Customer Reviews

Her Father: A Memoir

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Bill Henderson writes so well about his life, his belated "coming of age" into this thing called Adulthood. His writing comes across as so completely honest that I felt I was at a bar with my good friend Bill Henderson, listening to his struggles with love and religion and dead and dying parents and drinking and trying to conceive a child...and trying always to live authentically. Though this may seem an obscure memoir, Bill Henderson is in fact a highly regarded independent publisher ( Pushcart ) and the "boss" of the infamous Lead Pencil Club, of which I am a member ( irony abounds, God Knows! ). Bill edited a book called The Minutes of the Lead Pencil Club; I liked that so much that I searched Amazon for anything else he'd done - that's how I found the wonderful Her Father.

I wanted, very much, to get to know Bill Henderson, the man behind The Pushcart Prize and Pushcart Press. He has no web site and he's criticized by the publishing industry as someone who came from nowhere and awards prizes that are, for no reason, revered.

So, who is he? How did he come to be who he is?

Of his few memoirs published, each by his own press, this seemed most informative. But, it wasn't informative enough. It begins as a good memoir - a bit about his feelings, his past, his promise to his mother, which, as other reviews point out is the thesis of the book.

From that point on, this promise--to have a child--takes over, to the point of the book becoming not a memoir but a letter to his daughter, or, a year in the life of. He could have, perhaps, been helped by an objective editor (i.e., not the mom). Nine months of pregnancy does not half a memoir make.

I read the book and I know Mr. Henderson a bit better, which is nice. I wanted more than a bit, and I wanted more than a story of pregnancy.

His personal story, and seemingly the book, ends with him as a poor self-publisher. This begs the comment: No he isn't. He publishes one of the most sought-after prizes for small presses; he makes careers; his Pushcart Prize is an It Prize. He can't possibly be a poor guy in a shack.

When the story of his career stopped and the one of his fatherhood began, he forgot to mention what happened next in the rest of his life. I want to know what happened next, and I don't really want to read all four of his memoirs to find out.

Ultimately, I think that had he not been the publisher, this book would not have been published. As the title implies, it's about being "her father"; it's a note to his daughter. And, it's two books in one - the first half, a memoir; the second half, a pregnancy and child.