On how his father's downfall influenced his own sense of identity
Reporting this book and learning what I have about my father was confirming of my own sense of self. So, as someone raised primarily by my mother, I never recognized myself in her. She's wonderful. She's natively wise and accepting in these interesting ways, but she didn't have the same energy I had, she didn't really look like me, our interests didn't always align and I clearly came from some other stock.
My father was not the stock that I wanted to accept for a long time because my only impressions of him were negative. But once I saw what his career was like and how it aligned with the times and the excitement, and how good he was at it, I said, "Oh, OK. That is a nervous system I recognize, in fact."
I don't want to underplay the degree to which it was crushing to go through high school and college without clarity on where you came from and with a sense that your father was an empty vessel. ... The message that society pushes is "like father, like son." ... I felt that there was an inevitability that I would end up like him. ... I had to come to the realization that my father's destiny was one that he selected. ... Therefore, if he can make his life, I can make mine.
Read an excerpt of The Last Pirate