done something like 600 hours
[50:25]together by then, maybe almost 700. And he said, you know, all the work that we've done together, which is really good and beautiful and worthwhile.
[50:33]He seems great. He said, but your memoir did far more for you than the work we've done.
[50:39]And I think it's one thing to kind of rant about my father to my way for friends or, you know, have some type of internal monologue that I'm not really paying attention to, to be emotional about it.
[50:51]But to sit down and really sketch out my dad on the page, you know, to really create this three-dimensional character to get into his psychology.
[51:01]You know, in order for the memoir to work, I couldn't just create this straw man of a file. I had to really depict him as he really was.
[51:09]And so getting into his psychology and getting into his childhood and getting into, you know, even how he felt when he was doing these awful things,
[51:19]or why he was doing these awful things, it really just, the story became less of me being resentful and wishing for some type of revenge.
[51:30]And really just seeing it was this, this really unfortunate tragedy that I don't think my dad chose to be this way.
[51:40]I don't think he chose to be born with the limitations. You know, I've been, I've been saying a lot.
[51:47]You know, people say, how can you forgive your dad? How can you forgive?
[51:50]And I said, you know, it's kind of like if you walked up to someone on the street that had no money and you screamed at them.
[51:56]Give me a hundred dollar bills and they didn't give you any hundred dollar bills.
[51:59]If you're angry with them, they don't have any money. They can't give what they don't have.
[52:03]So with my father, he didn't know how to love a young boy.
[52:07]He didn't have that love. He wasn't, he didn't know when modeled that for him. He was abused as a child.
[52:12]So from my whole life, why didn't you give me this thing you didn't have?
[52:15]The other thing too, people asked me about forgiveness a lot on this tour.
[52:20]And I think there's a misconception that forgiveness is something that has to be earned.
[52:26]You know, if the other person has to say they're sorry and they've got to make amends.
[52:30]And you know, if that happens, it's great. You know, I recommend that. It's beautiful.
[52:35]You know, I was always, I was always waiting for my father to be worthy of forgiveness.
[52:40]And because he wasn't like in my leisure that I was keeping my whole life,
[52:44]I always say it's like I was carrying around this backpack that weighed 300 pounds.
[52:49]And forgiving him was just taking off the backpack. You know, it really wasn't,
[52:54]it really wasn't like saying I absolve you and now you're a good person and you know, we're going to forget it.
[52:59]And I'm just just take off the backpack. You know, I'm tired of carrying around this 300 pound backpack all the time.
[53:05]And that's been deeply healing for me.
[53:09]And because I'm not wearing the backpack, I'm not exhausted all the time.
[53:13]And I'm able to show up for other people without all that resentment and that baggage.
[53:17]And I think one of the things I've learned through doing analysis is yeah, of course you do the work for you.
[53:22]But you also do the work so that you're not making everyone else's life's worse.
[53:27]You know, and I think, you know, we can get into that victim mentality of, you know, these things happen to me and therefore this and that.
[53:35]But, you know, how are you showing up for everyone else? Like are you showing up pure? Like are you opening your heart?
[53:41]Like are you making your soul accessible? Are you allowing what you are born into this world to manifest and bring forth?
[53:49]Are you allowing that to flow? Or do you have some type of a head story, you know, some ego story that's blocking all that?
[53:55]And you're showing up to everyone else and saying well now, and I know I was when I was in alcoholic.
[54:00]Now you have to help me work on my father problems, you know, like the person in the Uber with me, you know, or whatever.
[54:06]Taking off the backpack is allowing me to show up a little bit in their pure.
[54:12]And my Uber ride last night this young man picked me up and you start talking at me.
[54:16]And before I knew it, I had learned everything about his childhood.
[54:20]This guy was just his father wounds were so palpable.
[54:24]And when I first I was like, I get a vent to do, I can't.
[54:27]And then I thought to myself, this is what my book is about.
[54:31]He was saying things to me. He said, you know, you're Gen X, right?
[54:35]You know, the older generation has stuff to offer.
[54:37]He's practically begging me to be a father for years.
[54:40]So I just listened for an hour, you know, and at the end he said, this was awesome.
[54:46]And I was like, it was, and I think if...
[54:49]Did you hand him your book?
[54:50]No, but I got his address and I'm going to send it to him.
[54:54]But, you know, I think 10, 15 years ago, I would...
[55:00]if needed to think, all right, where's my clonopin?
[55:03]Where's my alcohol?
[55:03]How am I going to get this this event?
