Priestdaddy is a book necessary for 2017—a meditation on living in the house of an unabashed patriarch, of asserting one’s humanity and continuing to take up space.”. “Lockwood is one of the great original voices of this new century and she is in total control of it here.”. The childhood of Patricia Lockwood, the poet dubbed 'The Smutty-Metaphor Queen of Lawrence, Kansas' by The New York Times, was unusual in many respects. There was the location: an impoverished, nuclear waste-riddled area of the American Midwest. American poet and essayist Patricia Lockwood’s memoir, Priestdaddy (2017), details her unique experience of having a father who is a married ordained Catholic priest, having converted to Catholicism from the Lutheran Church. Priestdaddy is an entertaining, unforgettable portrait of a deeply odd religious upbringing and how one balances a hard-won identity with the weight of family. 'Priestdaddy is a revelatory debut, a meditation on family and art that finds poetry in the unlikeliest things, including poetry. Patricia Lockwood's prose is nothing short of ecstatic; every sentence hums with vibrant, anarchic delight, and her portrait of her epically eccentric family life is.
Patricia Lockwood's 2017 memoir Priestdaddy was named one of the 10 best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review.
She's just released her debut novel No One Is Talking About This, which explores the perils of excessive exposure to the internet.
Lockwood has also released two poetry collections and writes for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and the London Review of Books, where she is a contributing editor.
No One is Talking About This, she told Kim Hill, is an autofiction - it draws heavily on her own character and experiences.
Listen to the full interview with Patricia Lockwood hereduration 41:53Lockwood became famous online - she was dubbed the Poet Laureate of Twitter, and her novel uses an online narrator who became famous after a tweet, and as a consequence travels the world speaking about online culture. Then, her sister discovers that her unborn baby has a rare genetic disorder, Proteus syndrome, and the internet tone of overworked irony failed to work anymore.
As the book's protagonist asks: 'if all she was, was funny, and none of this was funny, where did that leave her?'
'A lot of the first half is fictionalised - through humour a lot of the time, but the second half is largely drawn from life, and the personality of the child in the novel is drawn from my niece, Lena,' Lockwood said.
'Proteus syndrome is a disorder of the overgrowth pathway, so a lot of the times it will present asymmetrically - one side of the body will experience the overgrowth. She had it in her brain and she had it in her right side, she had it in her fingers, which grew out from each other -these middle fingers, like a moth's antennae, it was actually quite lovely. ...It was in her eyes, there were cysts in her brain that the doctor said just continue to grow as long as she was alive.
'We only saw the beginning of it, because she didn't live for a very long time. It is what we believe the so-called Elephant Man, Joseph Merrick, was believed to suffer from, so it's an interesting illness. She was the first person who had ever been diagnosed in utero.'
'For us she was unique for other reasons - she was an opportunity for excitement for other reasons.'
Priestdaddy Summary
The online environment she creates in her book has been described as: 'Infested with the privilege of those who have nothing to do all day but monitor one another's speech on social media and locate the blind spots of news reporters.' But Lockwood said her intention isn't to correct people's online lifestyles, but instead, to explore its importance in our lives.
Priestdaddy Summary
'I think most people get to the end of it and see the same thing that the protagonist does, which is that this was a a place we came to create language together and to put pictures and fragments of our lives so that other people can see them.
'I think it's profound, and it's something that I've felt: that when she came to the end of the book what she's thinking is that she wanted so much to put her niece's picture in the portal so that people could just encounter her, as a part of the broad stream of things.
'So, I think what she finds ...is that the portal has given her a language to use, to think about this child, to describe this child, and perhaps even to feel a contrast - some of our delights are felt by contrast. So if she felt that parched desert, that poverty of experience before, then she maybe even more feels the immense flowering of the second half.
'I think you do see it, that there's something to all this wasted, wasted time.'
