TMoP - Chapter Two - The cemetery

[David Morris]

Good point, Mark.  You've sparked a thought:

Coetzee, a writer of genius himself, is at some level also his main
character.  This is overtly the case in his _Diary of a Bad Year_.

Remember also that Coetzee is an ex-pat from South Africa and an
immigrant to Australia.  He is finely attuned to the injustices of an
Imperial force over a native populations, and the inherited
guilt/shame/responsibility of all that have benefited from or
acquiesced to those injustices.

As the creator of his son's world, D is deeply guilty for abandoning
his son.  In a sense, D is his own son's oppressor and murderer, and
his guilt moves him to try to deny the reality of his death, and to
wish to conjure him back into the living world.  Orpheus is explicitly
referenced in the 2nd chapter.

I've only just begun the book, so I don't know where to take this from
here.  But if we are to relate this to GR, we should know that GR is
DEEPLY rooted in Freud, and the Evil Father in GR goes back to Freud's
Oedipus Complex.  In GR the son is primarily the victim of the father.
 But Oedipus is the killer in the original tale.  The envious and
murderous impulse to posses the object of desire flows both ways
between Son and Father.  At a very basic level they are natural
enemies.

David Morris

On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 1:03 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> So, fictionally, a son of the narrating consciousness, a writer of genius, is dead....
>
> Sons.....they inherit, in general fictional metaphoric terms.....the world made by their fathers....
>
> Fathers and Sons....very famous recent Russian novel..about a "lost' son.   A marginal young man trying to find a place in a very narrow closed world?
>
> D's son found no place in Master of P.
>
> P.S. Remember TRP on fathers and sons in GR overtly?...in AtD, at length?