#2
Here is a review of this anthology which Zhu Xiao Di contributed to:
"Father.
Famous Writers Celebrate the Bond Between Father and Child."
Edited by Claudia O'Keefe.
Pocket Books. 350 pages. $13.95
by Mike Woitalla
(8/16/00)
How to explain the dearth of
decent dads in American literature?
Maybe "Huckleberry Finn" set the precedent. The boy in the most important American novel of the 1800s took to the river to flee his brutal, drunken father. A hundred years later the nation has a canon dominated by dysfunctional daddies. Only one super pop easily springs to mind, and he's a single father no less. But after Atticus Finch - who in "To Kill a Mockingbird" made even lawyers look good -- it's one pathetic pop after another. One of the 20th Century's last Pulitzer Prizes went to "Angela's Ashes," a story about a precocious boy whose father turned his family's finite finances into pints of beer while his children died of starvation.
That Frank McCourt book followed several highly acclaimed childhood memoirs. "The Liars' Club" (Mary Karr) and "This Boy's Life" (Tobias Wolf) both relied on a lineup of abusive fathers and stepfathers. Even somewhat sympathetic dads -- such as Arthur Miller's Willy Loman, John Updike's Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom and Upton Sinclair's Jurgis Rudkus -- ultimately fail at fatherhood.
Overall, American literature overflows with bad or absent fathers. That doesn't diminish the value of the works, but how refreshing it would be to find a collection of writing that paints some positive pictures of the male parent.
The anthology published this year by Pocket Books, titled "Father. Famous writers celebrate the bond between father and child," raises hopes at first glance. The opening line by the female editor extinguishes them. "On the day I was born, my father ... composed a song named for me, 'Claudia,' then a week later walked out of my life," writes Claudia O'Keefe. Not to choose a father to edit "Father" would have been easier to forgive had O'Keefe refrained from picking an author assembly of 16 women and only nine men. Imagine a mother anthology dominated by men.
Two of the entries by male authors are about bonding with weapons. Jesse Kellerman gives us father-and-son serial bombers and John Updike offers "The Gun Shop." Calvin Trillin's sweet recollections of his father's sense of humor are a refreshing departure from the anguish that permeates so much of the book. Three of the 25 stories are about being a father. "Forest Gump" author Winston Groom's loads on the cliches. Journalist David Forsmark writes entertainingly from the son and father perspectives. And Chinese immigrant Zhu Xiao Di's cross-cultural tale is warm, humorous and enlightening. It is the "celebration" that the title promises but rarely delivers.
This book is mostly about daughters' views of their fathers and it's dishonest to portray it otherwise. True, in Martha Coventry's brief and beautiful memoir she writes that when she was born "a shining and unbreakable love attached itself between my father and me." But mostly, the collection focuses on the emotional turmoil fathers bring into their daughters' lives. If that's a theme to base an anthology around, it shouldn't be marketed as a great gift for pop. "Father" ultimately comes across as a warning that fathers can saddle their daughters with pain and confusion. That's neither a celebration nor a significant departure from traditional literary portrayals.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Woitalla is the Executive Editor of Soccer America Magazine and a free-lance writer. He and his wife, Holly Kernan, live in Oakland under the reign of their 1-year-old daughter, Julia)
|
