The father, the son and, holy smokes, two daughters?
A title guaranteed to scare the bejesus out of my immediate family
0.
“The moment when you first recognize that your father is vulnerable to others is bad enough, but when you understand that he's vulnerable to you, still needs you more than you any longer think you need him, when you realize that you might actually be able to frighten him, even to quash him if you wanted to — well, the idea is at such cross-purposes with routine filial inclinations that it does not even begin to make sense.” — Philip Roth, I Married a Communist, 2009
When did my children first recognize that not only was I vulnerable, but that I needed them more than they needed me, and that, if they wanted, they could not only quash me like a rumour, an idea or a lust — but, literally, squash me like the cowardly little cry-baby stinkbug that I am?
Answer: pretty much on day one. On their backs, purblind, defenceless, little scrabbling limbs pointlessly turtling the air above them — they knew. Mewling, burbling, shitting, pissing — oh, they knew alright.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to get into any of that. Not here. Not yet.
Instead, I’m going to thank you for being here, being you, and being no one else. Because life is complicated enough without all this other nonsense.
My father died in 1987, which I bring up here for no good reason, and which calls to mind, for no good reason, the old French proverb, “Qui n’entend qu’une cloche n’entend qu’un son.” Meaning “(S)he who hears only a bell hears only a sound.” Meaning one cannot form an opinion or pass a just sentence or convict an accused without listening to both parties. Meaning a judge must hear and assess the defence after the prosecution. Testis unus, testis nullus: one witness, no witness.
One bell, no bell. Two bells must be heard. And here, the other bell, my father, is silent.
1.
The first crop of my millennial friends is just now starting to ripen and pop. One friend just discovered she’s expecting a boy in February, another a girl in March, which led to suggestions that the two offsprung might marry — “all future problems solved.” Which led to threats of cancelation for being heteronormative. Which led to “I was being ironic” which led to “I just think two women have a better chance of solving future problems” which led to “But we’re all being ironic, aren’t we?” which led to “I never know what we’re being anymore 🥺” which led to:
Which leads me back to the Roth. The wrath of Roth. You’ve all been there. Or near there; for at some point there was a father, and the seed of that father, and, farther back, the fatherer — even if you never knew him, nor he you. But that’s neither here nor there now, is it? We all know the ridiculous story of the gradually boiled frog, and we all know it would have jumped out of the pot long before the temperature hit anywhere near 100 degrees Celsius. Still, it serves as a useful apologue for many of our slipperiest slopes and slowest erosions, our shiftiest baselines, the pettiest pace from day to day of our creepiest normalities.
Montaigne had an interesting and more positive spin: “A village woman, having learned to caress and carry in her arms a calf from the hour of its birth, and continuing to do so throughout the animal’s life, gained this by the custom, that however big an ox it grew into, she was still able to bear it.”
“Usus efficacissimus rerum omnium magister.”
[“Custom is the best master of all things.” — Pliny, Nat. Hist., xxvi. 2.]
Montaigne also wrote of a girl whom Albertus reported somehow habitualized herself to live upon spiders, by which I think he meant that she ate them, because in the next passage he describes “the many great peoples in the new world of the Indies” (where I will be taking you presently, should you care to follow), who —
— stocked up on them and ate them, as well as grasshoppers, ants, lizards and bats; and in a time of scarcity of such delicacies, a toad was sold for six ecus, all which they cooked and dished up in a variety of sauces. There were also others found, to whom our diet, and the flesh we eat, were venomous and mortal.
2.
Just before the first lockdown, I was in a writer’s residency in the south of France, in one of the most beautiful houses I’ve ever laid eyes on, let alone lived in, and outside my window, every quarter-hour, one of the town’s bells rang — “dong-dong” — like that; and on the hour every hour every bell in town went “bing-bong-bing-bing-bong-bing-bong-bing-bing-bong” for five fucking minutes straight. The din was unbearable. I couldn’t sleep. Every 15 minutes. Every hour. Bonkers.
Then, on day three, I didn’t hear a thing. Not a ding. Not a dong. The bells still rang, but I had grown accustomed to them, and from then on, I slept through the night unmolested.
And then, on day six, just as I was hitting my groove, just as the seed of the book inside my head was forming into cells, tissues, limbs and organs on the screen, the lockdown hit, and I had to go home. (I went back and finished the month-long residency seven months later — or almost finished it: Macron announced a second confinement three days before the end.)
