Barry Moser Interview, plus links to author biography, book summaries, excerpts and reviews

An interview with Barry Moser

Why I Wrote We Were Brothers, by Barry Moser

My brother Tommy was tall and skinny when we were kids. I was short and fat. Tommy saved money and pinched a quarter so hard the eagle squawked. I spent money like there was a hole in my pocket. Tommy was reserved in his affections. I was demonstrative. His temper had a short fuse. Mine had a long one.

This is just part of a long litany of differences between two brothers who were spawned of the same parents, grew up in the same town of Chattanooga, Tennessee, slept in the same bedroom, ate at the same table, absorbed our family's xenophobic and racist values, went to the same schools, listened to the same radio shows, and saw the same movies. The only thing we shared in common was a love of our parents and of our dogs.

Tommy and I became even more factious as adults. Our differences escalated as we got older and resulted in our being at odds with each other for most of our lives. That discord did not abate until both of us were in our sixties.

For years—decades, actually—I tried to understand how and why my brother and I grew up to be such radically different people. He was conservative. I was liberal. He was a big game hunter. I have no guns in my house. He was a racist. I am a racist in recovery. He was a diehard football fan. I couldn't care less. He remained in the South. I expatriated myself north to New England.

As adults our sole means of communication was the telephone. We did not write each other letters or post cards. When Tommy called—and it was almost always he who did the calling—the conversation always began amiably with "How've you been?" We'd tell jokes and talk about our kids, our wives or girlfriends, our dogs, our travels. And then some unexpected spark of provocation—about race, politics, and infrequently, religion—would ignite an argument that went on until one of us either hung up or demurred to the other. But sometimes those quarrels escalated into furious invectives.


We Were Brothers is my attempt to make sense of these differences. To explain it to myself, to my children, to my grandchildren, to my brother's sons and grandchildren, to my brother himself, and perhaps to offer something of a palliative to readers who have had similar experiences.

Tommy was enthusiastic when I told him I was going to write this memoir. He welcomed me into his home outside Nashville in October 1995, and sat willingly and graciously for an interview. Before we began he told me that he would respond to my questions honestly and would hold nothing back—though I suspect some of his responses might have been a little embellished. Such was his way. Tommy did not live to see this memoir of our troubled brotherhood come to pass. He died on July 19, 2005, after an honorable battle with cancer that first took his left eye and two years later, his life.

I do not offer We Were Brothers as an indictment of my brother. Nor do I offer it as an attempt to aggrandize myself. I offer it as an apologia, a possible explanation of a thorny brotherhood. Now that Tommy is gone I understand just how much I did love him, and how much we lost in the years of our estrangement. And now that this memoir is being published, I realize that it is in many ways a paean to him, though to the reader it may not always seem so.

But this book is not only for Tommy. Familial conflicts are the universal drama. All of us who have experienced horrid, non-Norman-Rockwellian Christmas celebrations, or difficult and thankless Thanksgiving dinners know how true this is. But when one of the two main actors in a two-character drama is gone, the actor remaining on stage is the one who is left to reconcile, to bring the drama to conclusion, which I've tried my best to do. Whether you have been left on that empty stage, or if it still isn't too late, I hope my story—our story—might give you the perspective I wish I'd had. We were, after all, brothers.

Unless otherwise stated, this interview was conducted at the time the book was first published, and is reproduced with permission of the publisher. This interview may not be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the copyright holder.