Jeffrey Simpson, host of this interview and author of American Elegy: A Family Memoir, and his guest, Donald Antrim, author of The Afterlife: A Memoir, share in common the angst they experienced in writing candid memoirs about their families and, in particular, the difficult relationship each had with his alcoholic mother. Antrim admits that accessing respect and admiration for his mother was challenging when she was alive, and describes what he calls his “obsessive loop” after her death. Acknowledging that children almost always see their parents through a somewhat distorted lens, Antrim talks movingly about discovering, after her death, new aspects of who his mother was and seeing her through fresh eyes


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