Word: fathered
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Loos began as an actress in her father's theater in California and began selling scenarios to D.W. Griffith's Biograph Company. From there, Loos went on to compile one of the most impressive writing resumes of any woman this century. In addition to Gentlemen, Loos was responsible for the screen versions of San Francisco and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn as well as Douglas Fairbanks' early silent classics...
...theme of children dealing with a parent's death is timeless in literature, but in danger of being rendered trite through overuse. In The Letter Left to Me, Joseph McElroy avoids cliches by developing this theme in a unique and effective manner. The novel centers on letter from a father, written a few years before his death, to his teen-aged son. McElroy's choice of plot saves his novel from becoming another repetitive reflection on dealing with death...
...reflections on the letter become the jumping off point for the liberal rush of free association that follows. We follow the boy's thought process as he tries to reconcile his views of his father with those of his friends and family. We sense his uncertainty when, suddenly, the letter passes out of his control, and is copied and sent to numerous relatives and friends of the family. Each of these has some comment to make on the letter that the boy feels was meant only for him. Uncertain how this development occurred, the boy watches passively, unhappy but somehow...
...vacillations about the sending of the letter with credibility and sensitivity. Although the boy attempts to be understanding about his mother's and grandparents' decision to share the document, he is never certain what gives his family the right to examine and discuss this relic of his father's that he feeels was meant to speak directly...
Because it is the only meaningful talisman remaining to him after his father's death, every detail of its history becomes sacred. He constantly tries to recreate the letter's origins, to determine whether his mother knew about its existence before he found her with it, and to trace its journey from the safe where it was first kept to the desk drawer where it was after his father's death. He says, "I did not see my mother actually find the letter. Come across it; locate it. I'm building backwards again." Toward the end of the novel...