Priestdaddy

“When we came home later, my father was wearing his most transparent pair of boxer shorts, to show us he was angry, and drinking Baileys Irish Cream liqueur out of a miniature crystal glass, to show us his heart was broken.”

This may be my favorite sentence in all of writing.

What makes that sentence good is what makes the whole book good: a comical situation described in the evocative language of a poet. The contradiction that that creates is delightful. And really, it's the larger contradictions that draw you in and hold you. That a priest is married and has lots of children. That a priest likes to play down and dirty metal-hair-band-esque licks on the electric guitar. That a priest would blow his child's college funds for a guitar pre-owned by a rock legend, and truly believe that it couldn't be helped.

That last situation occurs at the start of the book, when everything is still very very funny. But it does presage a seriousness that takes hold 2/3 of the way through the book. The recounting of childhood experiences become more lonesome, the view of her parents' world becomes bleaker. You can really feel the despair of the author as she sees her father act incredibly selfishly towards her mother, towards her siblings, really towards anyone who isn't a priest. He clearly is the most important person in the family, knows it, and acts accordingly.

The change from hilarious to bitingly sad is disappointing because I was having such a good time - I love to laugh. It's also disappointing on purpose, because the author wants us to feel how it was to go back into that toxic environment as an adult, to relive with her the memories in their proper context. The journey is a good one, go ahead and take it.

I love Lockwood's writing and will definitely look up some of her poetry and possibly her novel, but this didn't really work for me. The good bits are good: she is funny, and sharp, and cutting - a lot like David Sedaris. But unlike his pithy tales there is a lack of direction here.

I also suspect a lack of honesty, which is a killer for a memoir. Clearly her father is a pain in the ass, bordering on absent or unloving, but she paints him as a loveable buffoon.

Worse is the fact that clearly Lockwood is a modern woman, probably feminist, very liberal, and yet there is absolutely zero reckoning with the wrongdoings of the Catholic Church, that well known and multi-faceted criminal organisation. There's an awkward discussion with “the seminarian” where she suggests that one of his pals is possibly a serial child abuser, but when he embarrassedly mutters excuses, she just feels shame that she might have been wrong (when she clearly isn't). She suggests no one really knows why her mother “hates nuns so much” - even though her mother has said “Sister liked to spank”, as if that's not enough. As if the crimes of nuns in charge of so-called schools and laundries and any other institution weren't well known to be horrific and abusive ‘care givers'.

I get that one of the most prolific and disgusting crimes of Catholicism is the doctrine of original sin, and the fact that all children are taught that they are inherently evil and therefore should despise themselves, but seeing this guilt and shame revealed in the cowardice of this memoir is tragic, as well as uninteresting. I'd have preferred something a bit more cathartic and excoriating.

Favourite quote, that describes exactly the enjoyment of my own totally pointless English Literature degree:

Singing down into yourself was called vocal masturbation, and you weren't supposed to do it, even though in literature there were postmodernists running around all over the place wanking themselves into recursive frenzies and getting awards for it.