Pythia Peay asked Pythia Peay:

Why did it take you twenty years to write your memoir?

Pythia Peay Because in telling my father's story as a way to understand why he was the way he was, I came to see that he'd been shaped as much by the history of his times—the Depression, the Pennsylvania Railroad, Brazil in World War II, the rising wave of commercial aviation he rode as a pilot, and so on, and by larger American themes. I spent considerable time with this historical research, as well as tracking down family members for their memories. In addition, I also interviewed psychologists to try and understand my father's eccentricity, depression, and alcoholism, and also the deeper influences on him of the American psyche. I had so much material left over from these interviews that my publisher decided to create a companion volume of interviews so they could be read in their entirety, which became AMERICA ON THE COUCH.

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