But that’s neither here nor there.
The common imaginations, the usual notions of this or that — this is also Montaigne — that we find in abundance around us and infused in our souls by the seed of our fathers, these seem to be universal and natural. Hence it happens that what is off the hinges of custom, people believe to be off the hinges of reason.
“Consuetudinis magna vis est: pernoctant venatores in nive: in montibus uri se patiuntur.”
[“The power of custom is very great: huntsmen will lie out all night in the snow or suffer themselves to be burned up by the sun on the mountains.” — Cicero, Tusc., ii. 17]
Does that even begin to make sense? Or is it totally off the hinges? To be clear, let’s just say I was never good at hiding my failings, and leave it at that. Is that a failing? Is anyone good at such things? I urge you to stop here and read instead Turgenev’s 1862 novel Fathers and Sons, and then the stories of his friend, Guy de Maupassant. Start with Maupassant’s “Le Papa de Simon”, published in the La Réforme in 1879 for 16 centimes a line. It is about little Simon, a seven-or-eight-year-old boy who lives in a village with his mother, a gentle young woman, tall, pretty, with long golden hair, and nicknamed La Blanchotte because of her pale complexion. When she was 17, she was betrayed by a man who promised her marriage but abandoned her once she was pregnant. From then on, she hated all men.
On Simon’s first day at school, the other children battered and bullied him because he had no last name — and no father.
Like savages in their ferocious joy they took each other by the hand and began to dance in circles around him, repeating like a refrain: — “Pas de papa! Pas de papa!”
Simon’s tears turned to rage. He hurled stones at his attackers, hitting two or three, causing the crowd to flee — “cowards, as crowds always are when faced with an exasperated man”.
Left alone, the little fatherless boy ran towards the fields, “for a memory had come to him that had brought a great resolution to his mind. He wanted to drown himself in the river.”
Fortunately, Philippe, a tall worker with a thick beard and curly black hair saw him standing on the riverbank, staring down into the fast-moving water.
“What are you so upset about, my good fellow?”
“They beat me... because... I... I... have... pas de papa... pas de papa...”
“What?" said Philippe, smiling, “but everyone has one.”
Simon, in the throes of his distress, struggled painfully: “Me... I... I haven't got one.”
Philippe recognised the son of La Blanchotte and, although he was new to the village, he vaguely knew her story.
“Come,” he said, “console yourself, my boy, and come with me to your mother. We'll give you... a papa.”
Then what happens? Do Phillippe, La Blanchotte and Simon find happiness as a family? Does Philippe tell Simon to tell the school bullies that he, Philippe Rémy, the blacksmith, is his father and that he will pull the ears off anyone who says otherwise, or in any way does him harm? Will the bullies never dare to bully him again? Will they become his friends? Will they play with him, grow up with him, attend his wedding and the christening of his children, and he theirs, and will they all sleep together peacefully for all eternity six feet below the dirt in the village cemetery?
Or does disaster upon disaster upon disaster strike?
3.
My children were born in France. Their mother and I were born in Canada. My children are therefore French and Canadian but not French Canadian. Nor Canadian French. Nor Canadiens français. Not to put too negative a spin on it, but no such compounding will ever twain them. We, on the other hand, we their parental units to whom filial inclinations should be as routine as a blood test, what are we, exactly? English Canadian? My ancestors came from County Cork, Yorkshire and Guernsey. C.’s came from Canton, also known as Guangdong, and Hong Kong, also known as Jūng'wàh Yàhnmàhn Guhng'wòhgwok Hēunggóng Dahkbiht Hàhngjingkēui.
None of that either is neither here nor there. And that is doubly doubly negative. Quash, squash? Why quash? Does it wash, or is it tosh? Is any of this significant?Probably not. Where is this going, then, you ask? More to the point, where is it coming from? Even more to the point, or perhaps this is another point entirely, Gustave Flaubert, who I wrote about at length two and three weeks ago, and who many, including former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, thought was not just Guy de Maupassant’s mentor but his biological father (paywalled 1974 NYT article here), was offered 30 centimes a line by the same revue in which “Papa de Simon” first appeared. And he turned it down.
4.