Priestdaddy Book
Her book examines what we do in our internet lives, the language and voices we develop, and touches on difficult topics; the death of a child, the debate surrounding medical abortion, and division over religion and beliefs within a family, among them.
And Lockwood said she does think some of the internet's en masse reactions such as outrage and judgement are a product of the social media mediums they are cultivated within, and it's well due time to rethink where those forums do take us to, and if we want to continue being directed that way.
Description
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2017 NAMED ONE OF THE 50 BEST MEMOIRS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS BY THE NEW YORK TIMESSELECTED AS A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY:The Washington Post *Elle * NPR * New York Magazine * Boston Globe * Nylon * Slate * The Cut * The New Yorker * Chicago TribuneWINNER OF THE 2018 THURBER PRIZE FOR AMERICAN HUMOR 'Affectionate and very funny . . . wonderfully grounded and authentic. This book proves Lockwood to be a formidably gifted writer who can do pretty much anything she pleases.' - The New York Times Book ReviewFrom Patricia Lockwood--a writer acclaimed for her wildly original voice--a vivid, heartbreakingly funny memoir about balancing identity with family and tradition. Father Greg Lockwood is unlike any Catholic priest you have ever met--a man who lounges in boxer shorts, loves action movies, and whose constant jamming on the guitar reverberates 'like a whole band dying in a plane crash in 1972.' His daughter is an irreverent poet who long ago left the Church's country. When an unexpected crisis leads her and her husband to move back into her parents' rectory, their two worlds collide. In Priestdaddy, Lockwood interweaves emblematic moments from her childhood and adolescence--from an ill-fated family hunting trip and an abortion clinic sit-in where her father was arrested to her involvement in a cultlike Catholic youth group--with scenes that chronicle the eight-month adventure she and her husband had in her parents' household after a decade of living on their own. Lockwood details her education of a seminarian who is also living at the rectory, tries to explain Catholicism to her husband, who is mystified by its bloodthirstiness and arcane laws, and encounters a mysterious substance on a hotel bed with her mother. Lockwood pivots from the raunchy to the sublime, from the comic to the deeply serious, exploring issues of belief, belonging, and personhood. Priestdaddy is an entertaining, unforgettable portrait of a deeply odd religious upbringing, and how one balances a hard-won identity with the weight of family and tradition.
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Reviews
'Priestdaddy roars from the gate . . . it's not just that Lockwood has fresh eyes and quick wits, but that in her father she's lucked upon one of the great characters of this nonfiction decade . . . Lockwood's prose is cute and dirty and innocent and experienced, Betty Boop in a pas de deux with David Sedaris . . . I suspect it may mean a lot to many people, especially the lapsed Catholics among us. It is, for sure, like no book I have read.' --Dwight Garner, The New York Times'Wildly entertaining...[Lockwood's] humor and poetic descriptions are both impressively prolific, every sentence somehow funnier than the one you just read.' --New York Magazine's The Cut'[A] vivid, unrelentingly funny memoir... [Lockwood's] stories . . . are both savage and tender, shot through with surprises and revelations.'--New Yorker 'One of the year's most singular memoirs . . . Lockwood's prose has the lyricism and perfect peculiarity of her poetry, diffusing the sometimes-darkness of her own life in a brilliantly observed kaleidoscope of kook.' - Elle Magazine, The Best Books of 2017'Gives 'confessional memoir' a new layer of meaning. From its hilariously irreverent first sentence, this daughter's story of her guitar-jamming, abortion-protesting, God-fearing father will grab you by the clerical collar and won't let go.'--Vanity Fair 'Remarkable . . . Lockwood proceeds with a near unflagging sense of ironic exuberance and verbal inventiveness . . . this superabundance of comic energy and literary vigor is a measure of Lockwood's seriousness.'--Washington Post 'With this ferocious, bodacious memoir, Lockwood finally mounts her own pulpit, reclaiming a story that all along was hers alone to tell.'