Word: fathered
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...consciousness that draws in the reader, seeming to replicate the confused and wandering form that a child's thoughts might plausibly take after a parent's death. At times the style grows annnoyingly Salinger-esque, and is peppered with italics and occasional self-conscious introspection: "And I said, `My father passed away last night.' I who of all people know enough to say 'died': yet said `passed away."' But for the most part the flow of free association is effective...
...changes his way of adapting to death, McElroy shifts the tone of the novel. The first chapters are a monologue, mirroring the isolation and entrapment that the protagonist feels. Later, McElroy inserts dialogue into the text, a change that reflects the boy's attempts to adjust to his father's death and to the dissemination of the letter...
...begins to shift his focus away from ownership of the letter, and he begins to directly confront his own relationship with his father. Part of him wishes to see it as a work of love: "If the letter is attention given to me, sending it out in all these copies is proof, or is giving my attention to those on the list," he says, trying to rationalize his mother's decision to share the letter...
...even as he reads it, and rereads it, searching for tidbits of love or caring, there are shreds of doubt in his mind. His memory betrays him, and his image of his father becomes confused with that of those around him. His fears are nearly realized at the end of the novel, when an acquaintance blankly tells him, "`It's not an affectionate letter...
Another part of the boy is tempted to view the letter as do his friends and relatives. They see it as a work of art as well as proof of love, and toss out comments like, "'Your father wrote extremely well,'" or "'You couldn't have had a better father.'" But the son of the writer is not content with this interpretation. His father becomes "the writer of the letter" rather than "his father...