Michael Lewis' Home Game: comic fatherhood
The Baltimore Sun's Joe Burris spoke with Michael Lewis, whose books have examined Wall Street avarice, a Silicon Valley crash and the Oakland Athletics' scouting system. Here's Burris' take: So what’s it been like for the man who recently crafted Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood to take readers to the changing table? “It was the first time I had to worry if my wife was going to let me get away with it,” said Lewis, whose latest book is a collection of a series of journal entries from Slate magazine. He’s perhaps best known for such works as Liar’s Poker, which chronicled his years as a bond trader on Wall Street, and Moneyball: The Art of Winning An Unfair Game, which dealt with the Oakland Athletics’ struggles to compete with major market teams.
But he’s also struck chords with Home Game, as he looks at how today’s fathers cope with being more involved with the everyday trials and triumphs of parenting. Lewis offers some colorful but poignant anecdotes on how he anticipated a plethora of joyful, father-knows-best moments, only to be awash with mixed emotions about the role.
He says it’s not surprising that men still struggle to find their way in the parenting landscape despite playing a more active role for years now. He says that women have experienced liberation from their former roles as mothers and home makers and added that many are conflicted about it. Why should men be any less conflicted about their roles, he asks. Here’s more from Lewis about his book and his view on parenting:
How much do you compare, as a father, to your father? “My father once watched me with a kind of detached pity as I struggled to dress our baby. Finally, he said, ‘You know, I didn’t talk to you until you went away to college.’ His experience of fatherhood was so different to mine that, at least in the first few years, it was completely useless to me. And yet he was, and is, a terrific dad. But there’s no way, if he landed the job today, he could get away with his approach."
What kind of responses have you received from other fathers about your book? “I’m sure there are fathers who take offense at my view of the role but I haven’t heard from them. Most of the response has been from women, who say something like, ‘It’s nice to know that my husband was actually thinking what I thought he was thinking.’ From men I tend to hear something like, "Dude! I can’t believe your wife let you get away with writing this!’"
When you felt the need to discuss difficult parenting moments with others, whom did you turn to? “I never felt that need. Or, if I did, I turned to my journal. My wife, on the other hand, had about 6,000 new mothers with whom to commiserate. New mothers gather; new fathers roll themselves up into a tiny ball in the corner of the room until the pain subsides.”
In what way do you believe that parenting resources serve fathers? “If by ‘parenting resources’ you mean the parenting books and birthing classes and so on: very little, in my experience. For a start, there’s the near total absence of the comic sensibility in them, when what they are describing is inherently a comic role. Each time my wife and I attended birthing class -- and we went to them before the birth of each of our three children -- there came a moment when the group split, and the women went into one room, and the men into another. The moment the men were alone the tone changed. In the presence of their wives and the instructors the men were serious and concerned; left to their own devices what they really wanted to do was joke about the absurdity of the enterprise. We had no real role to play except to pretend that we had a role to play.”
While she always preferred The Hardy Boys to Nancy Drew, 
Comments
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Posted by: Anonymous | July 15, 2009 7:51 PM