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.

Father Lockwood has snuck into the Catholic priesthood despite being married and having kids. His road to Damascus moment was leagues under the sea in a nuclear submarine after watching The Exorcist which turned a once staunch atheist into a man of the cloth. He's still staunchly Republican, prone to farting, loves pork rinds, and lounging around in his underwear when he's not shredding on his collection of electric guitars he's decided to purchase instead of funding college for his kids. He's known to yell Hooo-eee, Jiminy Christmas and OHHH YEAHHHH while listening to Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly at peak volume, at the same time.

The titular Priestdaddy is quite the character and Lockwood is at her best when she's riffing about him, for example his guitar playing:
“It sounds like a whole band dying in a plane crash in the year 1972. He plays the guitar like he's trying to take off women's jeans, or like he's standing nude in the middle of a thunderstorm and calling down lightning to strike his pecs ...Some people are, through whatever mystifying means, able to make the guitar talk. My father can't do that, but he can do the following:
1. Make the guitar squeal
2. Make the guitar say no
3. Make the guitar falsely confess to murder
4. Make the guitar stage a filibuster where it reads The Hunt for Red October out loud”

Lockwood can turn a phrase. She's hilarious and quirky on the page and selfishly I just want her to keep on riffing. Like explaining milfs to the seminarian haunted by the concept, or discovering semen on the hotel bedsheets in the room she's sharing with her mother. Shifting gears to obliquely talk about the abuses of priests in church, her rape and attempted suicide, living near radioactive waste which rendered her incapable of having children and wrestling with anger — it's jarring. Still beautifully written but less sure. My attention starts to wane and I'm finding myself missing words, trained in her prior voice and familiar with the language of the profane and funny I'm adrift in the more serious and poetic. Still, like her mother, Patricia Lockwood loves language and it shows on the page.