The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #11: Lucas Mann
The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #11: Lucas Mann
"Fatherhood, from the notes we got back from editors, is a tough subject. One that everyone seems to agree is underexplored in a serious, emotionally invested way in literature..."
Since 2010, in various publications, I’ve interviewed authors—mostly memoirists—about aspects of writing and publishing. Initially I did this for my own edification, as someone who was struggling to find the courage and support to write and publish my memoir. I’m still curious about other authors’ experiences, and I know many of you are, too. So, inspired by the popularity of The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, I’ve launched The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire.
Here’s the eleventh installment, featuring Lucas Mann, author of Attachments: Essays on Fatherhood and other Performances. -Sari Botton
Lucas Mann is the author of Attachments: On Fatherhood and Other Performances, Captive Audience: On Love and Reality Television, Lord Fear: A Memoir, and Class A: Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere. He teaches creative writing at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and lives in Providence, RI, with his family, where they own Riffraff Bookstore and Bar.
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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?
I am 37, and I’ve been writing, or taking the possibility of myself writing seriously, since I was 20. I’d always been told I was good at it, always loved reading and writing, though perhaps that was because I’d been told it was a place where I excelled, but never committed in any way until my junior year of college, when I was lucky enough to end up in classes taught by the incredible writers Amitava Kumar and Kiese Laymon.
Kiese’s was a class entirely on James Baldwin, and Amitava’s was a class called, I believe, “War writing,” but in both I was exposed to this whole expanded idea of what nonfiction could be, and something clicked for me. It was instantaneous. Both of them really encouraged me to try my hand at my own stuff, gave me prompts, read my work, really fostered my interest and challenged me. It was a perfect storm of good fortune.
What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?
My new book is called Attachments: Essays on Fatherhood and Other Performances, and it comes out in May of 2024.
What number book is this for you?
This is my fourth book. My earlier ones are Captive Audience: On Love and Reality Television, Lord Fear: A Memoir, and Class A: Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere.
How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?
This book is an essay collection, and that distinction feels significant to me because it’s my first. For the three previous books, in different ways, I was working with a larger narrative thread, and whatever digressions I took or formal play was there existed in the context of keeping the central tension moving forward. Writing these essays has felt very different, and freeing in a lot of ways. Even though there’s the unified subject of fatherhood, it doesn’t feel at all like a memoir to me because I relished the chance to do something totally new stylistically in each essay. That ended up being what made it fun.
There are essays that feel more like prose poems, essays that take up experimental forms, work that resembles more magazine literary journalism/cultural criticism, some straight up personal work. There’s an essay that riffs on how much Brad Pitt eats on screen, another about watching LeBron James’s dad content, and another that revolves entirely around Andy Warhol. So instead of having to move any cohesive story forward, it felt like the act of circling a subject and looking for new entry points, and that allowed me to dabble in all the essayistic forms that I love.
What is the “elevator pitch” for your book? (Up to one paragraph.)
I’m stealing the one from the blurb on the book because I think it’s good and I’m terrible at this:
“Lucas Mann turns his attention, tenderness, self-reflection, and humor to contemporary fatherhood. He looks closely at all the joys, frustrations, subtleties, and contradictions within an experience that often goes under-discussed. At once intimate and expansive, Mann chronicles his own life with his young daughter, but also looks outward to the cultural and political baggage that surrounds and permeates these everyday experiences. Moving through memoir, lyric essay, literary analysis, and pop culture criticism, Attachments treats the subject of fatherhood with the depth, curiosity, and vivid emotion that it deserves.”
I am 37, and I’ve been writing, or taking the possibility of myself writing seriously, since I was 20. I’d always been told I was good at it, always loved reading and writing, though perhaps that was because I’d been told it was a place where I excelled, but never committed in any way until my junior year of college, when I was lucky enough to end up in classes taught by the incredible writers Amitava Kumar and Kiese Laymon.
What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?
I was raised by people who love books, and I was always encouraged to read and write. That’s a huge part of it, and something I’m grateful for. I mentioned earlier coming to nonfiction in college, and then suddenly my whole adult life, from the end of college, into grad school, and on into a career, was shaped around writing — the origin story of this book is actually the most significant fallow period I’ve ever had. I published my third book in 2018, then my daughter was born at the end of that year. I was able to take parental leave for the following semester, then extend into the summer, and I found it so incredibly all-consuming and overwhelming – I didn’t write; there were existing projects that I looked back at and felt suddenly disconnected from.
