It seems to be the fashion lately for children of famous male authors to write tell-all books about how mean and nasty their fathers were. The newest one is "Reading My Father: A Memoir", by Alexandra Styron. In it she reveals that her father, William Styron, was an ogre, a verbally abusive bully who drank too much and may have cheated on his wife. The fact that famous authors are sometimes unpleasant to their families is not news. However, Alexandra Styron's book seems to be part of a trend. In the last decade there have been books by the children of John Cheever, James Dickey, and J.D. Salinger, telling stories of their parents' nasty behavior at home.
What's up with this rash of tell-all books? Is there something different about this generation of American novelists that made them so unpleasant to their loved ones? The "abusive" tag is what interests me the most, because I have often thought that what young people today call "abusive" is a far cry from what that word meant years ago. I grew up with a father who would be called verbally abusive by today's standards. He yelled when he was angry, and many things made him angry. He was not shy about telling the people around him when they did something wrong, in picturesque language. He was liable to explode without warning. Alexandra Styron tells about how her father flew into a rage when her mother burned the dinner. I remember a similar scene in my house, and it was not pretty.
But so what? The world was different 40 years ago. The men of what Tom Brokaw called "The Greatest Generation" had quick tempers, some of them, and maybe it was because of the world they grew up in. They had to deal with the worst economic depression in our country's history, two World Wars, and the threat of the atomic bomb hanging over them. They were under a lot of pressure, and at times they released that pressure by yelling at the people around them.
We survived, and most of us learned not to act that way around our loved ones. I rarely ever raise my voice to my children, and I'm proud of that, but the unintended consequence of that is they can't tolerate criticism as well as I can. If I mention some little area in their lives where they're falling short, if I raise my voice just a half tone, they tell me I'm yelling. "Yelling?" I say. "That's not yelling. You don't know what yelling is, believe me."
What's "abusive" for one generation is not for the next. Definitions can change based on circumstances. My father probably thought he was using kid gloves in raising his children. From the stories I remember about his own childhood, with a father who was prone to using a strap on his sons when they brought home a failing grade in school, he most definitely was a kinder, gentler Dad to me.
I'm sorry if Alexandra Styron has so many bad memories of her father, but I'm sure she'll survive.
I'm also sure she feels she's raising her children in a kind, loving, non-abusive manner. It remains to be seen if they'll look at it the same way when it comes time for them to write their own memoir.
No comments:
Post a Comment