Alternadad: A Tragedy?

Upon finishing Alternadad I was left feeling saddened and disappointed. Perhaps it is impossible to hold onto an idealistic view of a “utopian” or “perfect” parenthood, even if you are (in my view) the supremely cool Neal Pollack. During the climax of the book in which Elijah gets expelled from preschool and the parents receive a barrage of hate-mails attacking them for being horrible parents, I wondered what they could have possibly done more for their child in this situation. This was not an example of the mother taking the majority of the blame—on the contrary, Neal was the primary target of the assault. In light of Elijah’s apparently violent nature and chronic biting problem, I actually found myself wondering whether Neal and Regina’s Rock ‘n Roll parenting style was, in fact, a good idea after all. While it is true that the matter did end and the equilibrium was restored, that fact still did little to lighten my mood on the idea of “cool” but effective parenting. Society would never be tolerant and parents will always be judged by those who did not fully understand those whom they were judging, leaving parents of both genders guilty and torn.

Pollack proclaims: “Show me a perfect parent and I’ll show you a liar…we did the best we could,” but as much as his writing tries to pick up where it began with its rock-out, “who cares” attitude, railing against society and all of its stupidity, I found it faltering—ultimately unable to recover: “A miserable legacy of failed adulthood loomed before me…life was a hopeless journey into a bottomless abyss, only occasionally punctured by ironic Brazilian vacations. This truly was the end of the end” (317; 325). While attempting to be hopeful and rebellious by the book’s finish with “‘What we going to do in Los Angeles Daddy?’…‘Whatever the hell we want to, son,’” I still felt unsatisfied. The artistic, intellectual Neal at the beginning of Alternadad, so intent on remaining himself—refusing to conform to a judgmental society, seemed a far cry from the more worrisome and broken Dad by the end: “‘No,’ I said. ‘Elmo wants to give SpongeBob a kiss.’ That was the moment that I officially stopped pretending to be cool” (299). Wherever the controversy might lie in respect to Pollack’s coolness level must fall silent upon his own admission of defeat. Fatherhood has ended his quest for coolness once and for all; and it is a sad day for Alternadad.

It might be because it is so late at night that I have taken on this somber air of pessimism. Flipping through the pages and looking again at the family’s dynamic does seem to add some hope to the melancholy picture I’ve described: “You’re not a failure at all,” Regina reminds him. “You own a house. You have a wife and a son and a dog that love you. You support your family doing work that you love on your own terms…for some people that’s the very definition of success” (281). He seriously contemplates giving up smoking pot. But during the scene at Target, Neal cries because he wishes he “could give Elijah more, could be more for him. I just wanted the best for my family, and I felt ashamed that I couldn’t give it to them” (337). I suppose that we could view the ending as something other than a tragedy if we remember Bernstein’s idea of perfection as unstable peaks and valleys: “I knew that both good and bad awaited us in California. My family would convulse many more times, only to repair itself again. Careers would rise and fall. There would probably be a major earthquake at some point. But it had still been a long time since something had exited me this much” (344). The most hopeful lines in the book, I believe, are uttered by Elijah himself, when he states that “I see many beautiful things when we’re in the car, like trees and houses and flowers and oranges” (334). He seems happy and optimistic even if his worrisome, now-uncool parents are no longer are able to be. Perhaps, as Jill suggests, we should take our lessons from the child and not the parents. Maybe, aside from being peacemakers, they are the ones with the real answers, and are the ones who keep parents constantly surprised by the little ways that life reminds us of the happiness and contentment we’ve forgotten on their account in the quest to be perfect parents in an age where this has become a true and utter impossibility.