In “Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me,” Calhoun examines her relationship with her father through their shared fondness of O’Hara and finds catharsis in the process.
Ada Calhoun is one of those writers who can craft masterful prose that, no matter the genre, reveals the universal truths behind our inner machinations. With her impressive background as a reporter, editor, and A-list ghostwriter, Calhoun began her authorship by weeding through her own backyard for her first book, St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of America’s Hippest Street, a nostalgic celebration of one of Manhattan’s sacred spaces that became a New York Times editors’ pick and was named one of the best books of the year by several esteemed publications.
For her sophomore effort, she ventured into memoir with Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give, an honest portrayal of what it means to be married that was named one of the top 10 memoirs of 2017. A viral story inspired her next book, Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis, a deeply reported Generation X tome that, in exploring specific problems women of her generation face, resonated with so many readers, it became a New York Times best-seller right out of the gate.
Her fourth book, Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me, reverts back to memoir. It begins as an attempt by Calhoun to finish a biography of Frank O’Hara that her famous art-critic father, Peter Schjeldahl, started, but pivots into a deep dive into her own complicated father-daughter dynamic as he faces a terminal cancer diagnosis. In the end, the result is a fascinating examination of not just literary history but also Calhoun’s own history as an artist, daughter, and New Yorker.
While on tour in Boston, Calhoun spoke with Shondaland about her approach to writing Also a Poet, how generational conditioning contributes to gender inequities as writers and artists, and the catharsis writing the book afforded her.
VIVIAN MANNING-SCHAFFEL: Also a Poet is an exploration of your complicated relationship with your dad, spurred by a box of taped interviews he had in his basement intended for a biography of the poet Frank O’Hara. You wrote that your original intent with this book was to finish writing the book your father started because you were both inspired by his work.
ADA CALHOUN: Yes. I found these tapes in my parents’ basement in the East Village — it was 40 hours of interviews my father had done for a biography he never finished. As a ghostwriter, I often only get 10 or 15 hours, something like that. So, I was like, how could you never have finished this? There’s so much stuff here! Anybody could do this; we can just knock this out! Let’s do this for you. And I was very proud of myself. I thought I was going to really win and nail it, and it would be awesome for everybody. Then, you know, all hell broke loose.
Ada Calhoun Also a Poet: Frank O'Hara, My Father, and Me
Credit: Grove
VMS: In spite of all the dissonance between you and your dad in writing about Frank O’Hara, did you feel like it was an act of trust when your dad gave you permission to kind of do the same thing?
AC: I don’t know that it was his idea or that he would have chosen that, but the real magic kind of happened with the book’s publication, because he read the book. I didn’t know that he would — he was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer while I was working on it and was given a few months to live. Then he outlived, like, all these [prognostications] and was around to read it. It was actually really scary to have him read it. I sort of thought he might be mad, and it’s funny because at the book party last night, he said, “If the book weren’t so good, I might be cross.” He thought the book was really good. He always put art above everything else, and in this one instance, I was really glad he did.
VMS: Because you knew it wasn’t a compliment just for the sake of giving you a compliment. He really felt that way.
AC: Oh, he would never have liked the book because his daughter wrote it. That wouldn’t mean anything to him, right? It used to be that I would have been like, no, you should like it because I did it. But you know what? Actually, in this case, it’s much better because he liked it because he thought it was really good, and so he approves of it, even though it’s a complicated portrait of him.
VMS: In one chapter, you describe how you studied Sanskrit in college and wrote: “I didn’t want to be compared with my father, to be called a chip off the old block, as if he were a monolith and I, a tiny shard.” How did these feelings drive the many accomplishments throughout your career?
AC: It’s been kind of interesting. Women who were straight-A students in reaction to their fathers especially, kind of trying to earn approval that wasn’t easily forthcoming, have really related to the book. Because it’s a little bit about that reaction, trying to get some attention, to be so competent and so good that eventually it will get noticed and appreciated, then the frustration of, year after year, somehow not winning the situation, not getting what you want.
VMS: Throughout the book, you honestly describe numerous moments you felt let down and ignored by your dad, not just as a child but also as an adult, even after his cancer diagnosis. Not to excuse it — I’ve had to reckon with it myself — but to what degree do you feel his way of looking at parenting was generational conditioning?
AC: If it’s a man who is maybe considered a genius or creative, there’s all this permission attached to that — you can’t bother him, right? You can’t bother him when he’s working because it’s so important. Whereas I think, especially for women, you’re going to — and I did — write while watching Wonder Pets. While the kids are having a Nerf gun battle, you’re on the laptop behind the pillow fortress trying to get things done. I do think that’s generational because I do see men who are younger now trying to balance it more the same way that women kind of always have. And it’s funny because I think that both men and women maybe now are seeing the problems of both those realities. Now that my kid is a teenager, I am able to close the door more or go on a residency for a week or something. You do have so much more freedom; it’s incredible. It kind of blew my mind the first time I did that. I realized I can’t actually go deeper into the things I’m working on because I have more bandwidth. I think they were kind of on to something, but at the same time, men of that generation really did miss out on a lot of love in their lives, a lot of connection, and a lot of variety. Putting all their eggs into that one basket of work wasn’t necessarily great for their work in many cases, and it also wasn’t great for them as human beings on the Earth.
VMS: When your dad was diagnosed with cancer, there’s a point in the book where he says the idea of not being able to write fills him with dread, and that he doesn’t make any sense to himself if he’s not writing. Do you think you also have that need to process life through the filter of the written word? Maybe not in the same way?
