eMusic Bookshelf
Bad Dads
As the national holiday approaches when we honor our dads with golf paraphernalia and neckties, it seems appropriate to consider some simple guidelines for fatherhood — the do's but mostly the don'ts — as found in literature.
In the following selection of novels, bad parenting comes in surprisingly diverse forms. There's comically bad, violently bad, pathetically bad and so bad that one understands the desires of child stars to invoke legal action and remove the offending parentage altogether. There are dads who abuse their children with physical blows, others who humiliate their children with their immaturity and awkward behavior, and some who are just too busy having existential crises to do anything useful.
Parenting may well be a flawed enterprise but it takes a certain level of reproductive evil to reach the bad-dadness of, say, Titus Andronicus. Of course, most of us are fortunate enough to have much better, nicer and more supportive parents, and for that we must give thanks this Father's Day.
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The Bluest Eye
Morrison's early masterpiece, set in 1940s Ohio, sets a benchmark for crappy dads. Pre-teen Pecola Breedlove (the irony of the surname is in no way subtle, but then, neither is this crushing story) suffers from a yearning to be white and beautiful when she is black and, by all accounts, ugly. Tormented by other children — and even adults — who mock her appearance, Pecola can only dream of having blue eyes, a feature she thinks would solve her problems. Her father Cholly, meanwhile, is an alcoholic who beats both Pecola and her mother and tries to burn their house down. When he eventually rapes and impregnates her, Pecola searches for help from neighbors and family, but no one offers refuge. She eventually descends into madness. Though Cholly is, in some ways, just a personification of internalized racism, social inequity and self-hatred, Morrison has nevertheless rendered his brutal anger believably, making him one of the cruelest patriarchs in literary history.
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All Shall Be Well; And All Shall Be Well; And All Manner of Things Shall Be Well
With a title like Wodicka's it's probably not entirely surprising that, in fact, things are very far from well in the world of his narrator, Burt Hecker. The 60-something medieval re-enactor has already fallen on hard times: having lost his wife to cancer, he is now fully estranged from their children due to his reckless behavior, his inability to live as a responsible member of present-day society and his obscene fondness for mead. Also, he has been sentenced to anger management classes after an incident with a neighbor's car — a particularly bleak moment for a man who desperately tries not to live OOP (out of period). Touring through Europe to celebrate the 900th anniversary of medieval mystic Hildegard von Bingen's birth, Hecker tries to track down his son, a Julliard dropout moonlighting as a jazz musician in Prague, and the quest to right his bad decisions inevitably leads to more of them.
Though Wodicka places the reader within sympathetic reach of his troubled protagonist, it's difficult not to feel sorrier for Hecker's kids, who have long given up on his willfully obtuse, painfully disconnected, dirty tunic-wearing ass. Ultimately, Wodicka offers redemption of a sort, and it's strictly due to his skill as a writer that we, like Hecker's family, are at all willing to forgive this negligent dad. -
Titus Andronicus
One of Shakespeare's earliest tragedies, Titus Andronicus makes over-involved fathers everywhere look good. This gruesome play must be one of the earliest known explorations of the theme of parents who project their personal ambitions onto their hapless children. When Titus Andronicus is chosen to succeed the emperor of Rome, he instead settles for marrying his daughter Lavinia off to the late emperor's son, ensuring that she will be empress. So what if the emperor's other son was betrothed to her first? A battle ensues, and in the effort to promote his daughter to power, Titus kills his own son — who was trying to protect Lavinia. Later, after Lavinia is raped and tortured by the sons of Tamora, Queen of Goths (avenging Titus' sacrifice of their brother), he invites Tamora over for dinner. In front of her he kills Lavinia to put her out of her misery, before explaining that those very sons who raped and mutilated Lavinia are actually in the pie. It's a revenge fantasy that only Shakespeare could have devised, with the mutilated Lavinia signifying everything that's wrong with patriarchical culture. -
I Know This Much Is True
Ray, the father figure presiding over Lamb's dark second novel, is actually not a biological dad, but he's a doozy nonetheless. Forty-something housepainter Dominick Birdsey's twin brother Thomas is a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, and it's Dominick's duty to watch over him, even as he commits a horrible act of self-violence during a delusional Gulf War protest and must be institutionalized. Dominick never knew their real father, but his adopted father is a military thug who lorded over the brothers through their childhood, particularly the weaker Thomas, with all sorts of inventive tortures: duct-taping their fingers, leaving them by the side of the road, making them kneel on rice, and calling them names like "dirt," "garbage" and "greedy little pig." In therapy, Dominick confronts his difficult past, which has hovered over a failed marriage, his mother's death and his subsequent insomnia and post-traumatic stress symptoms. Told through Dominick's perspective, the story wanders through decades of history, including a recently recovered autobiography from the brothers' Italian immigrant grandfather. Yet the ambivalent Dominick and even the bullying Ray are not beyond salvation — however small — making Lamb's meandering saga a redeeming read. -
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Hardy one-ups the archetype of the absent baby-daddy in his tragic story set in the fictional town of Wessex, England. In the novel's first chapter, a hay trusser named Michael Henchard gets drunk in a bar and sells his wife Susan and daughter Elizabeth-Jane to the highest bidder. They get scooped up by a sailor and whisked away to another town for nearly two decades. When Henchard awakes from his hangover, his regret causes him to quit drinking — but it's too late to find his family. In the meantime, he becomes a successful businessman, but he's covered up his past and remains a selfish brute. Naturally, Susan and Elizabeth-Jane eventually return to look for Henchard when the sailor is lost at sea. Now, Henchard must contend with his old family while trying to string along his current fiancée, all the while trying to maintain his business and reputation as the town's "mayor." This 19th century classic explores the essence of moral fortitude and personal character in the form of a man whose impulsive choice to discard his familial responsibilities will haunt him for the rest of his life.
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Foreskin's Lament
In this hilarious but occasionally chilling memoir, Shalom Auslander recounts his upbringing as an Orthodox Jew in Monsey, New York. As far as problematic patriarchs go, Auslander's main beef is with God himself, as serious religious indoctrination has made the fear of the Almighty's wrath — even with years of psychotherapy — impossible to shake. As Auslander stares down the possibility of becoming a father himself he desperately tries to reconcile his love of pork products and porn with his belief that God is waiting to smite him. In the meantime, Auslander recounts how his actual father was ineffectual, overly strict, perpetually drunk on kosher wine, and physically and verbally abusive. A handyman in a land of rabbis, Auslander senior was denied his family fortune and his inferiority complex fills their household with a palpable sense of misery and defeat. Yet the author's hatred of him is tempered by some sympathy for his plight — made poignant by Auslander's childhood attempts to defuse household tension with stagey impressions of Nixon. Auslander's writing swerves elegantly between comedy and tragedy and one can't help coming away from Foreskin with a stronger appreciation for the role fathers play in shaping our future relationships, be they sacred or profane.
© 2009 Muze Inc. For personal non-commercial use only. All rights reserved.