[55:05]Like it was, I got to deal with all this issues inside of me
[55:08]that I haven't dealt with.
[55:09]So I can put myself together and be a human being
[55:11]and pretend to, you know, be this thing.
[55:14]Now I just show up as I am, you know?
[55:16]And I don't have that backpack anymore, you know?
[55:19]And so when those opportunities arise,
[55:21]I feel when I'm at my best, I still get tired.
[55:24]I still have bad days.
[55:25]But I think I can be more accessible to people.
[55:28]The other thing that happened when I did all this work, too,
[55:30]is that several male writers that are five to seven years younger,
[55:37]that means it's magically appeared in my life
[55:39]and just were hungry for mentorship.
[55:42]One of my former students showed up,
[55:44]that I taught from like 2000 to 2004.
[55:49]And she just showed back up in my life
[55:51]and I helped her get a book deal
[55:53]and she's gonna publish a book next year
[55:54]and then we text every Friday.
[55:56]And so I think that when I cleared up all of these issues,
[56:00]you know, I think psychically I was kind of advertising,
[56:02]like, oh, I'm back in the game, you know, I'm available.
[56:05]You know, I'm available to be teacher,
[56:07]father, figure, mentor in a way
[56:10]that I wasn't when I was sending out this vibe to everybody.
[56:13]Hey, my father abused me and therefore,
[56:16]that's your problem now, you know?
[56:19]So I think you do the work, you know,
[56:21]do you do the works for other people, humbly, if you can.
[56:24]And things come back to you in the right way.
[56:28]Yeah, over here, let me go for that.
[56:30]Yeah.
[56:31]Two-footer.
[56:32]Yeah.
[56:33]You mentioned sobriety a few times
[56:35]and it seems like that's pivotal to the story.
[56:38]Was there a trigger, a fan of something that caused that?
[56:43]And then the second part is if this was turned into a movie,
[56:47]would you wanna play you there?
[56:49]And it probably will be, by the way.
[56:52]Yeah.
[56:53]Well, the first part, yeah, there were definitely triggers.
[56:57]The first trigger, I talk about this in a memoir,
[57:00]but I went on a vacation with a couple of my wife
[57:03]and a couple of the couples and my buddy's wife,
[57:06]it's kind of a crafty person.
[57:08]So she took a bunch of photos and made photo albums for everybody.
[57:12]And, you know, she came over to her house
[57:14]and we were down in my bar at this huge bars
[57:17]as all alcoholics do, you know?
[57:18]And re-drinking and I'm flipping through their photos
[57:21]and I was like, who's this guy?
[57:23]It was this guy that we're hanging out with.
[57:25]Everyone looked at me and started laughing
[57:26]and then they said, that's you.
[57:29]And I literally didn't recognize myself
[57:32]because I was so, you know, when I got sober,
[57:37]I started running and I just started eating.
[57:40]I just went on a health cake
[57:41]and I lost 60 pounds in about two months
[57:44]and people just didn't even recognize me anymore.
[57:47]But it was that and then my blood pressure was through the roof
[57:50]and I got gout and I went to the doctor
[57:52]and I said, I don't eat sweets, you know?
[57:54]It was sugar, like, I don't eat desserts.
[57:56]He's like, did you drink alcohol?
[57:57]They're sugar in that and I was like, oh, you know?
[58:00]So that was that.
[58:02]There's also a time when I was at the Wright Brothers Memorial
[58:04]and I was walking with my wife and lightning started coming
[58:08]and the outer bank's lightning kills people every year.
[58:10]So you get in, it's no joke.
[58:12]And so I said, run, we got run, you know,
[58:14]we got to get to the car.
[58:15]And so she took off and I ran about five steps
[58:17]and I can't run anymore, you know?
[58:18]Because I've been drinking like an alcoholic for 25 years
[58:23]and there was this this wake up call moments.
[58:27]There are things that happened to, you know,
[58:29]I was working very closely with Harvey when he went down.
[58:31]I didn't know what was going on with Harvey
[58:33]but I worked closely with some of the women that accused him
[58:37]and they never told me about that.
[58:40]But some of them were quite young,
[58:41]like the age of my former students
[58:43]and just that was just a moment where I thought
[58:48]how am I, you know, like this is like I'm profiting off of that.
[58:51]He was like a kind of come to Jesus' moment
[58:54]where I'm looking at my life and just saying,
[58:57]this is a little bit out of control, you know?
[59:00]Not that I was culpable in any way for what Harvey was doing
[59:03]but Harvey was, I think I got along with Harvey
[59:07]because he was a abusive man
[59:08]and I knew how to take care of a abusive man.
