Finding My Father: His Century-Long Journey from World War I Warsaw and My Quest to Follow

by Deborah Tannen Narrated by Deborah Tannen

Overview

A #1 New York Times bestselling author traces her father's life from turn-of-the-century Warsaw to New York City in an intimate memoir about family, memory, and the stories we tell.

“An accomplished, clear-eyed, and affecting memoir about a man who is at once ordinary and extraordinary.”-Forward

Long before she was the acclaimed author of a groundbreaking book about women and men, praised by Oliver Sacks for having “a novelist's ear for the way people speak,” Deborah Tannen was a girl who adored her father. Though he was often absent during her childhood, she was profoundly influenced by his gift for writing and storytelling. As she grew up and he grew older, she spent countless hours recording conversations with her father for the account of his life she had promised him she'd write. But when he hands Tannen journals he kept in his youth, and she discovers letters he saved from a woman he might have married instead of her mother, she is forced to rethink her assumptions about her father's life and her parents' marriage. 

In this memoir, Tannen embarks on the poignant, yet perilous, quest to piece together the puzzle of her father's life. Beginning with his astonishingly vivid memories of the Hasidic community in Warsaw, where he was born in 1908, she traces his journey: from arriving in New York City in 1920 to quitting high school at fourteen to support his mother and sister, through a vast array of jobs, including prison guard and gun-toting alcohol tax inspector, to eventually establishing the largest workers' compensation law practice in New York and running for Congress. As Tannen comes to better understand her father's-and her own-relationship to Judaism, she uncovers aspects of his life she would never have imagined.

Finding My Father is a memoir of Eli Tannen's life and the ways in which it reflects the near century that he lived. Even more than that, it's an unflinching account of a daughter's struggle to see her father clearly, to know him more deeply, and to find a more truthful story about her family and herself.

Editorial Reviews

DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile

Author Deborah Tannen’s sentimental exploration of her father’s letters makes this audiobook one that listeners will enjoy and remember. Tannen’s delivery is warm, filled with love, and ideally paced for savoring. The story begins in Warsaw, Poland, continues through her father’s journey to the United States, and concludes with her discoveries within his many letters, many of which changed her perspective. Listeners will remember the audiobook because it demonstrates how, despite the passage of more than a century, immigrants continue to overcome obstacles as they strive to adapt to American culture. Although the audiobook focuses on Tannen’s father, it goes deeper. The stories of her parents’ courtship and the travails he overcomes professionally make this listen memorable. D.J.S. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

06/29/2020

Tannen (You Just Don’t Understand) examines the life of her father in this passionate memoir. A giant in her life (“he’s the parent I felt an affinity with, the one who understood me”), Eli Tannen possessed an even temper that masked an unhappy past. He emigrated from Poland to New York City in 1920 and quit school at 14 to support his mother and sister. He eventually went to college and earned a law degree during the Depression, but couldn’t find work as a lawyer for nearly 30 years, when he started a legal practice in support of worker’s compensation. To support his wife (who thought he was ugly and grew to dislike him) and family, he held various jobs, including as a prison guard and garment cutter. He was a prolific letter writer; Tannen notes, “my inclination to write traced to my father.” From him she “learned to listen for unspoken meanings in people’s conversations.” While visiting him in her parents’ Westchester condo, she uncovers letters detailing her father’s relationship with another woman just before his marriage. She then speculates what his life might have been, concluding, “She was better suited to my father... a kind, compassionate intellectual.” Tannen’s readers will appreciate this tender-hearted paean to her father. (Sept.)

From the Publisher

Praise for Finding My Father
 
“The ultimate recognition of her father’s painful need for connection is searing, the depiction of the Jewish community in World War I–era Warsaw riveting. Not only does Ms. Tannen’s heartfelt portrait keep her father—and his memories—alive, but her story also hints at the undiscovered currents that may await us, too, if we but delve beneath the surface of our own family myths.”—The Wall Street Journal

“[A] tender-hearted paean.”—Publishers Weekly
 
“Drawing on abundant sources, sociolinguist [Deborah] Tannen creates a loving biography of her father, who indelibly shaped her life. . . . A generous and empathetic portrait.”—Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Deborah Tannen

“Deborah Tannen combines a novelist’s ear for the way people speak with a rare power of original analysis.”—Oliver Sacks, on You Just Don’t Understand

“Tannen’s great gift . . . is the clarity she offers for emotionally charged familial relationships. . . . She guides the reader to listen in a new and responsive way.”—Wendy Wasserstein, The Washington Post Book World, on I Only Say This Because I Love You

“The effect of [Tannen’s] anecdotes and analysis is to reassure her readers that they are not alone.”—The Wall Street Journal, on You’re Wearing THAT?

“Tannen’s very talented ear allows her to see inside our most intense relationships using the windows of our words.”—The Baltimore Sun, on You Were Always Mom’s Favorite!