Covid hit when my daughter was a little over a year old, and my wife still had to go into work at the time, so this created a second period of pretty constant childcare, this time cut off from the world, generally freaked out, etc. I know this is not a unique experience at all, but it was transformative for me, in every way. I just stopped thinking about writing for a while, and let myself embrace that. I’ve never felt more totally present in the act of living, day to day. By the time my daughter was two, it felt like we were letting our lives open up a little again, and the nag in the back of my mind of even thinking of writing, going to sleep turning sentences over in my head, etc., returned.
But it felt like whatever would come next, if anything, had to be new. I had to start over, reconfigure whatever writing was left around new concerns, new constraints, a new set of curiosities, a new lens with which I looked at the world that felt more vivid, I realized, than anything previous. The Los Angeles Review of Books reached out around then to ask me to contribute something for an upcoming issue (actually, this was re-reaching out because they’d asked the previous year and I’d said yes before freaking out and bailing), and that kindness gave me a reason to try again. It felt really good!
It felt like I had all of these thoughts and feelings waiting right under the skin or something, and the voice felt like mine but also looser, less self-conscious. The essay was ostensibly cultural criticism about rewatching The Office and modern, tech-addled nostalgias, but suddenly there was this whole thread woven in about sleep training, watching my daughter sleep, etc., and it felt organic to the thought process, full of potential. That was enough of a kernel of something to make me keep going, and the collection grew out of chasing that impulse.
What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?
Writing the book was a pleasure, to be honest. A way less wracked experience than any previous one I’d had. It was just like, hell yeah, I’m doing this again, this is fun, maybe I have something to say. Not all the time, obviously, but more than I remember with any other book, for sure. Publishing the book was a nightmare. It took over a year to find a home — plenty of near misses, a few of the classic “we’ll be cheering you on from the sidelines.” And, frankly, a lot of just non-responses. That’s just the way of the world these days, I think.
But it was hard for a while, because there was this split brain of like, wow I do believe in this work that I’m writing, but maybe I’m really, really wrong? I felt energized about the project, itching to work more on it, but then was also thinking it’s hard to stay invested in a project that increasingly seems unpublishable. Fatherhood, from the notes we got back from editors, is a tough subject. One that everyone seems to agree is underexplored in a serious, emotionally invested way in literature, but then in the same breath it’s like, yeah we’ve never seen any evidence that there’s an audience for this, so that’s why it’s underexplored.
Then I think there was the fear that, even if people were interested in the subject matter, or a few of the more magazine-y essays, they then got to the more lyric or experimental essays and were like, what the hell this doesn’t feel like it’s for dads. By the end, I was pretty resigned to thinking, Okay, I wrote the book I wanted to, a book that I’d find valuable to read, but that’s not a book that is going to sell. And then the University of Iowa Press loved it, and got it, and brought it to life!
How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?
I’ve always tried to be pretty open about showing things to anyone involved who’d want to look. And if it feels important to someone to change things, I will. In this book, the main subject was anywhere from a newborn to four years old across these essays, and she’s only five now, so it’s a different situation. But I was very conscious of that dynamic — there would be no real chance to get her perspective and make things feel right for her. I struggled with that, and still do.
I tried to make a point keeping in mind whether I was sharing anything that might feel painful or embarassing for her to read years down the road, and I don’t think I did (about her, anyway; I’ll be embarassed instantly, but then I wrote the thing so I deserve it). It was also very important to me that my wife read every essay and we got to talk about it. This is about our lives, our family, and I wanted to make sure that my gaze wasn’t twisting anything. In past books, there’s been parts she’s quibbled with, and I’ve always made those tweaks, but she was wholeheartedly down with what she read in this one, so that feels very nice.
It felt like I had all of these thoughts and feelings waiting right under the skin or something, and the voice felt like mine but also looser, less self-conscious. The essay was ostensibly cultural criticism about rewatching The Office and modern, tech-addled nostalgias, but suddenly there was this whole thread woven in about sleep training, watching my daughter sleep, etc., and it felt organic to the thought process, full of potential. That was enough of a kernel of something to make me keep going, and the collection grew out of chasing that impulse.
Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)
There’s a lot of incredible parenting-related work that I was reading (or in many cases re-reading) when I was writing Attachments — Maggie Nelson, Tove Ditlevsen, Rivka Galchen, Jenny Offill, Rachel Yoder, some Knaussgard. These are wonderful writers and their books were important to me, but it also felt important at a certain point to get into books that were totally unencumbered by similar subject matter and felt totally free – the only responsibility I wanted to hold myself to when writing this was to fucking go for it, to feel weird and alive and funny on the page, and try not to get bogged down.
Stylistically, the book that was maybe most important for me at the time was Sasha Fletcher’s Be There to Love Me at the End of the World. We are very different writers, the subject is different, it’s a strange, dystopian novel, but to me it felt like an exercise in voice and style – totally un-self conscious, bellowing out its feelings. It was very helpful to just remind myself, hell yeah, you can do that, you should do that.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?
Well, the fear is warranted. It’s brutal out there – publishing is a nightmare of conglomeration, many of the best magazines and websites that were open to interesting essay work have folded or exist in some purgatory of venture capital vulturism. If you think about the publishing process too much, there isn’t much joy to be found; it’s the furthest thing from the experience of actually creating something.
The advice I’d give is that, if it feels important to you to write what you’re writing, if you sit down and do it and something in your brain is telling you it’s valuable (to you, to a few people, to the whole world), then that’s the only answer you need, and it’s ultimately the only thing that will keep you writing. The rest of it is something to deal with when you have to deal with it. Sorry if that sounds all kumbaya, and I’m sure plenty of writers would tell you that it’s naïve or privileged to say (fair!), but for me, I’ve been incredibly stressed about and engaged with the publishing process before and now I’m a lot less so, and honestly how miserable I let it make me changes nothing in the results. If the sand is where you might find the will to keep writing, I say stick your head in the sand.
What do you love about writing?
If I’m writing well, I really feel like I’m discovering what I think as I go along. I know that’s a bit of a cliché, but that’s what makes the essay form enduringly fascinating to me, the chance to say, Holy shit this is what I was thinking about, this is what is important to me, and I hadn’t managed to articulate it to myself until suddenly it was there on the page.
What frustrates you about writing?
Everything except the good days.
What about writing surprises you?
Every time, it feels like starting over.
Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?
At the moment, I’m just hoping to find anything resembling a routine again. This is a note to future me to say please figure that out.
If I’m writing well, I really feel like I’m discovering what I think as I go along. I know that’s a bit of a cliché, but that’s what makes the essay form enduringly fascinating to me, the chance to say, Holy shit this is what I was thinking about, this is what is important to me, and I hadn’t managed to articulate it to myself until suddenly it was there on the page.
Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?
I am a terrible musician, but competent enough that it can be fun to screw around. I’ve got a guitar and my wife has a little electric piano that, despite not knowing how to play piano, I enjoy futzing around with. Having my daughter around has made music a much larger part of our lives — it’s such a sharable art form. Watching her face as she listens to a new song, hearing the soft voice she reserves for when she’s trying to match a melody but wants to keep that process private — I love it so much.
So now when we’re sitting around in the morning I’m reflexively holding onto the guitar and noodling or playing something really basic on the piano and singing, and sometimes she’ll get her drum or screw around with a toy accordion, or sit next to me at the piano. This has become a steady source of joy. As for other pursuits that feel connected to writing…really just walking. If I have any time in a given day to take an hour walk, I am happier that day and my brain works better. A day cannot be wasted if you take a long walk and think some stuff while moving around in your neighborhood.
What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?
The past year has been pretty wild for me and my family. My wife and I took over a bookstore/bar called Riffraff in Providence last fall, which has been a delight but a very all-consuming delight. (Really Ottavia, my wife, is running everything, but I set up and host events, help out, etc.) So of late it’s been parenting, teaching, everything with the store, and also thinking about getting Attachments out into the world. The book is out in May, my teaching semester ends in May, and now the plan is to see, okay, what does a writing-filled summer look/feel like now, and hopefully something substantial grows out of that.
Really good interview. I can just picture him and his daughter making music !
This is a fantastic interview. I can’t wait to read Attachments!