[59:11]The first time I met Harvey, he screamed at me
[59:13]in front of an audience, I was in an interview
[59:14]and he just pulled me out of here
[59:15]and he was screaming at me and dressed me down in front of people.
[59:19]He made me eat a sandwich that was named after him
[59:21]by the chef watch.
[59:22]He was like, it's really brutal stuff
[59:23]but I know what to do with that.
[59:24]You know, I'd survive that in childhood, you know?
[59:27]Just narcissistically affirm.
[59:28]You're a genius, Harvey, you know?
[59:30]Like I love Mary Max, you know?
[59:31]Let me pitch a letter of peacock and he's like,
[59:33]okay, let's go.
[59:34]We're gonna help a bunch of kids.
[59:35]We're gonna save the world, you know?
[59:36]It's gonna be great for your image.
[59:38]I knew what to do with that, you know?
[59:41]But I got to a point where I'm like,
[59:42]maybe I don't wanna be around abusive men anymore, you know?
[59:45]And if I'm not gonna be around abusive men,
[59:48]well, I certainly can't do that sober, you know?
[59:50]I could do that drinking.
[59:51]I could take a lot of abuse if I could get loaded
[59:54]at the end of the night and just forget about it.
[59:57]When I couldn't get loaded at the end of the night,
[59:59]all of a sudden.
[60:00]couldn't tolerate that anymore. You know and I think I think that was
[60:03]health. So who would play the people in my movie? This movie will never get
[60:09]made because the casting will never get made but I think I would choose my
[60:13]for myself I have Matt Damon you know why not right. What's that? Oh yeah it's
[60:23]right with it. Yeah the honest I didn't even think of that. I think for my dad
[60:29]at JK Simmons they're using whiplash right and from my mom I really loved
[60:35]with Trisha Clarkson I don't know if you know Patricia Clarkson it was a movie
[60:39]called Lars and the real girl where she plays a therapist and I with Ryan
[60:43]Gosling I just I just I just love her so I think those would be the major
[60:48]casting who would I get to play Zeus right. I don't know like the people I
[60:55]think are first or dead like I think a Philip Seymour Hoffman would be great
[60:59]you know of course Robin Williams right I mean he would have been fantastic so I
[61:04]have to think of a in a live person. I work on that. Yeah over here yeah.
[61:11]It was tough right because it's like it's like this is the whole body of my
[61:24]life like which limb do I cut off you know it's really and Jofie was pretty
[61:30]surgical with it you know he would say not this chapter not this chapter and so
[61:37]I trusted him my wife is also a novelist and she's my best editor and so she
[61:43]loved the whole thing but we sat down and I sat down with Alicia and I said
[61:48]what do you think about Jofie's edits and she said yes no yes no and so between
[61:53]the two of them they really were able to guide me through it I usually don't
[61:57]have that problem with the editing but the material is just so personal and to me
[62:03]all of the scenes are vital because it's about me it's my life but to the
[62:07]other reader I had to to trust other people to kind of be a healthy mirror you
[62:13]know a trusted mirror Alicia's my best editor she's been editing me since
[62:17]of his 19 and she was 17 we've been together that long we just celebrate our
[62:21]29th anniversary so it's really wonderful because we've been through so
[62:29]much together that I just know she knows my psychology so well that when she
[62:34]edits me she's just editing to get the best version of me on the page and I
[62:38]trust her to do that and that is a wonderful gift to have you know in your
[62:42]house 24-7 you know so I got to give her a lot of credit I think I had a
[62:47]question here yeah
[62:49]there's even surprise by anything you know it was like there's nothing
[62:58]that surprised her at all my wife and I don't have any secrets and she lived
[63:03]most of it you know Alicia's really she's really I can trust her to tell me
[63:12]the truth you know if I write a novel and she's like this isn't good I know
[63:16]it's not good but this one she just she writes right she's like this is this
[63:21]is the best thing you've ever written and I think the reason why she said that
[63:26]is it because it's the most true thing that I've ever written and I think she
[63:30]realized that what it took for me to write it and she watched it she heard
[63:36]me cry in any other room she seen me do all the analysis she knew what it
[63:41]took for me to get sober my wife no one ever thought I would ever get sober
[63:46]that was just alcohol on me we're just that was just a match it was just
[63:51]never gonna not be and so I think she's seen some miraculous things happen in
[63:57]my life and she spearheaded them she got sober six months before I do not
[64:01]because she had a problem but I think she was modeling it for me and I think
[64:05]she felt like she was colluding with my alcoholism and so she she didn't do
[64:10]allnot she's decided one day I'm not gonna drink anymore and that was another
[64:14]wake-up call to because that was what we did every single night so that was
[64:20]really alarming and I owe her a great debt of gratitude for all of that so
[64:26]yeah that's it we're at right here
[64:30]Did your father's parenting skills contribute to new design whether to your father or no?
