Volume 28, Number 13 · August 13, 1981
Life With Father
By Roger Sale
Dad
by William Wharton
Knopf, 449 pp., $12.95
While reading William Wharton's wonderful novel, Dad, I could not help imagining, as many will, the circumstances of its composition. It has the tone of intense personal quest that leads the reader to such speculations. I ended up with this: Wharton (a pseudonym) spent some months five years ago in Los Angeles, nursing his mother back from two successive heart attacks and then his father from a cancer operation and from what his doctors desperately called 'instant senility.' He left with his son and started back home to France in a car he was hired to drive to Philadelphia. As he left off the car, he learned his father had died. Though he can say he accepts it, he knows he must write about all of it in order to try to understand it—although a good deal is unlikely in its sudden spurts of terror, laughter, recovery, and relapse. But if he can do so he may discover who his parents were and who he has become.
Review, 1478 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |