Meanwhile, in the country of complete sentences
Colm Toibin on the great American writer James Baldwin and the Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, in the NYRB.
“It seemed important, as both men set about making their marks on the world, for them to establish before anything else that their stories began when their fathers died and that they set out alone without a father’s shadow or a father’s permission. James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son, published in 1951, begins: “On the 29th of July, in 1943, my father died.” Baldwin was almost nineteen at the time. Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father, published in 1995, begins also with the death of his father: “A few months after my twenty-first birthday, a stranger called to give me the news.”
“Both men quickly then established their own actual distance from their fathers, which made their grief sharper and more lonely, but also made clear to the reader that they had a right to speak with authority, to offer this version of themselves partly because they themselves, through force of will and a steely sense of character, had invented the voice they were now using, had not been trained by any other man to be the figure they had become. . .”
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
October 6th, 2008 at 03:10
Seattle weekly alt-press The Stranger breaks down Obama and McCain by how their fathers influenced them to be they are today through their biographies:
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=648117
October 6th, 2008 at 10:35
Doesn’t Albert Camus’ “The Stranger” begins with “Mother died yesterday”? No sharp grief for the Camus character, though; in fact no emotion at all.
I wonder if Baldwin got the idea of starting a book by mentioning the death of a parent from Camus.
October 6th, 2008 at 12:20
James Baldwin’s Notes Of A Native Son is a collection of autobiographical essays, one of which is entitled Notes Of A Native Son. The book does not begin with the elder Baldwin’s death.
Many fairy tales begin with the death of a parent, and from what I recall, much of Dickens. The novel that intentionally uses the opening from the Camus is Platform by Michel Houellebecq.
October 7th, 2008 at 10:17
Really? I didn’t know that (you could tell, couldn’t you).
Anyway, I only read one James Baldwin (The Fire Next Time). As for Dickens, I only read three of his novels, and one of them does begin with a character ruminating about his parents’ tombstones. Pip informs us on his parents’ demise differently, though, unlike the way that fellow in the Camus novel tells us.
Last week I was hunting for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; instead I stumbled upon an old Trevanian (The Main). I stumbled upon it literally; it turned out the book fell off the shelf.
Thanks for the info, though. I know what books to look for next, I think. :=)