My Year With Proust - Day 87

   "The contempt which my father had for my kind of intelligence was so far tempered by affection that, in practice, his attitude towards everything I did was one of blind indulgence.  And so he had no qualm about sending me to fetch a little prose poem which I had made up years before at Combray on coming home from a walk.  I had written it in a state of exaltation which must, I felt certain, communicate itself to everyone who read it."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, pp. 490-491

Proust is reflecting upon his complicated relationship with his father.  Does anyone have a relationship with their father which is not complicated?  Or maybe this is just a gender-specific situation.  Maybe women have more simple relationships with their fathers, which they balance out by having complicated relationships with their mothers, and it is only the men who routinely have complicated relationships with their fathers.  One of the things I've always appreciated about my father is his love of literature, which we clearly share.  Growing up I would routinely harvest books from his library, and my first experience with Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio (which I've talked about at length) was from a bound set of his.  Years later when I did a meaningful books talk at Champlain my father went out of his way to track down all the books I discussed and read them all, some of which  became his favorites as well (especially Yukio Mishima), so I guess it came full circle.  And speaking of which, I need to send him my copy of the Iliad on CD.