[64:35]Yes in my alcoholic presentful days I said I will not be like my father and I
[64:43]will do anything not to to to a child what my father did to me including
[64:49]getting over the second you know and so my wife didn't want kids either and
[64:56]she very much felt like she didn't want to pass on some of
[65:00]the things that were in her family.
[65:02]So that was a decision that we made together.
[65:05]Alicia still very much feels comfortable with that decision.
[65:09]I have come to feel differently about that.
[65:13]In health, I feel that I've missed out
[65:16]on one of the quintessential human experiences.
[65:19]And so that ache inside of me,
[65:21]I think creates a need and also an opportunity
[65:26]because there's different ways to be a father.
[65:28]And so when I was talking about mentoring
[65:30]some of those younger men or my former students
[65:32]or even the kid in the Uber,
[65:34]I've got a lot of extra father energy to give, you know?
[65:37]So I try to do that the best that I can now.
[65:42]And I think there might be some reason to that who knows.
[65:45]You know, I can't go back and betray my former self.
[65:49]I'm not gonna put my former self on trial.
[65:51]But I'm here now and, you know,
[65:54]gonna do the best I can with that, yeah.
[65:57]However, two, they had the same father or different father.
[66:03]They had the same father, but different experiences.
[66:07]Yeah, my sister, because she was, you know,
[66:10]a girl and then a young woman.
[66:12]And she was also the middle child.
[66:14]And my dad was the middle child.
[66:15]She was paired, you know, she was not.
[66:18]I won't say she got off easy.
[66:20]You know, I remember there was a time
[66:23]when my mom thought my sister needed therapy.
[66:25]And she did.
[66:27]And my dad, I remember my dad screaming,
[66:31]the therapist will blame me.
[66:32]I'm not paying for that, you know, like when I was 16,
[66:35]I was like, whoa, I better not go a therapy.
[66:36]You know, this is creating problems.
[66:38]So, you know, I don't think they were unscathed.
[66:42]I think when I went to college,
[66:43]my brother became the target a little bit.
[66:47]You know, my brother was more in his sports.
[66:49]And so my dad became obsessive
[66:52]about my brother's wrestling career
[66:54]and his soccer career and all of that kind of stuff.
[66:57]And that kind of stereotypical, you know,
[67:00]dad living vicarious way,
[67:02]which I don't think was very good for my brother.
[67:05]But there are different people.
[67:06]My sister is a nurse.
[67:08]And my brother's a businessman.
[67:10]So they don't really like to have conversations like this
[67:13]that we're having tonight.
[67:14]If they were here, they would listen.
[67:15]They'd be very respectful.
[67:18]But they would not get up in front of a room
[67:20]and say all of these things.
[67:22]This is a fact that I need the book to write.
[67:26]I don't really know.
[67:27]You know, I gave it to him early and said to them,
[67:29]you know, have to read this,
[67:31]but it's going into the world.
[67:32]And I thought maybe you'd want to be aware.
[67:35]My sister told me she read half of it.
[67:36]And she said that, you know,
[67:40]she understood what I was doing,
[67:42]but she just wasn't ready to read the rest.
[67:45]And, you know, we're still talking, you know, it's fine.
[67:48]My brother didn't say anything to me,
[67:49]but he's been calling me on Book Tour
[67:51]and being really supportive.
[67:52]So I think I'm all right.
[67:53]I'm going to an Eagles game with him and his kids
[67:55]in October.
[67:56]So I think we're okay.
[67:59]Again, they're not writers.
[68:01]They're not people that process this way.
[68:05]And that's okay.
[68:06]I think they love me by allowing me to do this.
[68:10]You know, our brother always says,
[68:12]the story teller tells another story.
[68:13]That's his line, you know.
[68:15]And he's like, it's just a story, you know.
[68:17]And I live in Beaufort and, you know,
[68:20]it's Pat Conroy territory, you know.
[68:23]And I was going to ask that question,
[68:25]the line didn't want to be disrespectful.
[68:27]Now I love Pat.
