A Word on Words; 3623; Lou Ureneck

fb liz from national television studio way celebrating offers literature and ideas for more than three decades this is word on workers with jobs don johnson in the once again welcome to world words and i guess today blew your rhetoric heated to talk about his new book back it back as a historian it's a very personal story very

warm human interest story it gradually goes into that touches your heart thank you joe moses all it's great to be here thanks for it you my old friend that it's your own words back cast and let me just say at the outset this is a story of a trip you took with your song that's right i was eighteen you were what fifteen i was forty nine just going after just a better outfit and fifty and there was this on sunday in alienation yes and i'm sure that all this country on one of us comes there is tension and difficulty in and disenchantment and then down you helped distribute would cure distance between yourself

and that's right i had raised adam as a single father through high school and then he was very angry with me even though he had chosen to live with me and we had been together for his four years of high school i saw him getting angrier and angrier and he was headed off to college he just graduated from high school and i wrote i was afraid i was gonna lose my son that he was going to walk out of my life and in this relationship that i so treasured i love my son that there would be a brooch and we wouldn't have a relationship going forward so i decided to take them on a fishing trip and i dreamed up the bass fishing trip i could come up with and i was a trip to alaska adam and i had fish together a lot as father and son when he was very young i couldn't officially was seven years old up in maine where we had been living at the time we had lots of great trips together we went to canada we went to florida and we went to montana and wyoming lots of great memories together and done so yet this rough spot i thought

well i'm going to come on one more fishing trip so this book is largely an account of those ten days in alaska coming down a wild river from up in the arctic circle down to the bering sea and what happened along the way it is largely that story but it also it was a store that is interrupted an intimate nine by your recounting and how your whole life i had been focused on having a home having a family and we begin by talking about that your marriage how you literally bought land with your own fate hands constructed house on bunk and

there it is that everything that your life was directed toward becoming close to correct that great voice in your childhood default of seven years and turned and mother has been a sharp tough time raising three boys rooney ron paul tough time making ends meet your father's phone another man comes into her life yes a charmer right exactly oh laughter a lovable laughter that's right so so this is a this is a story of you know but to put this all in context once again and i congratulate you on your ability to do i mean you literally beer your human soul your whole life you lay out before the reader

ok this hip hop tough was it wasn't that difficult ridley john the decision to lay it all out i'd once i decided to tell the story i wanted to be a true story and down it was just me and the page me in the computer screen and i wasn't thinking about an audience when i wrote the book i was really kind of having a conversation with myself about my past and what had happened recounting the memories and the things that have shaped my life and so forth and i want very much to be honest with myself as i wrote this book so i made a decision to to not hold back and i guess i also knew that if i didn't tell the truth if i tried to kind of shape things a bit and change the story to make a better word the clean it up to make it was rough around the edges in some places i suspect the reader would have found me out you know that they would've smelled a rat i wanted to be a true story you know emotionally true story in a factually true story so i just later that as best i could and you know we all felt rough spots in our life we have periods when word and

there are still things that you wish had gone differently and so forth we all share that end what i found in now that the book is out is that people appreciate the honesty because they've been there as well on their own particular way we all have these problems and there i think it's worth being honest about this i just understood tell our viewers that this is a book that every family in america a fun and interesting and the reason i'm going to say something that is no waiting you know someone or someone in your family who has gone through something closely first or hear a praying secondly the marriage divorce above the end any relationship with his son let's talk about adam for a minute long before we get to the trip itself the vision couldn't sell

and it happened at a team is a good right leg actually very proud of medicare a land to be there as you said if you don't worry about the reader you might not want to worry about out of gas that goes part of this so let's bear in the adult doesn't come off that well neither of us look that great in the book that's absolutely there were both in a rough patch and we're not showing our better selves how do you feel about it when he knew you well out a funny story with a with a bit of a delayed punch line this is a lot about adam and a lot about young people to have general song writing the book and i'm explaining academy course he's very interested in what i'm doing and i finished the book i finished the manuscript so

i can the manuscript and i said you know i didn't really need to read this year and the dominant look at it and tell me what you think and let's talk about a couple of weeks pass by and said that you know when you think of of what you think are the manuscript he said well you know dad it's not the book i would've written up up up but it's your book so everything is okay and go ahead with it so i thought well that was easy i send the book off to the publisher year later a comeback and back as a published book and you know there it is between cover so i had a piano simon adam here's your copy he sits down on the so funny is reading it very intensively watches really engaged as he looks up after about ten minutes he says you know deb probably should read the first time but now he is he's good with it in fact that adam is now on parole and the money that you know that that's right he's so he's so information studying to be a catholic priest fish and i get up and actually beautiful note from him after he read the book fully

through completely the second time actually the first time we said you know dad had a chance to read the book and i've had a lot of it on a time to think about what happened between the new back then and i want you to know that i understand things a lot differently in a lot better and i also want you to know that you're there in a loosely as a son and caught i was it was a beautiful know johnny was writing the book for that no nobody ever that we have built we have lots of communication and were back and forth on the phone and email and so forth i'm very proud of my son well i should be and then doug and i think in fairness you should be fair do you understand you heard right and but you know there were times on the trip really really sliding right he was hard to the right and so then you're almost hit me with but we were there that day is there wasn't anything i couldn't do when i always lose the gun right he's he's angry

