My Daddy Was a Pistol and I’m a Son of a Gun was published by Villard Books (Random House) in 1986, Grizzard’s first book with a major New York publisher and the work that elevated him from regional humorist to national figure. The book is a memoir of his father, Lewis Grizzard Sr. — a decorated veteran of both World War II and Korea who came home with what would now be diagnosed as PTSD and drank himself out of his marriage, his career, and eventually his life.
The title captures Grizzard’s method: the father was a “pistol” (Southern slang for someone wild, dangerous, entertaining) and the son is the product of that wildness. The book alternates between stories of his father’s heroism and charm (the war stories, the romantic gestures, the capacity for joy) and the reality of his destruction (the disappearances, the broken promises, the final years in a VA hospital).
Grizzard writes about his father with a tenderness that never quite becomes forgiveness: he loves the man and cannot forgive the abandonment, admires the courage and cannot excuse the weakness. The book’s emotional honesty — unusual for a Southern male writer in the 1980s — connected with an enormous readership of men (and women) who had similar fathers: men broken by war, by poverty, by the expectations of a masculinity they could perform but not sustain.
The book became a bestseller and established Grizzard’s ability to move beyond humor into genuine emotional writing.
Collecting My Daddy Was a Pistol
First edition (Villard Books, New York, 1986): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $10–$20
- Signed first edition: $20–$50