Library Journal

08/14/2020

In this latest work, Tannen (linguistics, Georgetown Univ.; You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation) deviates from her usual linguistic focus to the more personal subject of her own family and the father she adored. Tannen wrote this memoir after years of faithfully compiling memories gleaned from the journals of her father, Eli Tannen, as well as collecting talks and recorded conversations between her and her father over an extended period of time. Tannen reflects on developing a love of writing, language, and literature because of her father's influence. She also considers what it means to be Jewish in the United States, and to be descended from Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jewish communities in Europe. Chapters on Eli's childhood in the Hasidic Jewish section of Warsaw in the early 1900s are as fascinating as the impressive recollections of his aunts and uncles, who add further context to family memories. While segments on Eli's personal and intimate life feel oddly tangential in the scheme of the overall narrative, early chapters provide historical context and valuable insight into Jewish lives during the height of Nazi Germany. VERDICT An uneven biography, but a worthy addition to World War II and Holocaust memoirs.—Stacy Shaw, Denver

DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile

Author Deborah Tannen’s sentimental exploration of her father’s letters makes this audiobook one that listeners will enjoy and remember. Tannen’s delivery is warm, filled with love, and ideally paced for savoring. The story begins in Warsaw, Poland, continues through her father’s journey to the United States, and concludes with her discoveries within his many letters, many of which changed her perspective. Listeners will remember the audiobook because it demonstrates how, despite the passage of more than a century, immigrants continue to overcome obstacles as they strive to adapt to American culture. Although the audiobook focuses on Tannen’s father, it goes deeper. The stories of her parents’ courtship and the travails he overcomes professionally make this listen memorable. D.J.S. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2020-06-23
A devoted daughter pays homage to an extraordinary man.

Drawing on abundant sources, sociolinguist Tannen creates a loving biography of her father, Eli Samuel Tannen, who indelibly shaped her life. She took on the project, she writes, “because he bequeathed his words to me—all the words he wrote and saved; all the letters and documents and cards and notes that he gathered and held on to; all the stories he remembered, wrote down, and told me; and the hours upon hours of conversations we had when he was old.” Arriving in the U.S. from Poland when he was 12, he soon became the breadwinner for his mother and sister after his father died. Although his mother wanted him to finish high school, he dropped out and studied law “because it was the only profession he could pursue at night.” In 1933, though, when he passed the bar, the Depression closed off opportunities to practice. His list of 68 jobs represents “a summary of his adult life” and “his pride in doing whatever he could—whatever he had to do—to support his family.” In 1958, he finally established his own law firm, specializing in workers’ compensation. Including eloquent passages from her father’s writings, Tannen relates his vivid memories of his childhood in Warsaw, portrayals of his accomplished aunts (one was Einstein’s student and lover), his fervent identification as a Jew, and his early idealistic membership in the Communist Party, which generated a thick FBI file. The author digs deeply into her parents’ relationship, concluding that their marriage resulted from “the inevitable interplay of two young people thrown together by circumstance; the temptations of sex (for him); the desire to marry (for her); and the scaling back of great, often unrealistic expectations by circumscribed opportunities.” Her brilliant, resolute father, Tannen amply shows, was worthy of her undying admiration.

A generous and empathetic portrait.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177775531
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	09/15/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Its Hour Come Round at Last

I adored my father. He’s the parent I felt an affinity with, the one I thought understood me. I trace to him my love of words, of language, of reading, and of writing. When my father was home, he was often sitting at his desk, writing. That remained his favorite place to be, his favorite thing to do, until he died two weeks before his ninety-eighth birthday. I don’t know if I was emulating him or expressing the genes he passed on, but when I was a child, the object I loved most was an old black manual typewriter with yellowing keys rimmed in tarnished silver. I typed poems and stories—and letters to my father, telling him what happened to me during the day, often laying out grievances against my mother.

I talked to my father through letters because when I was growing up he was rarely home. The strongest presence I felt in the house was his absence. A sense of yearning for him stayed with me long after I was grown. A dream I had in my thirties was typical: I’m having a birthday party. My father is there, but he’s suspended about two feet off the floor, with his head near the ceiling. I don’t know what he’s doing up there; he doesn’t seem to be doing anything, just floating in his own world. I can’t reach him; he doesn’t seem to hear or see me. I desperately try to make contact with him, but he’s stuck up there, and I can’t get him to come down.

After my father retired at seventy, he had time to spend with me and talk to me—and during the nearly thirty years left to us before he died, he did a great deal of both. Yet I’m seeking him still. A character in a story by Ethan Canin says, of a TV show he turned on in the middle, “I have entered too late to understand.” That’s what it’s like to try to understand our parents: we came into their lives too late. But we keep trying, keep crafting our own personal creation story—maybe creation myth. By writing this book, I’m trying to figure out what happened in my father’s life before I came in. My parents both helped by living to be very old: as they aged, their internal censors fell, and they told me things about their marriage that made me question everything I’d thought about their relationship; about relationships between women and men; and about the circumstances of my birth. My father helped especially, because he was ever eager to talk about his past—and because he left me mountains of words: not only the hours and hours of conversations we had, but also stacks of letters and notes that he saved, and memories that he wrote down for me.

