A Father's Words: A Novel

Richard Stern

Arbor House, 1986 - Fiction - 189 pages

In this portrait of fatherhood in late middle age, Stern shows how the stresses of a father's affection and tyranny cannot be handled by reason or words, but through the wrenching process of self-understanding. Cyrus Riemer publishes a science newsletter in Chicago while struggling with mortality, changes of fortune, his ex-wife and lover, and his four grown children. Preoccupied with the search for truth, unable to accept his family on their own terms, and insistent on playing relationships his way, he seeks to understand the truth about his life. He wants happiness for his son Jack, who evades his father's attempts to nag him into making more of himself, and evades the criticisms of his daughter who berates him for looking for truth in books and museums instead of within himself. But eventually both life and his children propel him into a growing awareness of himself, his children, and the woman he loves. ISBN 0-87795-791-6 : $14.95.

Contents

• Section 1: 11
• Section 2: 26
• Section 3: 43

About the author

Richard Gustave Stern was born in New York City on February 25, 1928. He received an undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1947, a master's degree from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. After a year teaching at Connecticut College in New London, he started teaching literature and creative writing at the University of Chicago in 1955, where he remained until his retirement in 2001. His first novel, Golk, was published in 1960. His other novels include Europe: Or Up and Down with Schreiber and Baggish, Stitch, Natural Shocks, Other Men's Daughters, and A Father's Words. An early story, The Sorrows of Captain Schreiber, won an O. Henry award as one of the best short stories of 1954. His short story collections include Packages, Noble Rot, and Almonds to Zhoof. He also wrote a collection of essays entitled The Books in Fred Hampton's Apartment and a memoir about his older sister entitled A Sistermony. In 1985, he received the Medal of Merit for the Novel, awarded every six years by the Academy of Arts and Letters. He died of cancer on January 24, 2013 at the 84.

Bibliographic information

• Title: A Father's Words: A Novel
• Author: Richard Stern
• Publisher: Arbor House, 1986
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Jun 28, 2006
• ISBN: 0877957916, 9780877957911
• Length: 189 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Family Life / General; Fiction / General