For many biographers and fans of Apple founder Steve Jobs, his daughter Lisa Brennan-Jobs has always been a footnote in the grand life of the tech pioneer.
But Brennan-Jobs, now aged 40, is placing herself in the spotlight for the first time by speaking of her childhood with Jobs, who famously denied paternity despite a DNA test establishing that he was the father.
Jobs — already notorious for his volatile, demanding personality at Apple — was as equally cold and cruel in his relationship with Brennan-Jobs, according to an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday. She reminisces of Jobs telling her she smells like a toilet; not installing heat in her room, to instill a “value system” in her; and berating a family relative for ordering meat for a family dinner.
But Brennan-Jobs emphasizes to the New York Times that her upcoming book “Small Fry” — which goes on sale Sept. 4 — is not a voyeuristic look into Jobs’ cruelty, but rather a triumph of her love and forgiveness toward her father despite the cruelty.
“Have I failed in fully representing the dearness and the pleasure?” asks Brennan-Jobs in the New York Times interview. “The dearness of my father, and the outrageous pleasure of being with him when he was in good form?”
Brennan-Jobs says the book includes many stories of Jobs’ awkward warmness to her — he ultimately served as a father to her after initially denying his paternity — alongside tales of Jobs’ cutting viciousness. She chronicles her memories of roller skating and laughing together with her father.
One time, when Brennan-Jobs was on a school trip in Japan, Jobs flew to the country unannounced, pulled Brennan-Jobs out of the program for a day and spent the day chatting with his daughter about the existence of God and how he saw consciousness.
“I was afraid of him and, at the same time, I felt a quaking, electric love,” wrote Brennan-Jobs in her book.
Others in Jobs’ family, including his widow and philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, did not take kindly to the book.
“Lisa is part of our family, so it was with sadness that we read her book, which differs dramatically from our memories of those times,” said a statement from the Jobs family to the New York Times. “The portrayal of Steve is not the husband and father we knew … It was a great comfort to Steve to have Lisa home with all of us during the last days of his life, and we are all grateful for the years we spent together as a family.”
Powell Jobs also was a main character who plays a somewhat “tonic note” in “Small Fry,” according to Brennan-Jobs in the article. Powell Jobs, for example, would bring Brennan-Jobs into family photos. But in one family therapy session when Brennan-Jobs was a teenager craving her father’s love, Powell Jobs told the therapist, “We’re just cold people,” referring to why they could not provide the parental warmth.
Brennan-Jobs’ mother, Chrisann Brennan, is characterized as a “mercurial, hot-tempered and sometimes neglectful” mother who also encouraged her daughter to chase after her creative pursuits, the article said.
An excerpt of “Small Fry” was initially published in Vanity Fair earlier this month. This news organization reached out to Grove Press — which published “Small Fry” — multiple times to interview Brennan-Jobs and did not receive a reply.