AC: I never thought so. I really always thought I could kind of take it or leave it. This is what I’m good at, so it’s a job I’m going to have, but I could have another job, no problem. But while I was working on the book, I had to really face the fact that writing a good book was actually really important to me. Making it really good mattered a lot. In the end, I really had to face, is it more important to me than everybody in the world loving me? and I was like, it actually is; yes, it is. That was a real awakening for me. A friend of mine said, “You know, you’re more like your father than you think you are.”
VMS: I know for me right now, work is the only thing that tethers me to a sense of control over anything. When you were going through losing [your husband’s] dad, then your dad’s subsequent cancer diagnosis, could you — can you — relate to that?
AC: There was this feeling, especially when things got really dark, where I thought sometimes the things that are the worst to live through are the best to write about. When you start seeing the world as material, in addition to everything else, it maybe makes them easier to handle. I felt that to be true.
VMS: Your brain needs a vacation from the reality. Would you say that writing this book was cathartic in terms of your relationship with your dad?
AC: One thing that I’ve always felt with memoir, that I always find is helpful, is when you make meaning out of what you’ve been through. It takes the power away somehow. It can still hurt, but there’s something about making there be a beginning, middle, and end, and then main characters and scenes, and all that around stories that just takes the edge off somehow. I felt so much lighter after that book was done, so much more at peace. I wasn’t mad anymore, really. It doesn’t mean I couldn’t still get frustrated with my dad, but the sort of messiness of it was resolved for me.
VMS: What do you hope that people who read your book take away when they put it down?
AC: The book just came out, and I’ve gotten so many messages from people who said that it made them go have conversations with their parents they had not had before, which I was surprised and moved by. Just this idea that the relationship might not break if you’re really honest about it. One thing a lot of people were saying about the book when I was working on it was “I can’t believe you’re going to write about this complicated thing. Your dad’s going to be so angry. It’s going to be so hard on everybody if you’re honest about the complexity of it. You should just say you love him; he’s dying.” Deep down, I think everybody wants to deal with the complexity. It’s not satisfying to just go through days and years saying everything’s fine if it’s not fine.
There was this feeling, especially when things got really dark, where I thought sometimes the things that are the worst to live through are the best to write about.
VMS: So many people do because they feel that’s what they’re supposed to do. They tamp down their feelings rather than have an honest relationship. I commend your honesty.
AC: There’s pros and cons, right? I have friends who come from really traumatic situations, and they’re just not up for stirring the pot. They’re more than happy to just have this very superficial relationship with family, and I completely get that. But I think a lot of relationships that we think are too fragile wind up not being too fragile and are actually really capable of taking some hard truths and surviving.
VMS: There’s also the kind of acceptance and understanding of the fact that the person in question will not accept what it is that you’re saying or process it. It may not change their behavior or change the outcome, and that’s okay.
AC: It doesn’t even matter. My dad still smokes even though he’s got cancer. My dad still occasionally is rather frustrating to me, but it’s like just having said how I felt to him — and, again, he was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer, and I really did think he was going to die soon, and he may still — it does feel somehow reassuring. I think both of us were able to say all the things we had to say to each other. He said having those conversations brought him peace in this sort of final chapter of his life.
VMS: I’m so happy for you because there’s nothing worse than the unanswered questions in the end and not having that peace.
AC: At one point, we had a fight. I’d been trying really hard to give us a happy ending and, you know, say these meaningful goodbyes every time I left, and just be very sweet. Finally, he said something so obnoxious to me, and I told him, “You need f--king therapy,” and I left. I was like, that might be the last thing I said to my father. Can I deal with that? And you know what? I was okay with it, he can deal with it, that could be the end, and we can both feel fine.
VMS: I don’t want to give too much away, but at the end of the book, you bring it back full circle and kind of put a bow on the whole thing. What’s your process as a writer?
AC: I actually have no real discipline, except that I really like working so much that I will do it as much as possible, to the point where I’ll just wake up in the morning early and start writing. If nobody’s around, if I am on a residency and don’t have to cook for my family or anything, I will just keep working until it gets dark out, until I fall asleep. Maybe 12 hours straight. Ghostwriting is often on a really tight deadline, so then I’ll just work all day every day and happily. I really do enjoy it. But then there are days or weeks where I don’t do anything. I’m not one of those people who’s like, you have to sit in that chair and crank it out, if you’re not feeling it. If I’m not feeling it, I just go to the Met, or I go to a baseball game, or I just go hang out with friends, go shopping, day drink. I just hang out with my kid, and I don’t feel bad about it.
VMS: What art inspires you right now? What are you reading? Whom are you listening to? What do you watch on TV?
AC: Good question. My husband is in seminary now, and I suddenly have a bunch of friends who are sort of religious in different ways. So, a few of the books I brought on this tour [include] Emma Straub’s This Time Tomorrow, which I’m enjoying very much. She was saying our books are sister books, and she’s totally right because they’re both about, like, fathers and New York City in various eras. I also have Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief, and I have a Ralph Waldo Emerson essay collection.
VMS: What’s your guilty pleasure?
AC: My downfall is Law & Order: SVU. If I turn it on, days or hours just go by. I can’t move. I forget to eat. I just watch, hour after hour, after hour. I avoid it, mostly, because I can’t be trusted.
VMS: I’m convinced Mariska Hargitay is medicinal for our generation of women. I think we just see her, and we feel better.
AC: Yes! So soothing, knowing she’s on the job. I just want to know she’s out there.