In praise of Moore

Moore does a little thing here which could have easily been labeled as a gimmick and tossed aside. He arranges his entire essay by the alphabet. Each letter corresponds to a different word, phrase, or name, and is then followed by a paragraph relevant to the subject. He succeeds in my opinion because, unlike the alphabet books you read as a child, this device does not dictate the entire work. First off, it’s used as a form of irony. The whole concept of an alphabetical listing implies a certain innocence or childishness, much like shows like Captain Kangaroo. But when it comes down to the content, what Moore writes is both vulnerable and mature. This is evident from the first paragraph, where he takes Tim Allen, somebody associated with light-hearted laughter, and chooses instead to talk about the death of the comedian’s father.

He also uses this alphabetical device as an instrument, a method of meditation, one that guides the reader across various different worlds in television, in nature, in Hollywood, in different time periods, and in the author’s own life. He can smoothly transition the reader from scene to scene mainly because the shifts aren’t surprising. With each new letter, each new word, the reader expects something different.

But here also is where Moore once again departs from expectation. Throughout the whole piece, there is a string that seems to connect all his paragraphs. The theme of “missing fathers” is obvious from the title, but beyond that, I can sense the author’s own dissatisfaction running through each section. Moore’s father was a drunk, plain and simple, and while Moore hints that there was more to him than that (how he could”muster a stunning , honey-rich Irish baritone”), it is ultimately the “embarrassment” that Moore remembers when he thinks of his father. And so when Moore writes about figures like Mr. Green Jeans, who is “kind, funny, and extremely reliable,” or a penguin father, who sings an “ecstatic” song after seeing proof of offspring in the form of an egg, what seems to be really going is that Moore is reflecting on his own father, and how he compares. This is not to say he doesn’t mention other bad fathers either—there’s a part on guppy fathers, who eat their offspring, and there’s Hugh Beaumont, who played a caring father but in actuality despised children. Nevertheless, in each case I could sense a tension, that in writing about all these fathers, Moore is really trying to explore his own experience—both as a son and as a father.