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ISBN-10: 0547816561
ISBN-13: 9780547816562
Edition: 2012
List price: $26.00
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Description:
The bestselling author ofFriday Night Lightsand3 Nights in Augustjourneys across country and into the psyche of his son and traveling companion, where he finds not only the remarkable skills and debilities known as savantism, but a host of qualities we might all emulate. Buzz Bissinger's twin sons were born three minutes—and a world—apart. Gerry, the older one, is a graduate student at Penn, preparing to become a teacher. His brother, Zach, has spent his life attending special schools. He will never drive a car, or kiss a girl, or live by himself. He is a savant, challenged by serious intellectual deficits but also blessed with rare talents. He has an astonishing memory, a dazzling knack… for navigation, and he can tell you the day of the week on which any date falls. Moreover, he is incapable of dishonesty, which can make him both socially awkward and surprisingly wise. One summer night, Buzz and Zach set out on a singular cross-country road trip to revisit all the places they have lived together during Zach's twenty-four years. Zach revels in his memories, and Buzz hopes this journey into their shared past will bring them closer and reveal to him the mysterious workings of his son's mind and heart. At first, father and son get on each other's nerves. Buzz, a reporter by trade and nature, peppers Zach with relentless questions. Zach often lapses into deep silences when he's not making indecipherable sounds or announcing, as he does on the second day, that he hates all this driving. But as they spend more time together in their pale blue minivan, their bond strengthens. Time and again, Zach saves them from getting lost when a highway cloverleaf or hidden exit baffles Buzz. And Zach's talents aren't just spatial: he defuses many a tense moment with a perfectly timed non sequitur. As father and son follow a pinball's path from Philadelphia to Chicago to Milwaukee to Oklahoma City to West Texas to Las Vegas and Los Angeles, they see the best and worst of America and each other. Along the way, Buzz fights the demons that have tormented him for a quarter-century—his own uneasy bond with his volatile, demanding parents and the persistent sense of failure he feels because he can never outdo his own early success of a Pulitzer and a bestselling book before he turned forty. Most of all he wrestles with his anxiety about Zach—the desire to make his son "normal," the shame at harboring such a desire, the anxiety about what will become of Zach in the decades ahead, when his mother and father are no longer around to take care of him. His concerns about Zach are only intensified by the fact that Zach is so unlike his twin. As Gerry thrives, the limitations of Zach's life become even more pronounced. Buzz is haunted by those three minutes that set the divergent courses of his sons' lives. Even more haunted is Gerry, who joins his father and brother in Los Angeles and shares his deep, fraught feelings about the closest, most challenging bond in his life. Buzz can never entirely allay all his fears about Zach, but their trip bestows a new and uplifting wisdom on him, as he comes to realize that Zach's worldview, as exotic as it is, has a sturdy logic of its own, a logic that deserves the greatest respect. Only with Gerry's help does Buzz learn an even more vital lesson about Zach: character transcends intellect. As father and sons converge in Los Angeles, we come to admire Gerry for how beautifully he navigates his intimate, intricate bond with Zach. And we come to see Zach as he truly is—not a man-child but a man of excellent character. Kind, fearless, patient, noble—he is in many respects a model for us all. Father's Day is a travelogue like no other—poignant, funny, frank, and revelatory—and a one-of-a-kind coming-of-age story in which a young man and his father give each other wisdom that neither of them could ever get from anyone else.