about that america very good and very good human the night in the radar it or not it will lead to sleep in a big road you're soaked to the skin right and jim got nowhere to go and to make it worse you go out and arrange us just to put it on it but the legal system the trip is not ideal rod for people who love fishing alone and you and i love fishing as you have love fishing century job and slowly was one of the ways i got through the childhood getting outdoors and fishing and loving nature you've got another clip and now you're on end every time he opens his mouth it's an eagle vs an end and you take a number well you know it's gonna be periods or punishment haven't gotten to and you managed to hold your

temper that crack about the gun i think our blown up and i well i came close to blowing up and you know in over the course of the trip coming down the river i'm getting angrier and angrier and he's giving more be more and more reason enough to be angry and i think it was a day seven on a trip where he jumped out of them either the raft millions of his life in danger of state do you mean you don't do that and i was really quite sharp with them and we have a garden and he shot right back to exactly don't tell me what that that's right in and very quickly this argument about jumping over the raft really became an argument out everything else in our life he was basically saying you know have the moral authority to be my father so don't tell me to jump out of the rafters don't tell me to do one and at that point i decided enough and i re asserted myself as a father and dumb and didn't except the criticism from him and insisted upon his obedience in terms of jumping out of a rafting and not talking to me like that so it was a iconic a climax of the trip and it ended up

a big difference in the relationship it didn't talk to me for was a couple two days in a day and a half after that encounter we're quietly in the ceiling going down the river but it did its search changed everything i re asserted myself as a father i was re gaining my confidence as a father is well you're coming down that river being outdoors having that you know blow up without him and ironically it pushes back on a much better course it didn't change things completely it didn't fix everything between us when the trip was done there were still problems but it set us on a different course and a lot of it was me remembering that i was the father and that he was the son and that i had already paid enough of a price for what had happened and we had to get on with our lives so i took it for seven days and they sell and you know it turned around and insulted the relationship to go to college so you're not going to be a custodial parent now he's offering his own life and i was fearful and this was me and as often

happens well sometimes happens with fathers in divorces it's the end of a relationship and i just couldn't bear to contemplate environment of an end during one of those flashbacks you finally get some advice you know it really is a therapist right and i have to say that right here there are flashes of humor and i'd be reading inside out laughter and so first therapist on the news is so gag with the idea of what's going on in life you cannot you cannot pronounce the word i cannot say i have to spell it for an announcer second their businesses with a german accent yes well i mean i hadn't grown up with therapy therapy was a new thing for me and end up so here i am in new york and i'm visiting a you know an eminent therapist it turns out that she has a german accent i thought to myself as i am and the money never see the side of new york and with a german therapist for those he was a great athlete

she would just pray for those you just tuning in i'm talking with louis riddick about his book back cast and i'm so happy to have an old friend to talk about like to be disabled in interpersonal in very personal terms well how much of the book itself is there how much is the writing they're hard to put a number on it but it's definitely they're part of what i needed to do was order and understand my life what had happened to me to make some sense of my childhood as well as a very very difficult period of separation and divorce and when i was going through that john i was obsessive about what happened and why and there's you know i didn't get into a lot of that in the book but that's really that was his need on my part to understand what i had been through what i just passed through and so on some proportion of the book really is my attempt to understand myself and to be honest about that at the same time i think it's a story that other people can identify with and you

know and we'll find some commonality with so it's not all therapy but there's definitely that element of a of a man in the middle of his life trying to understand what he's been through on and how we got to where he is a phenomena fifties second year of my marriage our lives are professionals have been very similar women who will nieman fellows of an artist says is that you are waiting for our pleas from four you were a distinguished editor of the the best newspaper in mainland and page one editor the philippine coral a great newspapers and this in this country and so we have a lot in common but i would say are unknown you're known about you for long time i knew nothing about you and now i am but you reach this is it'll be like a magnet when you poured into that book and there's so many so many you say there are flashes of human level

question whether creak is overly giddy about it again there's the threat became this as you gain is a threat that message arrives adds though that the cop says you can't miss it right and you all as to exactly you know there's the the alaska landscape was a gift of this book for me as a writer and we were lost on the river we were last on our lives and so i tried to use some kind of a metaphor you know and we had gotten directions from our outfitter you know you're gonna pass this particular creaking when you get there you know are you are we never found that creek you know we were connected messages even rangers to help you get you don't write that kind of the gas can say oh yes that would just your own music you can there's one more time you know the other thing is that there is an interest and anecdotes when a flashback you're billing this house and you literally right when the

process of laying a foundation turn my brother and i we cut the trees down we had them build and to timbers and beans and so forth and together we were constructing the middle of it easy by lightning right so violence but the foundation doesn't survive and then there was a phone call by labor and suddenly in the midst of the pouring rain that's right people show up at your at your house and neighbors with jobs they just walk away from what's astonishing climb and how you lay the foundations including including the contractor you have no external thats exactly right and you know i was amazed by that and it i felt welcomed into that small town near gloucester mame and i had never really been apart i've been at work or a community like that and i was it was it was on wonderful thing i think you say family the eu money rather than sending houses and that's right before i want to

