The Fathers: And Other Fiction

by Allen Tate

Book by Tate, Allen

370 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1977

About the author

Poetry of especially known American writer and editor John Orley Allen Tate includes "Ode to the Confederate Dead" (1926); a leading exponent of New Criticism, he edited the Sewanee Review from 1944 to 1946.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Tate

Reviews

[Penny · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is certainly a novel written in a different time and in a different manner. The author couched so much of the story in vague language that I had to read some pages more than once to be sure I understood what was happening. He also used a somewhat archaic vocabulary and style of expression.

About death: “Not even death was an instant; it too became a part of the ceaseless flow, instructing me to beware of fixing any hope, or some terrible lack of it, upon birth or death, or upon love or the giving in marriage. None of these could draw to itself all the life around it or even all the life in one person; not one of them but fell short of its occasion, warning all of us to fear, not death, or love, or any ecstasy or calamity, but rather to fear our own expectancy of it, good or ill, or our own lack of preparation for these final things.”