I think I’ve come closer to understanding my father. I know I’ve come to see that his life story, as I heard it growing up and embellished it in my mind—the creation story I’d devised for myself—was, in many ways, a myth.

*

My father’s life traces the history of the twentieth century: he was born in 1908 and died in 2006.

I’ve always been proud that my parents were born in Europe—my father in Poland, my mother in Russia. When I was a child, I thought it exotic. As I got older, I liked that it gave me a closer connection to my European roots, compared to most American Jews of my generation, whose parents were born here; it was their grandparents who came from Europe. But it wasn’t until writing this book that I understood the significance of that difference, the ways that my parents’ immigration reflects history: they came to the United States at the tail end of the massive influx that brought more than 2 million East European Jews to the United States between 1880 and 1924. The year my father came, 1920, was the last year there were few limits on immigration from Europe. The very next year the Statue of Liberty lowered her torch: in 1921 Congress imposed quotas, and in 1924—the year after my mother arrived—quotas were set so low that the doors effectively slammed shut.

My father was raised in a Hasidic household in Warsaw and had astonishingly detailed memories of life in that community before, during, and immediately after the First World War. He turned twelve two weeks after arriving in the United States with his mother and sister; his father had long since died of tuberculosis. At fourteen, my father became the family breadwinner: he quit high school and went to work in New York’s garment district. He studied high school subjects on his own; passed a law school qualifying exam; attended law school at night; earned a master’s degree in law; and passed the bar exam on the first try. But the Great Depression had descended, so he couldn’t get work as a lawyer or build up a practice without first working for little or no pay. This he could not do—not then, and not for many years after—because he was supporting first his mother and sister, then his wife and children. He was a Communist, and was investigated by the FBI; I have a copy of his file. Disillusioned with Communism, he became active in New York’s Liberal Party, a progressive third party closely tied to the garment workers’ union, and ran for City Council and for Congress on their ticket. From the time he received his law degree at twenty-one to the time he began earning a living as a lawyer at fifty, he held a dizzying number and array of jobs, including prison guard, parole officer, gun-toting alcohol tax inspector, and, from the time I was born till I was in junior high, a cutter in the garment district. After that, my father was a partner in his own law firm.

His is an American story, an immigrant story.

*

In writing this book, I’m fulfilling an assignment I gave myself more years ago than I can remember. Or maybe it’s an assignment my father gave me. A year after he retired, in 1979, he began writing down memories of his life:

This is an inauspicious spur of the moment beginning. I doubt I’ll live long enough ever to read these pages, just as I don’t expect to complete, nor even start, the myriad projects I’ve set for myself, so this effort can only be for my children or grandchildren. Maybe one of them will some day peruse these notes, or jottings, and find a nugget—one that might even be incorporated in a book (as I ventured to suggest to Deborah recently).

Reading this now, I’m caught up short: was it my father’s idea that I write this book? I was certain it was mine. And 1979? I often say I’ve been planning to write a book about my father forever, but I didn’t realize that forever goes that far back.

I find a note my father attached to a multipage dot-matrix printout of memories he’s written for me, stamped with the date Dec. 5, 1992. (He always had a date stamp on his desk, and always used it; how I wish I had done the same.) In the note, my father encourages me to write this book: “D’you have an envelope for my stuff? You know many of us take seriously your suggestion that you’ll write a booklet on the basis of my recollections after I’m gone.” My father talks to me through notes like this, and through slips of paper on which I jotted down things he said. Through one such slip of paper he tells me, “If you write it while I’m alive, you’ll have to be thinking of my feelings.”

I say to him in my mind, You’re no longer alive, but I’m still thinking about your feelings. I’m trying to understand what they were, and how they shaped your life—and mine.

I first planned to write my father’s life in the mid-1990s, while he was alive. It was going to be my next book after You Just Don’t Understand, the book that became a surprise bestseller and changed my life, and the one that followed, Talking from 9 to 5. I started interviewing him regularly, recording our conversations and writing notes, but didn’t begin shaping the material into a book. In 1995 I feared I was tempting fate by putting it off: my father was eighty-seven, and had a bad fall. Yet I went ahead and wrote two other books instead. When those were done, he was ninety-three and, amazingly, still fine. Why didn’t I count my lucky stars and start writing this book then? I think in a way I felt like Penelope, who said she’d accept her husband Odysseus’s death when she finished weaving a death shroud, but made sure she never finished it. So long as I was still gathering my father’s stories, he couldn’t die. If I were to start writing the book about him, it would be like writing his obituary, accepting, if not hastening, his death.

My father died more than a dozen years ago. The time for this book has come round at last.

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