A Father's Words

by Richard Stern

Cy Riemer, divorced and middle-aged, tries to come to terms with his feelings about his grown children and himself as a father and a man

Genres: Fiction

189 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1986

Reviews

[Linda]

This book is a head-shaker. So many questions. Like why would someone think writing it was a good idea? Why would someone think publishing it was a good idea? Again, as with Getting Off, I couldn't tell if the author was in on the protagonist's cluelessness, or cluelessly celebrating it. Long spoutings of unrealistic dialogue. Finally toward the end, the main character (the "father" of the title) has his adult daughter tell him off for his self-obsession and his need to basically continually inflict microagressions onto his kids. Yet somehow he manages to emerge from this fight believing himself the wronged party. And then he and his much younger girlfriend have a baby. Oy.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. I read this book after reading my father's extremely positive review of it on Librarything, and I thought it sounded interesting, which is was, though to say "I really liked it" is an oversell on my part. This is a book with a very specific audience- it is basically the polar opposite of anything termed "chick-lit", in that rather than being read and enjoyed primarily by women, generally in their 20s-40s, this book, I think can only be REALLY enjoyed by men in their 60s+. I say this because as a woman in her 30s, I had a difficult time relating to the text, to the period of life being described, to the themes of creating a new relationship after a divorce that is built upon companionship and leaving each other alone as much as it is on love, of letting your children become adults, even if they aren't good at it and trying to step back while still exerting control with whatever money you have to offer. These are not things I've experienced as an adult yet, and I hope (perhaps blindly) that I will not have the same troubles with these issues that Stern's "Old Fay" does.

The narrator/anti-hero main character is a surly, always-right, always-concerned, frequently-worried divorced father of four grown children. His voice is extremely intellectual, bordering on pretentious at times, and often condescending in speech, though filled with self-doubt and often self-flagellation in thought, which makes for an interesting dichotomy in character. I found myself liking the narrator, even if I didn't necessarily like how he treated people. Stern somehow made him sympathetic, if not reliable.

Overall, I enjoyed the WRITING of this book more than I thought I would. Stern's references and turns of phrase are original and fun to read. His diction is on an academic level versus a conversational one, and because it suits his character, that quirk is charming rather than frustrating. I wouldn't recommend this book to my friends, but I would probably recommend it for their fathers. Thanks for recommending an interesting read, Dad! :)

[Lee]

No wonder this one hasn't gotten the NYRB reanimation treatment. A superfluous novel about a superfluous father and his family. Excessive cleverness throughout without the propulsion of a discernible story. Kept wondering when the "story" would start but it's too filled with introductory summary, too diffuse, totally unbelievable (Cy, who seems to read like a writer, doesn't know "Hills Like White Elephants"?!), the dialogue is laughably overdone and remains so when the exposition recognizes it as such, the characters other than Jack don't really come to life, again, because there's no real story. Reads like a polished early draft. The newsletter's fortunes don't really make for riveting reading. Occasional insightful and well-worded sentences, what I expected after reading Other Men's Daughter's earlier this year, but this reads like fiction weakly boiled down from life. Hard to believe it was published. Read the first chapter closely, and the next few chapters skimming occasionally before I quit once it started getting into the ex-wife heading to East Africa for the Peace Corps and Cy's tennis partner uttered a racial slur of a pun that really seemed more like a product of the author than any character. Oh well.

[Kurishin · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a novelistic genre that is relatively rare-the father novel, which makes it also a family saga, of sorts.
Well-written. Stern's use of space and language is excellent.
The primary theme I am taking away from this is that fathers tend to focus on the aspirational difficulties of fatherhood without, generally, realizing the expectational difficulties of being a son. Fathers can quite easily lose empathy and are not necessarily looking out for their childrens' best interest.