Zack Rogow is the author of the new memoir Hugging My Father's Ghost. His other books include the poetry collection Irreverent Litanies. He is also a playwright and translator.
Q: What inspired you to write Hugging My Father’s Ghost, and how was the book’s title chosen?
A: My father, Lee Rogow, was a widely published fiction writer and the drama critic for the Hollywood Reporter, a glamorous man-about-town in Manhattan of the 1950s, and captain of a submarine-chaser in World War II. He died in a plane crash when I was 3 years old.
When someone perishes that young, people shower praise in a way that makes it difficult to get to know the person in a three-dimensional way. My dad remained a mystery to me. Not only that, grief prevented me from looking closely at his writings.
The experience of raising a son myself finally gave me to the incentive to read my dad’s work in depth, particularly his unpublished writings. I also interviewed people who knew him.
By writing this memoir, I was finally able to piece together all the clues I could find to get to know my father as a human being.
The title, Hugging My Father’s Ghost, is a way of saying that writing the book brought me much closer to my dad, but that I’m aware that he’s still a “ghost” now, a projection of my own vision of him.
Q: How did you research the book, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?
A: There were many startling surprises. I researched the book through a variety of materials, from newspaper and magazine articles, to digging through unpublished works of my dad that had never seen the light of day.
Interestingly, much of the “research” was in my mind, since I created imaginary dialogues between myself and my dad to flesh out his personality. I learned a great deal about my dad and my mom, secrets that had previously only been whispered.
Q: The poet Robert Pinsky said of the book, “This is a moving story of grief, genius, and laughter, beautifully told. And a good read!” What do you think of that description?
A: I love Robert Pinsky’s description because it highlights the many sides of the book. Yes, there was deep grief for me in remembering my dad, but he was a hilariously funny guy, and I could not have done justice to his life and his personality without including a lot of humor.
My father’s budding genius as a writer is also evident in his writings included in the book.
Q: Can you say more about the impact that writing the book had on you? What do you hope readers take away from the book?
A: My dad died almost 70 years ago, so I didn’t think that telling his story would be very emotional for me. I had already grieved him many times over, but getting close to him through his writings and the interviews and his life story—well, I had to cry multiple times in the process of writing this book.
That was extremely cathartic, and paradoxically it allowed me also the relief to experience his humor.
Another feature of my dad’s life is that he came from an immigrant family—all my grandparents were Jews who arrived in the U.S.A. from Eastern Europe. This book is very much about the immigrant experience and how it shaped, nourished, and limited not only my dad, but my mom as well.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: My father, Lee Rogow, was named in honor of the Yiddish fiction writer Leib Peretz. I’m writing a play based on several classic Yiddish short stories, three of them by Peretz. I’m also writing a book of poems about aging called The Kama Sutra for Senior Citizens.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: There’s a lot you should know, but I don’t know it either, so I can’t tell you.
No seriously, I want to emphasize that this book is about the loss of a parent, but it’s also about the deep love and humor in families that cushion even the sharpest grief. It’s a bit like reading a mystery, because I had to quilt together a lot of different types of materials to create a rounded portrait of my dad.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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