Follow up on Rob Kall's interview with Sam and Gifford Keen about their book Prodigal Father Wayward Son.
We live in an age of simple stories -- Us vs. Them, good vs. evil, America vs. Iran, Jews vs. Arabs. So long as we cleave to such narratives there can never be political or personal reconciliation. Only more conflict.
On a
personal level, this propensity towards simple stories colors and distorts the
relationships between fathers and sons. From Oedipus to Hamlet to Luke
Skywalker, the father/son relationship is fraught with complexity and conflict.
Yet, so many of the stories that divide fathers and sons are unbelievably
simplistic.
In my new book, Prodigal Father Wayward Son, written with my father, Sam Keen, we explore the power of storytelling, both as an unconscious, mythic force that estranges fathers and sons, and a conscious prescription for reconciliation of long term, intractable alienation.
The book begins with an account of a terrible argument. At the time, I was grown, a father, retired from a professional career, my own man. Yet the basic personal dynamics between my father and I hadn't changed fundamentally since I was eleven, when he abandoned me.
Here's an excerpt from that scene:
SAM
I was due to return home that afternoon, so we decided to treat ourselves to breakfast at Cafe Pasqual's. After huevos rancheros and cafe latte, we were walking down
Water Street.
GIF
And then it happened.
"So," you asked, "what are you going to do now that you're not working?" It was casually said, but there was a nasty gleam in your eye, a critical tone in your voice.
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