[68:28]And I'm actually become very good friends
[68:30]with his literary agent, Marley Russoff.
[68:32]She's become a good friend of mine.
[68:33]I'm doing the Pat Conroy literary festival.
[68:35]But there's, you know, Pat,
[68:37]he wrote great Santini's dad beat on him and was awful.
[68:40]And apparently his dad used to come to all of his signings
[68:44]and would sign the books, the great Santini.
[68:46]And he would say, enjoy my son's fiction.
[68:48]And then on the line fiction a million times.
[68:50]And I just love that story.
[68:53]It's just so perfect.
[68:55]Many more prints are tied to the area where you live.
[68:59]Yeah, I mean, the movie sets are right there.
[69:01]I mean, there's scenes from the Prince of Ties
[69:03]that are 10 minutes from my house.
[69:05]The bridge that Forrest Gump runs over
[69:07]is the bridge that connects my island to ladies, island.
[69:10]There's all kinds of cool movie stuff there.
[69:12]Question here?
[69:13]Yeah.
[69:14]I was going to ask, did you become an alcoholic?
[69:18]Do you think because of what you dealt with with your dad?
[69:22]Or it was alcoholic and sometimes it runs in families.
[69:27]Yeah, I mean, alcoholism does run in my family.
[69:31]My maternal great, my maternal great grandfather
[69:34]was now Chaulick, a pretty notorious one.
[69:37]But I think I was now Chaulick because I
[69:40]had a tremendous amount of shame.
[69:42]And when I drank alcohol, that shame went away.
[69:46]And I was talking to a friend of mine
[69:48]whose daughter was just in rehab.
[69:51]And she was trying to understand it.
[69:53]And she said, why can't you just have one drink?
[69:55]Why can't you just have one sip?
[69:57]And I said, OK, this is a deal.
[69:59]Like, pretend.
[70:00]Then I take you out in the ocean and hold your head under water for 40 years, and then
[70:03]I let you up and you get one breath of air and I put you back down and say no more
[70:07]breast for you.
[70:08]And then she's like, oh, I got it.
[70:10]So for me, the first time I had alcohol, the first time I drank alcohol, and I get
[70:16]some of my late teens, was the first time I ever felt that there wasn't something inside
[70:21]of me screaming.
[70:23]It was the only time that I felt okay, like just even normal.
[70:27]It was the only time I ever didn't feel anxious.
[70:29]When I drank and got drunk for the first time, I'm like, oh, is this how everyone else
[70:33]feels in the world?
[70:35]It was wonderful.
[70:37]And so then it became, oh, I have to live most of my life feeling anxious and depressed
[70:43]in this horrible sense of shame until I get to that bottle and then it goes away.
[70:49]And this was a time when I was living in a place where you didn't talk about mental health.
[70:54]You know, there was no therapy for us, you know, in the blue collar town I grew up in.
[70:59]And, you know, that was a shame, but it made me a writer.
[71:03]So, you know, here we are, wouldn't recommend it, but, yeah.
[71:09]Any last, we could take one more.
[71:11]There's one more.
[71:12]Okay, great.
[71:13]Thank you.
[71:14]Yeah.
[71:15]Oh, it was so glad.
[71:16]I have bipolar.
[71:17]I'm familiar with it.
[71:18]I recognize all things and improving.
[71:19]And I really appreciate the stigma of us saying that it did.
[71:22]And I'm having major, major movies that are in a film about the illness that's so very
[71:40]common.
[71:41]And I'm going to thank you for doing that.
[71:43]And you need to thank David.
[71:44]David O'Rustle, you know, in the book, Pat has a brain trauma, you know, he's not diagnosed
[71:51]with bipolar.
[71:52]And David made that adjustment.
[71:54]But I do think that the thing that I saw with the movie is, it really wasn't a conversation
[72:00]so much about bipolar disorder, though I take your point.
[72:03]I think it was a conversation about all mental health illnesses, you know.
[72:07]And there were so many people that went to that film and afterwards just had a conversation
[72:12]with their spouse or a friend afterwards about these things that really created, particularly
[72:18]now someone who was those crazy people going to the Eagles games, you know, getting drunk
[72:23]with all these guys and drinking 12 hours a day.
[72:26]And I remember after Silver Linus came out, some of my buddies I'd tailgated with for
[72:30]years.
[72:31]They came over very quietly, over beers, you know, how do you know about this mental
[72:36]health stuff?
[72:37]Because me too, like I haven't told anyone, but I'm schizophrenic and I've been taking pills
[72:41]for years.
