Nov 302011
Father’s Day: Across America with an Unusual Dad and His Extraordinary Son
Buzz Bissinger’s twins were born three minutes—and a world—apart. Gerry, the older one, is a graduate student preparing to become a teacher. His brother Zach is a savant, challenged by serious intellectual deficits but also blessed with rare talents: an astonishing memory, a dazzling knack for navigation, and a reflexive honesty that can make him both socially awkward and surprisingly wise.
One summer, striving to understand the twenty-four-year-old son who remains, in many ways, a
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A journey within a journey…,
I have been a fan of Buzz Bissinger since his Philadelphia Inquirer days, so I jumped at the chance to get his new book, Father’s Day: A Journey Into the Mind & Heart of My Extraordinary Son. This wonderful book is actually a journey on many levels. It’s a physical journey as Bissinger takes a car trip with Zachary, his savant son, from Philadelphia to Los Angeles. It’s a journey to explore the psyche of Zach. But throughout the journey, we learn just as much about father as we do about son. Father’s Day is a book that is moving, funny, endearing, and disturbing in equal parts.
Zachary Bissinger and his twin brother, Gerry, were born 13 weeks premature. While both of them struggled at birth, Gerry has developed normally and is in grad school at the University of Pennsylvania. Because Zachary was born 3 minutes later, he suffered trace brain damage. Although he has an IQ of 70, he’s a savant with extraordinary gifts of memorization in calendaring and maps. Bissinger has spent near 25 years trying to decipher the mystery of Zach. “It is strange to love someone so much who is still so fundamentally mysterious to you after all these years.” Having a special needs son “is the most terrible pain of my life.” In addition to pain, it has also brought the author profound guilt and shame. Bissinger sees a cross country trip as a way to bond with Zach, to rediscover each other, to fall in love again.
Zach is not good with new things and change, so Bissinger decides that their trip will include people and places that Zach already knows–Chicago, Milwaukee, Odessa, and Los Angeles. The only new adventure will be to Las Vegas. As with all trips, things don’t go as planned. Zach doesn’t always react the way his father wants. They get lost. He loses too much money gambling in Vegas and is frustrated with conversation with his son. Bissinger loses his camera bag, and becomes volatile when angry or frustrated. His poor behavior makes Bissinger realize that “I am not at peace with my son. I am not at peace with the helpless horror of how he came into the world and what he became because of it. I don’t know if I ever will be and I do what I do when in conflict–take it out on someone else, too often someone I love.” But by the end, the author has also made new discoveries about Zach. Zach is a survivor. He knows what he wants as he moves toward a more independent life. Zach is true and sincere and honest. And that maybe Zach has taught his father more lessons about life than the other way around. Zach “is not the child I wanted. But he is no longer a child anyway. He is the most fearless man I have ever known, and the most admirable.”
While Bissinger claims this book is about Zach, it’s also about the author. Throughout the trip, Bissinger reflects not just on Zach and his challenges, but also his parents’ deaths, his success with Friday Night Lights, his failure with NYPD Blue, his three marriages and his two other sons. Buzz Bissinger’s writing is eloquent and funny and observant and poignant. I had to laugh at his comments about Ikea. Zach’s bedroom was furnished with everything Ikea, “where all men shop after divorce, the silent Ikea secret handshake as we write out with a stubby pencil the list of furniture we must have by this evening because the kids are staying over for the first time and we need to provide a stable atmosphere fast and try not to get too upset when you put something together and there are still 85 pieces left.” But the fun is tempered by heartache. “How can they be twins? Sometimes I wonder if they are even related. My pride in Gerry tamps down because of the guilt I feel for Zach. The goddam guilt. The scrapmetal weight shackled to my ankle. It’s always there.”
How good is Father’s Day? It’s good enough that even though I received this copy through Amazon Vine, I intend to purchase a finished copy when it’s officially published in May.
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|One Long Journey, Two Short Stories,
I just finished reading an advanced copy of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Buzz Bissinger’s yet unpublished book titled “Father’s Day.” He has written two New Your Times bestsellers, Three Nights in August and Friday Night Lights, the latter being made into a film and eventually a TV series. As the subtitle indicates, Bissinger’s book is primarily about “A Journey Into the Mind & Heart of My Extraordinary Son.”
SPOILER ALERT: There may be plot information beyond this point that some readers may not want to know. If so, stop now or continue reading at your own risk.
Bissinger goes into great pains to describe the births of his twin boys, Gerry and Zach, who were born over three months premature (13 1/2 weeks) and often, through literary flashbacks, fills in even more details. The boys were born three minutes apart, three minutes that separated them into two completely different social, economic and academic worlds. Gerry, as Bissinger described him, was among the “Normals,” while during the intervening three minutes, Zach suffered partial brain damage. Gerry is currently seeking an advanced degree at the University of Pennsylvania, with aspirations toward becoming a teacher, Zach spent his childhood mostly in special schools and works in a stockroom.