“Between crinolines and theories, some of us would get squashed.—Charles Kingsley, The Water-Babies, 1863
When did this moment of recognition first arrive with my father? When I was 15. The same age as young Nathan Zuckerman in the Roth, which is a fine read in many places, but dips a bit, as I find is often the case in Roth, when female characters are at the fore, especially ones that bear resemblance to Roth’s ex-wife and stepdaughter.
(Greil Marcus, a few weeks ago in his Substack, called I Married a Communist The Best American Novel of the Previous 25 Years. Not sure I’d go that far, but it sure has some amazing bits. Page 94-100, Ira and Nathan at Goldstine’s. Wow.)
Jumping back in. One day, on my way home from school — actually, on my way home with some friends after smoking a joint after school — I saw a spiral of smoke rising up behind the fir trees on the far side of the park. There was a bridal path back there, and behind it, a sprawling subdivision with a hundred homes on it, giant homes on giant lots near a freakishly giant golf course on prime waterfront. All of it on Musqueam reserve lands.
Our house was on Vancouver’s last street west, just up from the mouth of the river and across from Tin Can Creek. It was built in 1964. “There was nothing here before,” I remember someone from our street saying. “Just fucking more trees.”
Just fucking more trees that were also on surrendered Musqueam territory — the band was among the first to lease land to “settlers”. Under the Indian Act, they weren’t allowed to negotiate for themselves but had to “surrender” their land to the federal government, who in turn sold it on their behalf. The rates negotiated were well beneath market price. The golf course land — approximately one-third of all Musqueam reserve lands — was leased for a fraction of its value. The Department of Indian Affairs’ Indian Agent refused to give the band access to legal representation. They were not allowed to witness the lease negotiations. They were not even told the terms until 1970.
All that changed when the Musqueam were able to lawyer up — and beget their own lawyers. After a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1984, the band was awarded $10 million in damages. Today, the golf course’s rent went from $69k a year to well over $1 million. Today, Musqueam Capital Corp, allied with Squamish Nation and Tsleil-Waututh Nation, is behind the biggest real estate development schemes in the city’s history.
Here there neither.
5.
It was really important to our old people that you know who you are and where you come from. It was really important to them to know how to identify yourself… who you were, where you came from, and who you came from. — Johnny Louis, Musqueam band member, 2014
On that day walking home my friends and I saw the smoke billowing above the treetops from the other side of the park, and it stopped us in our tracks. Then, being 15 and seriously stoned, we went inside to get something to eat; and a few minutes later, upstairs, making five open-faced tuna melts and five Carnation Instant Breakfasts, I didn’t see my father’s Cougar turn into the driveway. But my friends did, as they were sitting in the deck chairs on the deck above the carport, smoking another fatty, and drinking my father’s Smirnoff. I must’ve been looking for something else to eat for my head was down below the kitchen window, in the bottom-corner cupboard next to the sink, spinning the Lazy Susan, watching the big cans of Bonus Boneless Chicken orbit next to the pudding cups and the No. 3 peas. Mesmerizing. Chunky Beef and Barley, Chunky Poulet et nouilles, Habitant Soupe aux pois. This was 1976, two years after le bilinguisme: every can in Canada was in both official languages. And we ate out of cans every day.
I remember thinking — is there no French word for chunky? — when the downstairs back door slammed. I cracked my head on the bottom of the counter. Had he seen my friends? Can he smell the dope? Where’s the Smirnoff?
No voices. No sounds except Wild Kingdom in the den, animals killing or eating or humping each other. Out on the deck: the shrub in the rotting half-barrel. The Smirnoff next to it. The deck chairs, bleached, threadbare. Empty.
My friends, gone.
6.
“The child is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lit.”—Michel de Montaigne, 1580.
The front door was open.
I binned the melts and poured the Breakfasts down the sink and moguled down the stairs, one, two, Adidas Tobaccos barely grazing the worn patches of forest green shag pile, one hand skipping off the banister, the other one-time slapping the wall overhead halfway down, fingers slapping the dent produced from my sister’s forehead, just below her framed charcoal portrait, a fair-to-middling likeness salvaged two years before from the garbage can of the fine arts prof down the lane. Three-pointing onto the floor, hands out like a gymnast, dad at the door, just outside, looking at the smoke rising up behind the trees.