[72:42]It was like this wonderful kind of coming out for all of us, you know, we're all pretending
[72:46]we're normal and then lo and behold, we're all secretly have all these issues and there
[72:51]is something so freeing about that.
[72:53]And it was really, it was really beautiful and pretty much everybody who was involved
[72:59]with the movie that I talked to had a very specific reason for doing it.
[73:04]I can't really tell you what those are because they're private and not all, not everybody
[73:09]was open about that.
[73:11]But yeah, I don't think there's any secret, there's a lot of stuff that and a lot of mental
[73:16]health issues in Hollywood too.
[73:18]And so there's people that were passionate, you know, and to his credit, Harvey was very
[73:22]passionate about that and I think that that was genuine.
[73:27]I really do.
[73:28]Harvey was complicated because he was so awful, but he also believed in my work in a way
[73:33]that I don't think anyone has ever believed in my, he'd champion my work and I would
[73:37]talk to him on the front.
[73:38]I feel like I could do anything afterwards, you know, when the good Harvey came, you know.
[73:43]So he deserves some credit for that too, you know.
[73:46]And I think I like to say that because it's important to remember that the full spectrum
[73:50]of humanity, you know, exists in everybody, you know, we can't tolerate these awful behaviors,
[73:55]but I think we do ourselves to disservice and we just label people monsters and don't
[73:59]really think about maybe how they got to be that way, you know, we dismiss the full spectrum.
[74:05]It needs to be held accountable, obviously, but I think that we need to have nuanced
[74:09]conversations about these things.
[74:10]And even in terms of insight, your dad at one point in the books is I was the father
[74:16]in Silver Lining's playbook, wasn't I?
[74:18]Yeah.
[74:19]And he meant the book, not the movie.
[74:21]Yeah.
[74:22]Yeah, the movie is the book version is much more aligned with who he actually was.
[74:27]Yeah.
[74:28]The book version is very much aligned with who my dad was.
[74:30]And then, you know, of course, Robert DeNiro wanted to be play a likable dad and he had
[74:35]a wonderful off camera relationship with Bradley Cooper, very father, son, mentor, mentee.
[74:41]And that they wanted to put that in the film, which is beautiful and it really worked.
[74:45]You know, their chemistry was amazing.
[74:47]But my dad went to see the movie, he's like, I like this so much better.
[74:50]Like, you know, it's really difficult for me too because I had written this novel about
[74:57]this character has brain trauma and he...
[75:00]comes up with this delusion that his life
[75:02]is a Hollywood movie, and he's going to get a happy ending.
[75:05]And the whole point of the book is that life
[75:07]is not a Hollywood movie, and there's no Hollywood ending.
[75:10]And then Hollywood made a Hollywood movie out of it.
[75:12]And everyone's like, we like this word.
[75:13]With the Hollywood ending.
[75:14]Yeah, we like this better.
[75:15]And so I was like, OK, yeah.
[75:19]But he had that moment of insight to say,
[75:21]like, I see myself in this abusive character
[75:26]that you wrote in the book.
[75:27]The one, I love the movie.
[75:28]I love David's movie.
[75:29]And I was very supportive of it at that time.
[75:31]I'm still supportive.
[75:32]But it was a little bit difficult to see the message being
[75:37]that, and bipolar's a little bit different, right?
[75:40]Because it's a thing that is not caused by your upbringing.
[75:47]It's something that you develop.
[75:48]But for me, when I wrote the book, Pat's
[75:51]problems besides the brain trauma,
[75:54]but a lot of his other problems were really
[75:55]due to the abuse that his father did to him.
[76:00]And in the movie, it was kind of like Robert De Niro's kind
[76:03]of bad, but he's also quirky and fun.
[76:06]And I think my dad, when he went to see the movie,
[76:08]he's like, see, I am like quirky and fun.
[76:10]You know, I wasn't that bad.
[76:12]And so that was a little bit difficult to see.
[76:17]Because I was really minding my own trauma in that book
[76:21]and to see it run through the Hollywood machine
[76:24]was before I really knew what that was,
[76:26]was an interesting experience.
[76:29]Well, I want to thank you so much for writing this beautiful
[76:32]memoir.
[76:33]And so excited for all of you just to read it.
[76:39]And Matthew was happy to chat with you and sign some books.
[76:44]And if you haven't read this beautiful book,
[76:46]you should read that one, too.
[76:47]Bye, bye, that today.
[76:48]Thank you so much.
[76:51]Hey, thank you so much.
[76:52]You get a lot here.