Book Announcement: Father's Day

Not yet a Book You Can Buy From Me....buy it new!

Book Title: Father's Day

Author: H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Date: 2012

ISBN: 978-0-547-81656-2

Length: 242 pages

Quote: "My son's professional destiny is paper or plastic."

Having recently mentioned Buzz Bissinger as a victim of (short-term) censorship by the Illiberal Left, I'd like to let youall know why his name rang a bell. I've been posting these things from a computer center housed in a library. I've often had to wait for a computer, and while waiting I've browsed the New Books shelf for light reading. One light book that's held my attention enough that I've finished it is Bissinger's new book, Father's Day.

It's not actually about a day. It's a memoir of a road trip during which Bissinger reminisces about the birth, childhood, and adolescence of Zach, the one of his sons who has major, conspicuous brain damage. (He has two other sons, one with mild brain damage and one with no evidence of brain damage. Their privacy is protected in this book.)

Along the way he also catches up with two apparently normal boys he profiled in Friday Night Lights, a book about high school students. Perhaps to deflect the charge that he damaged the "slacker" teen's reputation, he reminisces about his long-term friendship with this student during the years since Friday Night Lights cast him as the slacker.

Mostly, though, this is a story about what it's like to watch a "savant" grow up. Zach's brain damage produces some autistic-like symptoms, but is not the same as autism. Mostly Zach is just not intelligent; he has a fantastic mental calendar but is not qualified for jobs that require literacy. He looks "different," too, even in still photos. Some people like him; some are afraid of him, and unfortunately some people's fears take the form of hostility.

Zach is, I'm sorry to say, the kind of person who creeps me out. I consider this a weakness, but it's true. I believe, philosophically, that real stupidity is always a choice; that people like Zach should receive some sort of social credit for the intelligence they use to cope with their physical injury, which is what Zach's brain damage is. I'm the one who doesn't have enough intelligence to be able to communicate with them. I think many normal and "gifted" Americans share my kind of lack of intelligence, and more of us should admit it. But, as things are, reading a biography of Zach is still about as close as I can get to appreciating him as a person. Sad, but true.

If you know someone who is not even "retarded," but permanently damaged (and yet still alert enough to mind being called a ree-tard), you may feel that Father's Day speaks for you or to you.

If you've spent your life thus far trying to avoid being around people with brain damage, or at best telling yourself that your cousin who has cerebral palsy is different from Zach because she's intelligent underneath, you may find that Father's Day at least reminds you that you are suffering from some degree of phobia...maybe a phobia of admitting the deficiencies in your intelligence that prevent you from communicating with someone like Zach?