Bernard Cooper

I wasn't sure at first whether I would stick with this memoir, as the tale of an irascible, shouting, aged father struck a little too close to home ["each of them implied that my father was irascible while at the same time commending in him a certain charm they had a hard time putting their fingers on". But I'm glad I did. Well written and containing humor as well as pathos, there are some remarkable turns of phrase and descriptions, such as this one in which he has driven up to a curb where show more his father sits, seeming not to recognize him. "With the windows rolled up, the world surged by with barely a sound. He seemed to be sealed inside the sunlight just as surely as I was sealed inside my car. I was afraid to roll down the window, afraid he wouldn't respond to my voice, wouldn't react if I called him Father. Stranded in the gap between silence and speech, I could almost feel my own name loosen and peel away, leaving me raw and anonymous." Highly recommended. show less

This is a book of short pieces of different types. Many of them are prose poems not totally unlike the Charles Baudelaire book I’m leisurely making my way through. I didn’t love a lot of these. I thought the stories where he talks about his family were much better, still having his interesting style, but with more feeling and seeming more solid, where some of the other pieces seemed sort of forced and self consciously "artsy".

This is a book of short pieces of different types. Many of them are prose poems not totally unlike the Charles Baudelaire book I’m leisurely making my way through. I didn’t love a lot of these. I thought the stories where he talks about his family were much better, still having his interesting style, but with more feeling and seeming more solid, where some of the other pieces seemed sort of forced and self consciously "artsy".

I thought this story was both funny and sad. The author and his father had a mutually ambivalent relationship for most of their lives until the son finds himself becoming the caretaker for his father. It's touching to see the son attempting to understand his father while still finding humor in their somewhat odd relationship.