This is the problem:
My father is an author. Much of his writing is autobiographical fiction and poetry. In fact, if you Google my real name, my father’s poems come up on the first page of search results, mainly because we share a last name and one of his poems has my first name in the title.
In the past, it bothered me that I was fodder for his writing, and I objected strongly to one piece in particular.
This was a traumatic period in our relationship, for both of us. He was hurt by my anger and rejection. I was hurt by his inability to understand how I was feeling. I come from a family in which people have been know not to speak to each other for decades (exhibit one: my father and his mother), and at one point I thought we might end up like that.
On the other hand, I am not in favor of censorship. In the abstract. In this specific case, I would have preferred a little self-censorship, though.
I know that nobody who knows a writer is safe from having parts of her history or quirks grafted onto a character. I know that it is common for people to see themselves in a character that is completely fictional. However, making arguments based on close textual analysis is what I do for a living, and I thought I made a strong case for identifying a certain character with myself. (Admittedly, focusing on the biography of the author in order to interpret the text is not how I normally analyze literature.)
“It’s not about you, it’s about me” was not convincing to me when I argued with my father about this.
I love reading mommy blogs. I love reading about people’s kids. Not just about parenthood, but the kids as well.
And my favorite bloggers who are mothers may very likely have more readers than my father does, or at least more than he did when his stuff was all in small mags or published by small presses.
So that is one reason that it is hard for me to blog about Zebediah.
P.S. I should note that:
My father has seven children, and I don’t think the others have had such a negative reaction as I have to his stuff.
Also: I think I worry as much about being called (if only by myself) a hypocrite for writing about my kid after complaining when my father wrote about me as I do about the actual act of writing.
