Alternadad 1

Episode 1

Owen: Hi everybody, I’m Owen Edgerton. We’re here today at Dad Labs in The Lounge with author and father Neal Pollack who’s book “Alternadad” is sweeping the nation and changing the way we look at being a dad. It’s….wow.

Neal: Yeah. I know. I know what an honor it is for you, Owen.

Owen: So, yeah, you’re book…I’m going to put it here so everyone can see it and remember what they need to buy on Amazon. Or they can just go to www.nealpollack.com.

Neal: And still buy it off www.amazon.com.

Owen: Alright, well. This is a great book. For those of you who have not read it, it’s hilarious, it’s very fun. Neal found himself a dad while living in Austin, Texas and has sort of written the book of what it means to be someone in our generation who maybe never even sort of could have imagined himself being a dad and what it looked like, and what it means to be a dad, and maintain that identity too, maintain your own identity. So tell us about writing it, what was the process going through that whole self-examination?

Neal: When I initially pitched the book it was sort of a snarky advice book for dads, but I had no advice to actually give so that version of it wasn’t really coming together. I think that there were a couple of moments in my life where I think the narrative also started taking shape. One of those is the opening scene in the book where I’m awoken from a nap, it’s before my son turns two, and he’s taken off his diaper and he’s throwing poop all over the bedroom.

Owen: Yes, yes.

Neal: Which is a moment that I think all parents have, in one form or other, the shit storm moment so to speak.

Owen: Yes, yeah.

Neal: And the other sort of key incident that I think helped shape the book was when my son was kicked out of pre-school for biting other kids. That definitely was a sort of crisis point. Especially because I wrote about it on salon.com and then my wife and I were vitriolicly attacked by thousands of people. We were called people who shouldn’t have parents…shouldn’t have kids.

Owen: Or parents.

Neal: People who shouldn’t have parents or kids.

Owen: Which is weird.

Neal: We were attacked more viciously than I couldn have possibly imagined.

Owen: I remember that.

Neal: That sort of helped me form an idea of my own identity as a parent and as an adult. That was kind of a key moment. And I think after that happened it was easier to put the narrative in place. Feelings fell into place.

Owen: You’re known for writing satire and your of course false persona, Neal Pollack The Treatest American Writer, well, maybe not false.

Neal: No, it’s false.

Owen: In this one you kind of, it’s hilarious, every page is funny. But you’re kind of writing about yourself. What do you think? What changed in that?

Neal: Every book requires a different voice. I could have tried to write a satire of contemporary parenthood but I didn’t really have the perspective to do that so the book is sort of raw and immediate. The voice just emerged from experience. It wasn’t premeditated. In fact, none of my books are premeditated; they all seem to happen by accident. This definitely is one of those. It definitely happened by accident.

Owen: Same with your child.

Neal: No, the child was planned. The book was an accident. A happy accident.

Owen: That was my child.

Neal: Exactly.

Owen: She was a happy accident.