Where We Going, Daddy? by Jean-Louis Fournier

This is a book that deserves more attention than it’s getting. It’s a quick read, no more than an afternoon of time.

Before going any further, here’s letting you know that I’m going to refer to the children in the book as handicapped. I don’t know that this is the most sensitive term, though I am certain it’s not the most insensitive. I am a believer in the power of words, but part of that power is their ability to shift. Yesterday’s retard is today’s differently-abled person. That’s fine, except don’t forget that today’s acceptable term is tomorrow’s slur. So just understand that I am using “handicapped” today with no malice or agenda.

Jean-Louis Fouriner is a French humorist who fathered two severely handicapped sons. He doesn’t go into great detail about just what we’re talking about, but that’s what makes the book so excellent. He’s not trying to convince anyone out there to treat handicapped people one way or another. The book isn't about how hard it is to be handicapped, how the other kids make fun of his boys and that sort of thing. It's about being the father of two boys who have, as the phrase he adopted goes, "heads full of straw."

If you are looking for an uplifting tale of humanity and all its different forms, you will be disappointed by this book. He mocks them at times, almost seeming cruel when he asks idly, “How is the trigonometry coming?” Or when he tells his son, “Close your mouth. You look retarded.” He also spends a lot of time speculating what his life might have been like if his sons were different. How would they spend their days? What would they enjoy? However, it's clear that he truly cares for the boys. He has spent so much time speculating on their shuttered inner lives that it would be impossible to say otherwise.

The truth is that the humanity explored here is Fournier’s, not that of his boys. As he puts it,

Aren't you ashamed, Jean-Louis, you of all people, their own father, making fun of two little kids who can't even defend themselves?

No. It doesn't mean I don't have any feelings.

I think maybe this book is missing the broader audience for a few reasons. I think to some it seems too precious, to likely to fall into the category where all life is a miracle and handicapped children happily fingerpaint and never really grow old. I assure you this is not the case. In fact, it is far less so than most baby books and growing up memoirs.

Clearly this is not a comfortable topic for many people, which must also have something to do with it. But this is not a book written for parents of the handicapped. Fournier gives the reader a gut check every here and there, but not the kind designed to make the reader feel guilty. Not the kind that says, "You'll never understand." Like any good artist, he tries to help the reader understand something without trying to point out how little they already grasp.

If I can make a sort of analogy here, I don't read a lot of books related to the Holocaust. Sure, it was horrible and fascinating in its own way. There's a lot of material to cover there. But often you'll find that books that use the Holocaust as the center are using it to up the emotional ante. They aren't really telling me much about the topic, and they are counting on our history classes to fill in the characters. It's a way of creating a sort of artificial high, a tension and emotion that is implanted into the book by force of history. Going in, that was my fear with Fournier's book as well, that this was going to be a day-in, day-out drag of life that's a little off course, but that the tension would be raised by the very existence of handicapped children.

It's not.

Just like any good book that deals with the tragedy, you get the sense that if things had been different, this book never would have been written. And just like any good author dealing with hard times, you get the sense that the author would have preferred to forgo living the material.