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A review by liralen
My Father, the Pornographer by Chris Offutt
4.0
Three days after Dad died, the family convened at the house. The first action each of us took, unplanned, was to slam the back door and stomp around the house—activities forbidden to us, reserved only for Dad. Then we laughed like maniacs, four middle-aged adults at last allowed to behave like children in our own home. (18)
What sticks with me, months after reading this book, is not Offutt's father's job but the way he interacted with his family. This was not a man made for contemporary Western civilization: solitary and suspicious, deeply competitive, resentful of the needs of his family. He also, as it happened, made his living writing science fiction, fantasy, and pornography.
Offutt was not unaware of this as a child; his parents kept their industry—his mother did things like type up the manuscripts—separate from their lives in town, but it was not a secret to the children. But as an adult, after his father's death, Offutt was tasked with handling the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books and manuscripts and drafts that his father had amassed over a lifetime.
More than five hundred manuscripts made several uneven columns on a long dining room table, reminding me of architectural ruins. The older drafts were crumbling at the edges. Carbon copies typed on onionskin tore easily. Metal paper clips left rust marks on the pages. I separated them into categories of porn, science fiction, and fantasy, then subdivided those into published and unpublished, short story and novel. Dad didn't date the first drafts, all of which were handwritten, their titles and character names shifting between revisions. (77)
The constant barrage of odd sexual content left me flailing with the knowledge of my father's dedication. This was him—what he enjoyed, what he collected, what he wrote. I was thankful for the utter absence of kiddie porn. My father's proclivities were not the worst. He only liked adult women. It was a cold comfort, like an executioner offering a condemned man an old rope so the bristles wouldn't hurt his neck. (83)
No child pornography, Offutt notes, but everything else. He lists parts of his father's collection and writings at one point in the book, and it's hard to describe except to say that the darker and more twisted it got, the more likely it was that it aligned with his father's interests.
My father often said that if not for pornography, he'd have become a serial killer. On two occasions he told me the same story. One night in college he resolved to kill a woman, any woman. He carried a butcher knife beneath his coat and stalked the campus, seeking a target. It rained all night. No one else was out. He went home soaked and miserable and wrote a story about a man who invented an invisibility serum and killed women at a YWCA. Dad destroyed the manuscript and castigated himself for using invisibility in such an unimaginative way. For me, the crucial element of this story is a man's impulse to tell it to his son. (178)
Offutt goes in from a number of angles, and by doing so he's able to portray a lot of complexity even as he wrestles who his father was and the impact that he had on Offutt's life. It's not all bad, but nor does it sound like an easy, or good, way to be raised.
I would be remiss, though, not to mention Offutt's mother. She too is complicated, standing quietly by her husband's side, supporting his work, supporting him—Offutt describes his father as remaining deeply in love with Offutt's mother throughout their married life—but she is also, in different ways than her children, set free by her husband's death.
Mom had lived her entire life in two counties of Kentucky. She'd never lived alone. Three months after Dad's death, the movers transported her possessions to her new home in Mississippi, a few blocks from the Oxford square. For the first time in her life, she was autonomous. Mom promptly bought a new bed and hung her favorite pictures. I'd never seen her so happy. She could sleep as late as she wanted, eat a roast beef sandwich for breakfast, and read in bed. The only rules were hers. She applied for a passport. In the ensuing year, she traveled to Germany, Spain, London, Paris, Prague, California, Texas, and Virginia. (112)
Reminds me of [b:Mama's Boy, Preacher's Son|79198|Mama's Boy, Preacher's Son A Memoir|Kevin Jennings|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1170964698s/79198.jpg|76474] in a way...this question of what lives these women might have lived had they grown up in other places, in different times, with more agency.
I'm not sure if Offutt ever really came to understand his father; I'm not sure I want to either. But he does a pretty bang-up job of tackling hard stuff, un-talked-about stuff, head-on and with nuance.
What sticks with me, months after reading this book, is not Offutt's father's job but the way he interacted with his family. This was not a man made for contemporary Western civilization: solitary and suspicious, deeply competitive, resentful of the needs of his family. He also, as it happened, made his living writing science fiction, fantasy, and pornography.
Offutt was not unaware of this as a child; his parents kept their industry—his mother did things like type up the manuscripts—separate from their lives in town, but it was not a secret to the children. But as an adult, after his father's death, Offutt was tasked with handling the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books and manuscripts and drafts that his father had amassed over a lifetime.
More than five hundred manuscripts made several uneven columns on a long dining room table, reminding me of architectural ruins. The older drafts were crumbling at the edges. Carbon copies typed on onionskin tore easily. Metal paper clips left rust marks on the pages. I separated them into categories of porn, science fiction, and fantasy, then subdivided those into published and unpublished, short story and novel. Dad didn't date the first drafts, all of which were handwritten, their titles and character names shifting between revisions. (77)
The constant barrage of odd sexual content left me flailing with the knowledge of my father's dedication. This was him—what he enjoyed, what he collected, what he wrote. I was thankful for the utter absence of kiddie porn. My father's proclivities were not the worst. He only liked adult women. It was a cold comfort, like an executioner offering a condemned man an old rope so the bristles wouldn't hurt his neck. (83)
No child pornography, Offutt notes, but everything else. He lists parts of his father's collection and writings at one point in the book, and it's hard to describe except to say that the darker and more twisted it got, the more likely it was that it aligned with his father's interests.
My father often said that if not for pornography, he'd have become a serial killer. On two occasions he told me the same story. One night in college he resolved to kill a woman, any woman. He carried a butcher knife beneath his coat and stalked the campus, seeking a target. It rained all night. No one else was out. He went home soaked and miserable and wrote a story about a man who invented an invisibility serum and killed women at a YWCA. Dad destroyed the manuscript and castigated himself for using invisibility in such an unimaginative way. For me, the crucial element of this story is a man's impulse to tell it to his son. (178)
Offutt goes in from a number of angles, and by doing so he's able to portray a lot of complexity even as he wrestles who his father was and the impact that he had on Offutt's life. It's not all bad, but nor does it sound like an easy, or good, way to be raised.
I would be remiss, though, not to mention Offutt's mother. She too is complicated, standing quietly by her husband's side, supporting his work, supporting him—Offutt describes his father as remaining deeply in love with Offutt's mother throughout their married life—but she is also, in different ways than her children, set free by her husband's death.
Mom had lived her entire life in two counties of Kentucky. She'd never lived alone. Three months after Dad's death, the movers transported her possessions to her new home in Mississippi, a few blocks from the Oxford square. For the first time in her life, she was autonomous. Mom promptly bought a new bed and hung her favorite pictures. I'd never seen her so happy. She could sleep as late as she wanted, eat a roast beef sandwich for breakfast, and read in bed. The only rules were hers. She applied for a passport. In the ensuing year, she traveled to Germany, Spain, London, Paris, Prague, California, Texas, and Virginia. (112)
Reminds me of [b:Mama's Boy, Preacher's Son|79198|Mama's Boy, Preacher's Son A Memoir|Kevin Jennings|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1170964698s/79198.jpg|76474] in a way...this question of what lives these women might have lived had they grown up in other places, in different times, with more agency.
I'm not sure if Offutt ever really came to understand his father; I'm not sure I want to either. But he does a pretty bang-up job of tackling hard stuff, un-talked-about stuff, head-on and with nuance.