In this curiously involuted thriller of the near future, the father is not dead but absent, if only temporarily. The son must act for him, whether he wishes to or not. They exist in the most ideal loop of anxiety, the father a ghost in the son’s brain, the son a sub-routine of the father’s competence. They are a single entity, the hero only completed by his father’s wealth and prior achievement; the father present in the world only through his son’s ability to act in it. Whose anxiety is the greatest ? It is hardly possible to venture a guess. They describe between them not so much a main character as a desirable state, a circle whose perfection is forbidden to the son, no longer obtainable by the father.
10 Comments
September 17, 2008 at 2:25 pm
isn’t that The Dead Father, by Donald Bathelme?
September 17, 2008 at 2:26 pm
sorry, Barthelme
September 17, 2008 at 3:09 pm
This must be Question #5 and the previous is probably #4.
Or maybe the other way up.
September 17, 2008 at 3:11 pm
& I thought I was channeling Dick Francis… There’s the power of the archetype for you. Is it any good, the Bartheleme ?
September 17, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Hi Z. Nice one.
September 18, 2008 at 11:32 am
Sounds a little like the first story in the Fifth Head of Cerberus.
September 18, 2008 at 11:45 am
Any more bids ?
September 18, 2008 at 2:53 pm
…Greek tragedy written by William Gibson
September 18, 2008 at 2:57 pm
i think it was called: Paternal Noise
September 18, 2008 at 10:30 pm
The blurb is something like:
The Dead Father is 3,200 cubits long and being hauled on cables across the ground. He’s not entirely dead: he is past his prime, sexually and authoritatively… vain and foolish, but he looms large.
It’s not so much a book as a series of cartoons. But I think some of them are brilliant. “If your father’s name is Hiram or Saul, flee into the woods… “
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