Joey asked:

I'm still trying to digest "My Father's Mask." It wasn't necessarily one of my favorites in this collection, but it was one of the most memorable. I'm not exactly sure what to make of it beyond it being a creepy slice of surrealism. I'd love to hear what anyone else thought about it. Any ideas?

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I just read "My Father's Mask" yesterday, and not to be too literary or anything, it creeped me out. I don't know what to make of it either, but the mask symbolism reminds us we never really know one another. And Jack certainly did not know his parents and in the end anything he knew of his father he forgot.

The card game was interesting because after saying he could recognize his mother, even with a mask on, he failed to recognize her or his father. Another reference to never really knowing another person. The card game also continues the theme of games, which his mother plays continually both to mask reality and to give Jack a road map to navigate their peculiarly surreal (your very apt word) reality.

His father sacrifices himself for Jack (and perhaps his mother) not only physically by giving himself to the card woman but also metaphorically (not quite sure if that is the word I want), as even memories of him fade from Jack's consciousness to be replaced by something else. (Probably a reference to the very human habit of our projecting what we think someone is like over who they actually are.)

Now if you want to get all psychoanalytical about the story you can replace Jack with Joe and his parents become Tabitha and Stephen King. The surrealness becomes what growing up with a famous horror-writing father is like. The games reference the fact that both his father and his mother are novelists and exist in the world of fiction. Joe is perhaps slyly implying his mother is the better writer since she seems so much better at playing the games than his father. The card woman would become Stephen's drug addiction that he succumbs to. His attempt to warn Joe that he will be leaving and not to forget him may be his consciousness that the drugs are winning. His mother's manipulating almost the entire situation beginning with the drive to the cabin is Tabitha's shielding him (and his siblings) from his father's addictions. In this story, unlike in real life, his father is lost forever. The overwriting of the memories as they leave the cabin may be how Joe sees the family memories of that time when his father had problems. They gloss over the bad and focus on (and perhaps invent) only the good. (It also may be simply the perspective, his mother's view of that time will differ significantly from his for a number of reasons.)

Two more thoughts (if you are still with me and not rolling your eyes). Jack is a reference to the jack in a deck of cards. Jack represents someone of the lower classes (in France) or a servant of royalty (in England. Thank you Wikipedia!) In this story we can perhaps assume that the mother is the queen, the father is the king, and the narrator is their son, the jack.

And, finally, I keep thinking about the boy on the velocipede. I can not figure that one out. Is he there to add weirdness, does his appearing on the path mean something (if Jack is playing cards with his parents, is the boy on the bike Jack?), or is he just there as part of the landscape? Also, the card woman. What exactly does she symbolize?

Sorry if this was more than you bargained for when you asked for ideas, but, like you, I found it very unsettling and memorable and once I started writing about it I realized how great the story was. There is a lot in it and that is a testament to Joe Hill's writing.

Keep on reading!
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Elise I felt as if it was a "creepy slice of surrealism" but also felt that in some way the son was meant to replace the Dad. I found all the "games" in the story creepy and fascinating!

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Maria Rose I got a different perception of this tale. First of all, his parents impressed me as adults who never really grew up and spend money like it was tissue paper. I knew that they were going to the Cabin to get something to sell. Apparently, the father thought he was being noble in sacrificing himself as an organ donator but failed to realize the fallacy of what he was committing to (all his organs). The mother was a lost clause being so needy. As for the boy, it doesn't look well for him, thinking that he's an adult now at 13.

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Melissa I just finished this book. I didn't really understand this story, and it almost seemed like we were missing some other companion story that went with it.

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20th Century Ghosts

by Joe Hill (Goodreads Author)

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