At the Intersection of Writing and Life: 6 Authors on Being Dads

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June 15, 2015 

By Meaghan Wagner

http://www.biographile.com/at-the-intersection-of-writing-and-life-...

Jonathan Safran Foer, J.G. Ballard, and Lev Grossman

Biographile’s This Week in History remembers events of the past, and the icons that set them in motion. If you're stirred by the words below, read more inspiring author quotes.

Get your presents wrapped and reserve your tee times because Father's Day is fast approaching. Whether you're celebrating your own father or a man who has greatly impacted who you are today, now is the time to honor all those supportive dads around us. To gear up for it -- much the same as Mother's Day -- we've collected some meditative quotes from authors on their dual roles as fathers and writers. How does fatherhood impact writing and vice versa? These six dads weigh in with their experiences.

1. "Having a child didn’t make me wise or mature, but it did make me realize how unwise and immature I was. It was a start." ("Daughter Pressure." When I First Held You, Lev Grossman)

2. "Children confront us with our paradoxes and dishonesty, and we are exposed. You need to find an answer for every why ... and often there isn’t a good one. So you say, simply, because …  The shame of parenthood — which is a good shame — is that we want our children to be more whole than we are, to have satisfactory answers." ("Against Meat." The New York Times, Jonathan Safran Foer)

3. "I believe in the magic of fiction and I want to believe that it can connect with the magic of children, with all its weirdness and imagination-play, in a positive way. I want to believe it’s possible to adhere to more than one image—that you don’t have to choose between parent or writer." ("The Pram in the Hall." The Paris Review, Shane Jones)

4. "As my son was laid on his mother's chest in the delivery room, he turned to look at me and in an instant all my previous priorities vanished. It was extraordinary, extreme, like having one's emotional hard drive wiped and overwritten. Writing was still important, still something I would think and talk about and do obsessively every day, but from now on it would never be the only thing. How could it, when he was there, when he was so small and vulnerable and needed me so much?" ("Fatherhood and Writing."The Guardian, Hari Kunzru)

5. "For the sake of my children and grandchildren, I hope that the human talent for self-destruction can be successfully controlled, or at least channeled into productive forms." (J.G. Ballard, Disturb Interview)

6. "I think a lot of times as dads, as fathers, as men, we don't realize our own importance, or we believe that our importance stops when we write the check for the rent. And I think that it would be a great compliment to me if a lot of us would begin to, as men and women, would begin to reevaluate and would begin to say, you know what? No. There's more to it than that, that when that man is not present in the life of that family, something invaluable and irreplaceable is lost." (Leonard Pitts, NPR Interview)