“I haven’t got anything to tell you.”

The deflection, and what is underneath it

A very large number of fathers, invited to tell their life story, say some version of “there’s nothing to tell” or “you don’t want to hear about that”. It is worth understanding that this is usually not modesty and not refusal. It is a genuine failure to see that anything he did was remarkable - because to him it was simply what you did.

He also, often, has no practice at the form. A man who has spent fifty years being asked what he thinks and never what he remembers does not have a ready answer to “what was your childhood like?”. He has an enormous amount to say about the mill, the route, the boat, the winter of the strike, and the exact sequence of what he did between four in the morning and the end of the shift.

Ask about process, not feeling

This is the single most useful thing on this page. The question that gets nothing:

“What was it like working at the plant?”

The question that gets forty minutes:

“What did you actually do, from the moment you clocked on?”

The second question is answerable. It has an order to it. And somewhere in the middle of the answer - around the part about the man who taught him the job - the feeling arrives on its own, unasked for and far more truthful than it would have been if you had asked for it directly.

The same trick works on nearly everything: not “what was the war like”, but “where were you sent, and what were you doing there”. Not “how did you feel about your father”, but “what did he do for work, and did you ever go with him”.

Things fathers turn out to have a great deal to say about

• The first job, in detail. What it paid, who hired him, what he did wrong in the first week.
• Cars, machines, tools, boats. Not trivia - these are the objects his life was organised around, and every one has people attached.
• Service. Where, when, with whom, and what the days were actually like. Ask about the routine, not the action.
• His own father. Often the most closed door in the house, and often the one he most wants opened. Approach it through work.
• How he met your mother. The one story he will tell without being asked twice.
• Money. What things cost, what he earned, what the first house cost and how frightening it was. Men who will not discuss feelings will discuss a mortgage in 1974 for an hour.

Why an interviewer helps here specifically

Rosie asks the process question, then the one that follows from his answer, then the one after that - without getting bored, without changing the subject, and without the particular self-consciousness that comes over a father being interviewed by his own son or daughter.

She also never signals that an answer was too long. That signal, given once, ends most of these conversations for good.