TOM: I’m remembering as a kid reading Moby-Dick and Thoreau and Mark Twain together. In terms of your teaching literature, were there characters or themes or particular scenes in those books that stood out to you in terms of being instructive of what it means to be a good father and husband?
DAD: It’s really difficult to find portraits of fathers in the classic tradition of American literature. The most usual pattern is male bonding and often in the setting of man encountering nature, challenging nature, the sea, the great West. The closest is Jim and Huck on the raft in Huckleberry Finn. Jim really replaces the murderous, drunk father that Huck is escaping from in a very thoughtful, tender way; that’s in the fabric of being a Negro slave and all the prejudices of that time. So that example is at least one to ponder, but it’s not one you identify closely with as an immediate model for how to be a husband to a wife.
TOM: But none the characters in these classic American literature pieces were fathers in any real sense? That’s fascinating.
DAD: In Moby-Dick, it’s an all-male boat. The aunt, Charity, is the last person off the boat when they leave the harbor and that’s the last time you see a woman except in the South Seas. Thoreau in his great books is essentially putting himself into nature in a variety of very interesting, very thoughtful ways. He does travel with his brother on A Week on the Concord and the Merrimack Rivers, his first well-known book, but again, never married. Husbanding and parenting are not part of his pattern, and he had a failure for a father. And for Twain, similarly—a failure father and a lot of narrative figures who make their own way comically or adventurously, but who were not portrayed as well married or trying to be a good parent to their kids.
Next: Was Abe a Good Man?
Photo Credit: Plotbox
Hi, Tom-
I took a couple of courses with your dad at Cornell in spring and fall of 1970 (so he was not at U Mass then). He was a wonderful lecturer and one of the teachers I admired most at Cornell. He definitely influenced my views on race. He was also a tough grader, which did not help my GPA at all, but it was worth it. I was interested and pleased to hear of the direction his life took and that he is alive and well in beautiful Rockport, Maine.
Tom, It took me a couple year’s after my Father Passed away in September of 1999, to understand who he was but more importantly The man I thought I had to be… I think our Fathers, seem so Hero like as children in our eye’s! As we age and mature, They have exspectation’s and we tend to think or believe what they want for us, is Not in our plan’s. So we fighnt it every step along the way. Tom, My Dad many times through out my childhood made me feel WEAK and Unexcepted! Growing up My eye’s saw his… Read more »
What an interesting guy your dad is, Tom!.
One of the striking things that comes through this conversation is that despite your returning to the father/son theme over and over, in so many instances that you and your dad address the fathers were not present, or the men were not in family situations etc. Makes it clear how major a shift your generation is in the midst of, and how timely your focus is!
Thanks for showing open interest in your son’s cause, Jean Matlack, in your comment here and your own interview in May. Discovering his TGMP work is one of the best things that’s happened for me in the past few months. It does my heart good to see Tom honoring his father and mother while finding his own way!
Excellent interview, Tom. I am very glad that you were able to sit down and connect with your father like this. As much as we think we know our dads at times, there is always more to the story—small (or in your case, large) details that would have gone otherwise untold unless you spend quality talk time.
I enjoyed this. You both are good men.