“Hey,” I said. “I called the fire department.” Why did I say that?
He turned and looked at me. Then turned back. We looked at the smoke. Then we heard the fire trucks.
“Let’s go,” he said.
We went to the carport.
7.
Montaigne again: “Custom has made speaking of oneself a vice, and obstinately forbids it out of hatred for the boasting that seems always to accompany it. Instead of blowing the child’s nose, as we should, this amounts to pulling it off. I find more harm than good in this remedy.” In other words, It's better to leave your child snotty than rip his nose off.
In the car, silence. A serious look on his face. Did he know I was stoned? Could he smell it?
And again:
I saw the other day, at my own house, a little fellow, a native of Nantes, born without arms, who has so well taught his feet to perform the services his hands should have done him, that truly these have half-forgotten their natural office; and, indeed, the fellow calls them his hands; with them he cuts anything, charges and discharges a pistol, threads a needle, sews, writes, puts off his hat, combs his head, plays at cards and dice, and all this with as much dexterity as any other could do who had more, and more proper limbs to assist him. The money I gave him--for he gains his living by shewing these feats — he took in his foot, as we do in our hand. I have seen another who, being yet a boy, flourished a two-handed sword, and, if I may so say, handled a halberd with the mere motions of his neck and shoulders for want of hands; tossed them into the air, and caught them again, darted a dagger, and cracked a whip as well as any coachman in France.
We parked on Salish Drive. The smoke was coming from the bridle path. The fire seemed deep in the ground. There were two fire trucks. Two firemen were dousing the woodchips with water from their firehoses. There was more hissing steam than smoke now. The rest of the firemen were standing around talking and laughing. They seemed to be having a good time. I could do this, I thought. I could be a fireman.
My father approached one.
“My son called in the fire,” he said.
The fireman turned to me. His eyes were twitching and blinking and red. Maybe from the smoke. He stared at me for a long time.
“So it’s under control?” said my father.
“Yeah.”
“Because these things can burn underground for a long time.”
“It’s okay, now, sir. You can go home.”
“How can you be sure?”
The fireman gave him a look. “Take your boy home,” he said.
“Who’s in charge here?” said my father. The fireman sucked air through his teeth, shook his head wearily, and turned away.
This time my father raised his voice. “Hey! Who’s your superior?”
The fireman joined the others. “Fucking useless dick,” he said, loud enough for us to hear. They all laughed.
We shuffled around for awhile, then got in the car and drove home. My father went in the basement door. I went up on the deck and hid the Smirnoff behind the half-dead shrub.
8.
Musqueam traditional territory is the area that we’ve lived off of, we’ve fished, we’ve hunted, we gathered, and it’s something that we’ve never given away. It’s something that we still hold and we still believe is our right. — Larissa Grant, Musqueam band member, 2014
One day a man was traveling through the neighbourhood that he had grown up in, this was on the west coast of the new world, and he heard in the distance the sound of feet pounding the ground. He went looking for the people making the sound, and what seemed like several years later he found them. They were his old neighbours, the closest friends of his parents, and the parents of his closest friends, and they were in the woods near his childhood home dancing around the biggest tree, which was on fire. When the man asked them why they were doing this they said they were trying to get his attention.
Now the man thought that this was weird. And he told them there were easier ways to get his attention, new ways, and he showed them how to send messages from a smartphone. And they were sore amazed. But they didn’t have smartphones. And the man couldn’t give him his because he needed it. To call the fire department. So the old neighbours shrugged and smiled and said that’s okay, and they gave him some spiders, grasshoppers, ants, lizards and bats, and off he went.
Further into the forest, he met another man who was tending a fire on which sat a pot of gently simmering water. Next to him was an armless young boy dexterously wielding a blacksmith’s tongs and hammer with his feet. Next to the armless boy was a tall, pretty, pale woman carrying a full-grown ox.
The man was frightened at first, but the woman put the ox down and caressed it behind the ears, and the ox sighed and lowered its head on her lap.
“Is there a frog in that water?” the man asked.
“No,” said the other man. “We’re all out of frogs. That’s a toad. Six ecus. Total rip-off but what can you do?— we’re hungry. We’ve been lying out all night in the snow and before that we were burned up by the sun on the mountains.”
“Is there a sauce?” asked the man. The toad smelled delicious.