In his own words, Bissinger describes his feelings for Zachary:
“It is strange to love someone so much who is still so fundamentally mysterious to you after all these years. `Strange’ is a lousy word, means nothing. It is the most terrible pain of my life. As much as I try to engage Zach, figure out how to make the flower germinate because there is a seed in there, I also run from this challenge. I run out of guilt. I run because he was robbed and I feel I was robbed. I run because of shame. I am not proud to feel or say this. But I think these things, not all the time, but too many times, which only increases the cycle of my shame. This is my child. How can I look at him this way?”
Bissinger’s passion to excel in his career as a writer, his two failed marriages and his obsessive guilt mentioned above have limited his opportunities to really draw closer to his now 24-year-old son, Zach, to understand how his world runs, how he copes in a world populated by “Normals” and especially how to his father can become part of Zach’s world. Bissinger decides to take Zach on a 10-day road trip from their home in Pennsylvania to Los Angeles, stopping at specific locations along with way where they previously lived, schools Zach attended and especially people who Zach knew while growing up.
I will admit that when Bissinger hatched his excursion across America plan–a dad and his extraordinary son on the open highway in a minivan that should have been retired years ago, I thought, “Is that the best you can come up with?” He had already told the reader that Zach didn’t handle change well, so an almost four-thousand-mile drive to LA in an old minivan really didn’t seem like a good decision at the time. However, up to that point, I didn’t know just how “extraordinary” Zach really was. Bissinger gives the reader a hint during the following comments:
“Zach is interested in people. It doesn’t matter whether he last saw them 20 minutes ago or 20 years ago. Realizing this makes the route suddenly self-evident. We will travel across country in ten days stopping at all the places we’ve lived before or know well–Chicago, Milwaukee, Odessa, Texas, Los Angeles. Branson, Missouri, the evangelical answer to Las Vegas, is an add-on because I always have wondered whether the Christian right cheats at miniature golf. The real Las Vegas is on the itinerary as well.”
Once the trip begins, it doesn’t take long before the reader begins to get glimpses of who the two main characters really are. After only a day or two Bissinger begins to let his worrisome mind spin off into chaos, while Zach stays focused on his collection of roadmaps, pinpointing where they are and how to get to their next destination. Bissinger often allows his frustration and anger boil over and explode into loud profanity-laden tirades. This was one of the more unseemly characteristics of this book–Bissinger’s fits of cursing rage. We witness this after he becomes lost trying to leave Chicago, not realizing he could rely on his son for help, and when his camera and recording equipment were left behind at a hotel. Often it would simply be over an attempted conversation with Zach–”I am not at peace with my son. I am not at peace with the helpless horror of how he came into the world and what he became of it. I don’t know if I ever will be and I do what I do when in conflict–take it out on someone else, too often someone I love.”
It isn’t until the fifth chapter that the reader finds out that Zach is not only mentally impaired, but, according to Bissinger, he is also a savant! For me, this revelation places an entirely new…
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|Alternate Reality,
Buzz Bissinger is a famous author (Friday Night Lights). Buzz Bissinger is the father of twins (Gerry and Zach). Buzz Bissinger is the father of a brain-damaged son, now an adult.(Zach) “Father’s Day” brings in all of the many roles Buzz plays, with the emphasis on finding his way to accept his son Zach’s abilities and disabilities.
Zach was born three minutes after his brother. Those three minutes seem to have made a difference in the oxygen to his brain. Gerry is Ivy League; Zach is different, always was and always will be.
The competitor in Buzz wants both his sons to shine in the world of education, sports, and human relationships. Gerry does. Zach, no. Many of Zach’s qualities of social impairment and scripting of language make him sound autistic although that is not what the numerous psychological studies have shown. Zach is a savant when it comes to calendaring. His favorite things are maps and birthdays. Conversations with Zach, which Buzz recorded for years in preparation for this book, are delivered in a staccato framework of questions and factual statements, often with little link among them.
Buzz has decided to learn more about his son, taking him on a journey across America to old places they used to live. The meltdowns are mostly on Buzz’s part as he finds communicating with Zach over the endless miles a chore almost beyond his ability as a parent. Buzz forgets bags. Buzz can’t find exits. Buzz wants to scream and pound his head against the wall.
Zach shows patience with his father though Zach never wanted to drive on the journey in the first place. There are incredible moments of tenderness between father and son as Buzz tries new rides at the amusement parks that Zach loves and eats the Mexican food Zach chooses. There are moments of laughter and moments of frustration and finally, truly, a moment of realization between father and son about this grown-up young man who will never be quite normal.
Because I have an autistic grandson, I am drawn to books in which parents do not find a miracle cure, do not solve their problems with one magical diet, and vent their sorrows when they realize this child, unique and loved and special, is the child they have. The child will become an adult, who will need support and supervision, but who will also have the right to a private life despite the bounds of his disability.
This is an honest, interesting, deeply touching read of a parent and a son.
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