Andrew Bomback on Starting with Memoir and Ending with Cultural History
In Conversation with Alex Higley and Lindsay Hunter on I'm a Writer But
Welcome to I’m a Writer But, where two writers-and talk to other writers-and about their work, their lives, their other work, the stuff that takes up any free time they have, all the stuff they’re not able to get to, and the ways in which any of us get anything done. Plus: book recommendations, bad jokes, okay jokes, despair, joy, and anything else we’ve got going on that week. Hosted by Lindsay Hunter and Alex Higley.
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In this episode, Andrew Bomback talks to us about using his experience as a formerly angry father to write a cultural history on modern parenting, moving from writing fiction to nonfiction, the pressure cooker of parenthood today, looking for answers in parenting books, and more!
From the episode:
“I started writing about being a parent and being a father and dealing with a lot of the disappointments in myself, how difficult a time I was having, and about how I kept giving into anger. Eventually, I really worked on it and did a sort of anger management program in my life through reading a ton of parenting books and working with counselors and a parenting coach. And I was like, I think this would make an interesting story. […] Those parts about me being an angry father make more sense in the context of the cultural history I’m providing.”
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Andrew Bomback is Associate Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and the author of Doctor (2018) and Long Days, Short Years (2022). His essays have appeared in the Atlantic, Los Angeles Review of Books, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere.