“Perpignan.”
Before the man could ask where they had procured the ingredients required for this — stock, dried ham, truffles, mushrooms, herbs, and madeira wine — the other man, having noticed the spiders, grasshoppers, ants, lizards, and bats, licked his chops.
Where did you get those?” he asked.
The man told him, from his weird old neighbours dancing around the biggest tree in the forest.
“That’s not the biggest tree in the forest anymore,” the boy said. “It burned down. The biggest tree is now the one down by the river.”
The man turned to the woman and asked, “What do you want for that ox?”
“What have you got?” she asked.
“Some spiders, some grasshoppers, some ants, a lizard and a bat.”
“What else?”
He showed her the smartphone.
“Too heavy,” she said. “I could never lift it.”
“You’re carrying a full-grown ox.”
“Yes, but I started carrying it when it was a young calf.”
“Try,” said the man, holding out the phone.
She hesitated. Then she took it. It wasn’t heavy. “Huh,” she said, and off she went, texting as she walked. The other man gathered up the other creatures and went after her. The boy followed.
The man went to lift the ox. He couldn’t budge it. So he scratched it behind the ears and leaned against its flank. Soon he was asleep.
That’s when the bells started.
9.
Thank you for reading. The photo below is of that half-dead shrub — a Norfolk pine — which my father bonsaied for two decades in a Sweeney’s half-barrel on the deck at 5940 Crown Street. After the house was sold the barrel was moved onto my sister’s deck. When her oil tank was dug up, it was planted in the hole and it straightened out and it grew up and up.
10.
“A nihilist,” said Nikolai Petrovitch. “That's from the Latin, nihil, nothing, as far as I can judge; the word must mean a man who ... who accepts nothing?”
“Say, ‘who respects nothing,’” put in Pavel Petrovitch, and he set to work on the butter again.
“Who regards everything from the critical point of view,” observed Arkady.
“Isn't that just the same thing?” inquired Pavel Petrovitch.
“No, it's not the same thing. A nihilist is a man who does not bow down before any authority, who does not take any principle on faith, whatever reverence that principle may be enshrined in.”
“Well, and is that supposed to be good?” interrupted Pavel Petrovitch.
“That depends, uncle. Some people it will do good to, but some people will suffer for it.”
“Indeed. Well, I see it's not for us. We are old-fashioned people; we imagine that without principles, taken as you say on faith, there's no taking a step, no breathing. Vous avez changé tout cela. God give you good health and the rank of a general, while we will be content to look on and admire, worthy ... what was it?'“
“Nihilists,” Arkady said, speaking very distinctly.
“Yes. There used to be Hegelists, and now there are nihilists. We shall see how you will exist in a void, in a vacuum; and now ring, please, brother Nikolai Petrovitch; it's time I had my cocoa.”
Vous avez changé tout cela.
11.
Now, final note. I know this will cost me a bunch of free subscribers, but I have to get it off my chest.
Maupassant was a syphilitic sadist. So was Flaubert. Look it up.
I once made the mistake of watching a Jordan Peterson video on YouTube. The one where he was said to have made mincemeat of some hapless BBC interviewer. It was horrifying. I then looked at his writing. Worse. That was years ago. I’ve head-in-the-sanded him ever since. I know he’s still there, probably more powerfully toxic than ever, but I’ve successfully — and, it could be argued, cowardly — ostriched him out of my existence. Just as I have a former president of the Excited Snakes and dozens of writers on this platform, and countless countless others. Joe Rogen, for example. The way people who like Joe Rogen talk to me about Joe Rogen makes me know I should steer clear of Joe Rogen.
Ditto Russell Brand.
In fact, the video below is only the second time I’ve ever seen or heard Russell Brand. The first was a forgettable film called Get Him to the Greek that didn’t survive our house’s 20-minute rule.
This low-budget train wreck of a documentary, Dadfight, which was brought to my attention by Sam Atis, is fascinating. It ain’t Turgenev, it ain’t Roth, but on the subject of fathers and sons it is most compelling, and I urge you to watch it, just as I urge you still to read Flaubert and Maupassant — and by doing so I am not turning blinded eyes in sand-buried head towards the allegations of rape, sexual assault and abuse.
Just have a watch, then rinse your head out with something nice.
Ta.