know where we were always on the rise my mother had was something of the gypsy and we're always broke out running the rent paul revere words get to exactly that's right and them and so here i was trying to plant myself in a place to be rooted to be part of a community so i'm building a house and to have the town turned out to help me build that house the way did on that terrible rainstorms day was quite amazing it was a real gift never i'll never forget it then suddenly the community in other hand is their extended family in a very natural sense including love aunt lived next door and down the road or say yeah i guess i don't think it's a very nice person except for as a neighbor and certainly early in his days in clinton this was not next to godliness a man is out so direct absolutely was right out of a robert frost of palma knows one of these backwoods new england characters and he'd come

over and sit on a rock and talk with me is i built the house in and he was serving a backwoods philosophers figure robert frost i love the way at you periodically literature into a narrative and from frost poem has wanted an example you're talking listening to your daughter who is an aspiring actress and from the earliest days and she's reciting shakespeare wrote for and use of violence in the midst of that it's making them first aid i mean i had that really those are a little erasers and a parliamentary jumble of age fourteen year and unruly and it's a very classical criminal oh thank you very much you know poetry is an important part of my life and i when i was there in alaska i felt you know lost confused cold and having a little

bit of poetry that i could recite made him a little bit more familiar and anne elisabeth absolutely my daughter you know one of my great joys as a father it was so sunny morning breakfasts i would pay her to recite poetry you know and she was she had a good memories does a good memory and saw it or a dollar and she recites a sonnet or a snatch of shakespeare from one of the plays walt whitman oh captain my captain do the whole thing for a ballerina so it was a great joy to me as a father was just wonderful i loved being a father when you sit down to write the book and part of what this program's about is how authors all right i have to do is you set out on out on because it that it didn't get the flow so well right there's an idea jon i put a map of alaska on the wall and the river that we traveled and i literally marched on the river ten days and my plan was to

organized a trip organized the book based on the track and i didn't initially have a plan to write so much about my childhood but i felt that kind of undertow as i was going through that the narrative of the rest of them away from an absolutely did in fact there was there's one section of the book or i remember a fishing with a boy named timmy courtship today was an important part of my life when i was you know nine ten eleven years old i he was wild time and that he was my best friend i didn't know i was gonna write that passage in an ice i broke the narrative the alaska trip and i remember kenji i was thinking about fishing and learning to fish and so forth and that whole section about fishing with him he just poured out of me it was a complete surprise so tom i begin by organizing the narrative days on the river today's in the most three days and there's three days and there's the final day of the night in between those narratives sections went

back and remembered what was like to be a boy learning how to fish fishing without a father and then having a father in and having that father disappeared and then it turned out that they were kind of parallel narratives that they work together and then toward the end of the book they they kind of come together they come together but one on one part of the story strikes me is tragic than you finally at one point the sun jonathan wright i don't know i was having a lot of trouble making the decision about divorce and then i was in a big knot i was paralyzed and i thought you know of course it's a difficult decision what you know what's wrong with me what's going on here and i i realized that there were a lot of things about my younger life that i hadn't attended to

and the biggest of those of those things was the fact that my father had walked out of my life when i was seven and i never made any effort to find him looking back on it it seems incredible that i would've done that but for reasons that relate to not want to hurt my mother and not to upset my life and so forth i never went back to find him so i'm at about that time when i'm going through that before so i go looking for him i find his name on the internet i write a letter hand them as it turns out i learned from a nephew of his that he had passed on several years earlier and unfortunately i also learned that he had never told his second wife or anyone else in his new life about his two sons my brother pointy stilettos very painful he basically obliterated his previous life including my brother and they are from his new life i am very very difficult and you know while you had at a certain father and johnny

yes who i love dearly and you know he was an alcoholic and he had a lot of problems and in the end he was abusive to my mother but we don't want to you know we had a very complicated relationship with him he brought happiness in your life a little bit of mystery enjoy an adventure but he also had a big problem with drink min ago novel open a lot of pain a lot of pain and you know when you're a child going through that you wanna love the people around you say you find excuses for them you try not to judge them and so i had a i'm a man here who was misbehaving in a very big way it was very important in my life i didn't wanna make a judgment as a child because i loved him but you know looking back there were a lot of problems associated with that but but he did teach me to fish in our economy be a better fisherman and we had lots of good times together and he's now gone also

i look back on with a lot of love and and understand that you know he helped you tell the story yesterday back together without that's exactly right we have just a minute left libya not for markets got faster you're a liberal i am i'm i'm at work right now it's it centered on my mother and it's telling her story immigration and assimilation my mother came of age in newark new jersey daughter of immigrant parents greek american in the nineteen thirties and early forties and ethnic enclave and dumb things happened for life that i think are interesting important was a small life in some ways but it's also like for me i wanted to unpack that in and tell her story her story deserved to be told when you tell a comeback year thank you thank you very much and thank you all of you for watching and dancing and author word on words it's billy the

pay they're supposed to be you know