Buzz Bissinger talks about "Father's Day"

Q. What remains for Zach?

The great thing about how Zach lives his life is that he just plows on. He talks about the trip. He talks about the bungee jump. But I’m not going to say that he talks about it a lot. Sometimes I’ll say, “Hey Zach, how about that road trip? Do you want to go again?” And he’ll say, “Yeah, I’ll think about it. But only if we fly.”

Q: Zach is a very endearing character. Did you learn new things about him on the trip? 

I really did. First of all, his ability for empathy stunned me. He really wanted to help me and to calm me down. His abilities of observation also surprised me. He saw things that I didn’t think he saw. I also found that he doesn’t simply have a yearning for independence. He needs independence.

Q. You are brutally honest about yourself and your own struggles in this book. Why did you decide to do that?

My sense is, if you’re going to [write a memoir], you have to be honest. The things that I reveal, they inform me both as a man and as a father. It’s not in there gratuitously. The price of ambition, the need for success: I always loved the kids, but I lived very much inside my own head. And I paid a toll for that, and so did the kids to some degree. 

Q. What about Zach? Did you worry about the impact this book might have on him?

I worried all the time. I asked Zach how he would feel if I wrote a book. I knew what he would say. He would say he’d feel pretty good about it. That’s always what he says: “Pretty good.” He didn’t really know what that entailed. I also knew that he was defenseless. He doesn’t really have the capability of saying, “Well I want this in but I really don’t want that in.”

It was a huge responsibility but I am a journalist. I’ve spent all my life asking people to tell the truth and be honest. All I can say is that Zach is pretty much getting an A+ in this thing and I’m getting about a C- so I think he’s fared pretty well.

Q. What would your ideal Father’s Day be?
 
The ideal Father’s Day is, in a sense, what happened after the book. Zach expressed for the first time that he wanted to go away. He wanted to go overseas. And in fact we all did. Gerry [Zach's twin], Zach, and myself went to South Africa to visit Caleb, my youngest  son, who’s in Capetown on an exchange program from Kenyon [College].

Zach did beautifully. As a father it was like the first time, really the first time that it was just the boys and me – my wife wasn’t there – and as a father here were my three precious wonderful beautiful boys and it was boys' week out and we were together, as opposed to, as happened so often, Gerry and Caleb being together and Zach not being there because the feeling always was that either he couldn’t do it or he didn’t want to do it.

And to me that was an eternal Father’s Day.

Q: Anything else about the trip?

The thing I can say about the trip is: Did it change me? No, it didn’t change me. But it made my bond with a son whom I love madly much closer. He is the man that I admire most. I have never seen anyone who gives as much as Zach. He really makes people feel good about themselves. And I knew that and I saw that, but it took me a long time to accept it.

Marjorie Kehe is the Monitor's Books editor.

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