--O, The Oprah Magazine 'A sharply written and (I can't overstate this) relentlessly funny family history . . .Lockwood's language swerves into sumptuous poetry several times per chapter.'--Boston Globe'A memoir about growing up different and Catholic, but unlike any you've read before. Poet and writer Patricia Lockwood brings her uniquely bracing yet humorous prose to the story of where it all began: home.'--Glamour Magazine'Here, using the same offbeat intelligence, comic timing, gimlet skill for observation and verbal dexterity that she uses in both her poetry and her tweets, [Lockwood] delivers an unsparing yet ultimately affectionate portrait of faith and family... Priestdaddy gives both believers and nonbelievers a great deal to contemplate.'--Chicago Tribune'Funny and gorgeously written, with scenes so witty and zany they could be lifted from a Broadway show, Priestdaddy will be one of the major prose debuts of the year.' --The Huffington Post'Priestdaddy is a revelatory debut, a meditation on family and art that finds poetry in the unlikeliest things, including poetry. Patricia Lockwood's prose is nothing short of ecstatic; every sentence hums with vibrant, anarchic delight, and her portrait of her epically eccentric family life is funny, warm, and stuffed to bursting with emotional insight. If I could write like this, I would.' --Joss Whedon'Lockwood is antic, deadpan, heartbreaking. . . each sentence shimmies with wonderful, obscene life.'
--npr.org'Lockwood's humor can shape-shift into something else entirely, something quite moving. . . Priestdaddy is a book necessary for 2017--a meditation on living in the house of an unabashed patriarch, of asserting one's humanity and continuing to take up space.'
- The Rumpus 'Lockwood is one of the great original voices of this new century and she is in total control of it here.'
--The Awl'The story of a very loving and eccentric family, full of American contradictions and dense with brilliant sentences that Lockwood seems to toss off as if she were brushing lint from her sweater.'
- Vulture.com'Patricia Lockwood's side-splitting Priestdaddy puts the poetry back in memoir. Her verbal verve creates a reading experience of effervescent joy, even as Lockwood takes you through some of her life's darker passages. Destined to be a classic, Priestdaddy is this year's must-read memoir.' --Mary Karr, author of The Liars' Club'Beautiful, funny and poignant. I wish I'd written this book.' --Jenny Lawson, author of Furiously Happy
'Lockwood has the singular ability to sear you with its often comical, but rarely less than sublime beauty. Her words work as lightning; they devastate with extreme efficiency, you continue to see them in front of you even when you've closed your eyes.'--Nylon'This is a story about all kinds of sacred things... Lockwood's estrangement is born of intimacy, and she chronicles it with clear eyes.'
--Guernica'A sidesplittingly funny, and simply gorgeously written reflection on her father's decision to become a Catholic priest. As poignantly self-reflective as it is authoritative and enlightening about the state of the Catholic Church--and modern religion--today, PRIESTDADDY's buzz is sure to sustain us all summer long.'--Harper's Bazaar'A powerful true story from one of America's most relevant and funniest writers. . . the commandingly written Priestdaddy--about family, religion, identity and trauma--will certainly make you laugh out loud. But it may also move you to tears.'
--Playboy'Irreverently reverent . . . It is easy to be distracted and delighted by [Lockwood's] strange, phosphorescent prose, but the wisp of an idea brushes against you, and before you know it, there's a welt.'
--New Republic
'These vignettes of growing up as the daughter of a married Catholic priest (rare but possible) are so darkly funny that I found myself hooting with laugher and highlighting passages like crazy.'
--Omnivoracious'Lockwood's book is really a rather deliciously old-school, big-R Romantic endeavor: a chronicle of the growth of a mind, the evolution of an imagination.'
--The Atlantic
'I'm an agnostic, but I truly believe that we are all blessed by Patricia Lockwood's decision to lend her amazing facility for language to prose with Priestdaddy. It's a hilarious book full of heavy truths; a wonderful study of one of life's most precious resources - beautiful weirdos.' --Andy Richter
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