Page 29 - ARUBA TODAY

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PEOPLE & ARTS Thursday 6 sepTember 2018
'Small Fry' more than a Steve Jobs story

By BARBARA ORTUTAY nights of movies and carrot
Associated Press salad, and, after years of
"Small Fry: A Memoir" (Grove denial, an acknowledge-
Press), by Lisa Brennan-Jobs ment that he did in fact
The ghost of Steve Jobs name an early computer
haunts "Small Fry," the mem- he created, the Lisa, after
oir by his first daughter, Lisa his daughter. But evidence
Brennan-Jobs. He looms of his love wasn't steady or
larger than life even on the dependable, causing Lisa
pages where he is miss- to crave it all the more.
ing — and he missed a lot. He'd promise and not deliv-
But we already knew that. er, or deliver then rescind,
We also knew that he was throughout her life.
not a particularly nice per- "We all made allowances
son, that he was a genius, for his eccentricities, the
a charismatic visionary, the way he attacked other
co-founder of Apple Com- people, because he was
puter. also brilliant and sometimes
But the book is more than kind and insightful," she
the missing piece of the writes, after her father tells
Steve Jobs puzzle. It's a the A-student, high-school
story of a girl growing up Lisa that she has "no mar-
in 1980s and '90s California ketable skills" despite her
trying to fit into two very many extracurricular activi-
different families and not ties. "Now I felt he'd crush
belonging in either. It's the me if I let him. He would tell
story of her single mother me how little I meant over
trying to keep it together and over until I believed it."
and often not succeeding. To some, this is an unfair
It's the story of a family that portrayal of Steve Jobs
is as imperfect as every — as his widow, Laurene
family, things complicated Powell Jobs, and his sister,
by wealth, fame and, in the Mona Simpson, assert in a
end, illness and death. joint statement saying that
Read "Small Fry" one way "Steve loved Lisa, and he
and you'll find the account regretted that he was not
of a reluctant, sometimes the father he should have
outright hostile, mercurial been during her early child-
father whose daughter is hood."
constantly reaching after But this becomes clear at
the tiniest crumbs of love the end of the book, when
and attention. Read it an- he is on his sickbed and tells
other way, with Lisa and Lisa, over and over, that he
not Steve as the central "owes" her one. He starts to
character, and you'll find cry.
the story of an observant "If only we'd had a man-
child coming of age and ual. If only I'd been wiser.
trying to make sense of But you were not to blame
the people around her, vy- I want you to know, you
ing for what she views as This cover image released by Grove Press shows "Small Fry," a memoir by Lisa Brennan-Jobs. were not to blame for any
a "normal" family and not Associated Press of it," he tells her.
yet knowing that for most Steve Jobs died on Oct.
of us, no such thing exists. me. While we did not know her on a blanket, going was living with him after a 5, 2011. But we knew that,
She tries so hard to find her each other, we were on through names until they slow warming up, she'd get too. Sometime before that,
place in the world that the the school paper together could both agree on Lisa. a new birth certificate, this Lisa complains to her moth-
details of her efforts are and shared the rare privi- Her mother, Chrisann Bren- one listing both Brennan er that Steve does not love
sometimes painfully un- lege that was high school nan, drew stars on the mar- and Jobs as her last name, her. She assures her that is
comfortable, like when she in Palo Alto in the 1990s. I gins of her birth certificate, connected by a hyphen. not true, that he loves her
decides to run for freshman remember her striking eye- which listed both parents' Lisa remains that hyphen but he doesn't know it.
class president a month or brows, that she was go- names even though Lisa throughout the book, He doesn't know until it is
two after transferring to a ing to Harvard and the had just her mother's last tugged between her par- too late. Chrisann quotes
new school, hardly know- day Steve Jobs visited our name. Despite obvious ents and the very different an old Billie Holiday song:
ing anyone, or pines to be a paper during production, physical similarities, Steve worlds they inhabit. From "Mama may have, papa
beautiful blonde, or paints bringing us vegan, cheese- Jobs denied that he was her mother, she gets un- may have, but God bless
herself as a Cinderella, hav- less pizza and a rowdy child Lisa's father at the begin- conditional love but also the child who's got his own."
ing to do the dishes in the who messed up the care- ning, and in 1980 the state a neediness that is often In the end, that's all one
Jobs' household because fully pasted-up newspaper of California sued him, re- too much for a child to can wish for children, even
the dishwasher is broken. pages.) quiring a DNA test to prove bear. From her father, she's if they are fully grown with
(Full disclosure: I attended Lisa was born in 1978 on a his paternity and compel- handed bits and pieces of children of their own, even
high school with Lisa, who farm in Oregon. Her par- ling him to pay child sup- the evidence of his love — if they are the children of
was in the grade above ents, who were 23, laid port. Years later, when Lisa roller skating, Wednesday Steve Jobs.q