Attachments Essays on Fatherhood and Other Performances

"With Attachments, acclaimed nonfiction writer Lucas Mann turns his attention, tenderness, self-reflection and humor to contemporary fatherhood. In essays that resist categorization, he looks closely at all the joys, frustrations, subtleties and contradictions within an experience that often goes under-discussed. At once intimate and expansive, Mann chronicles his own life with his young daughter, but also looks outward to the cultural and political baggage that surrounds and permeates these every day experiences. Attachments examines climate anxiety, the helplessness and resentment of pandemic caregiving, the often toxic internalized legacy of masculinity, and the gender dynamics at play in any public or private act of fatherhood. Mann traces his own cultural obsessions and curiosities, from Brad Pitt to Andy Warhol to superstar athlete fathers like LeBron James, to the men achieving semi-fame making dad jokes on Instagram. He probes the history of the way fatherhood has been depicted in books, movies and television, from Marilynne Robinson's Gilead to Cormac McCarthy to Karl Ove Knausgaard to Tony Soprano.