Isaac Fitzgerald stopped by the Today show to discuss his latest book, the memoir-in-essays Dirtbag, Massachusetts.
Fitzgerald, a frequent Today show guest, is the author of a children’s book, How To Be a Pirate, illustrated by Brigette Barrager, and the co-author, with Wendy MacNaughton, of Pen & Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them and Knives & Ink: Chefs and the Stories Behind Their Tattoos.
His latest book, published Tuesday by Bloomsbury, tells the story of his childhood growing up in a homeless shelter, and his adulthood working a series of jobs that included tending bar and acting in the porn industry. A critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, “Fitzgerald unearths inspiration from dirtbags of all shapes and sizes, sharing it with sincerity and generosity.”
Hoda Kotb asked Fitzgerald about his childhood, when he sometimes regarded himself as “a mistake.”
“My parents were married when they had me, just to different people,” he said. “And from a very early age, I viewed myself as a bomb that exploded their lives. And that was something that I carried with me for a very, very long time.”
Kotb noted that Fitzgerald “went through hell and back” in his childhood, adding, “You did say the one thing your parents gave you was books. You always had books. Without books in your life…who would I be talking to today?”
“I think I would still have my bubbly, energetic self, but I never would have had dreams or ambitions,” he responded. “What books gave me was a map out of the life that I was living and toward something larger and more spectacular. And because of that, that gift that my parents gave me … through that, through reading, I was able to find a different life, and that’s something that I still treasure about them.”
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
