Prospero′s Son – Life, Books, Love, and Theater - Hardcover

Lerer, Seth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 022601441X ISBN 13: 9780226014418

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2013

Synopsis

This book is the record of a struggle between two temperaments, two consciousnesses and almost two epochs." That's how Edmund Gosse opened "Father and Son", the classic 1907 book about his relationship with his father. Seth Lerer's "Prospero's Son" is, as fits our latter days, altogether more complicated, layered, and multivalent, but at its heart is that same problem: the fraught relationship between fathers and sons. At the same time, Lerer's memoir is about the power of books and theater, the excitement of stories in a young man's life, and the transformative magic of words and performance. A flamboyantly performative father, a teacher and lifelong actor, comes to terms with his life as a gay man. A bookish boy becomes a professor of literature and an acclaimed expert on the very children's books that set him on his path in the first place. And when that boy grows up, he learns how hard it is to be a father and how much books can, and cannot, instruct him. Throughout these intertwined accounts of changing selves, Lerer returns again and again to stories - the ways they teach us about discovery, deliverance, forgetting, and remembering. "A child is a man in small letter," wrote Bishop John Earle in the seventeenth century. "His father hath writ him as his own little story." With "Prospero's Son", Seth Lerer acknowledges the author of his story while simultaneously reminding us that we all confront the blank page of life on our own, as authors of our lives.

About this title

About the Author

Seth Lerer is dean of arts and humanities at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of many books, including the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Children's Literature: A Reader's History, from Aesop to Harry Potter.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

PROSPERO'S SON

Life, Books, Love, and Theater

By Seth Lerer

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Copyright © 2013 The University of Chicago
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-226-01441-8

Contents

PROLOGUE. First Love.......................................................
1
ONE. Rough Magic...........................................................
13
TWO. The Abduction from the Seraglio.......................................
26
THREE. Enter Tubal.........................................................
36
FOUR. Blithe Spirits.......................................................
49
FIVE. Vaseline University..................................................
60
SIX. Iceland...............................................................
79
SEVEN. Upriver.............................................................
98
EIGHT. Kaddish.............................................................
116
NINE. Lithium Dreams.......................................................
126
TEN. Beauty and the Beast..................................................
140
EPILOGUE. The Soldier's Tale...............................................
153
Acknowledgments............................................................
157

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Rough Magic

November 2003.

I was teaching The Tempest when the department office managercalled me out of class. My comparative literature seniorseminar had eight students, all but one of them young womenwhose fathers were college professors, social activists, artists, orscientists. It was supposed to be a course in literary theory withan emphasis on gender and interpretation, but the syllabus—Shakespeare,Marx, Freud, Saussure, De Man, Erich Auerbach,and Judith Butler—soon morphed into weekly meditations onauthority and pedagogy, reading things for what they weren't,and the students' own literary tastes. Theory became a familyromance for them, a way of understanding authorship as if it werepaternalism, reading as if it were a household chore. We were afew weeks into the seminar, finishing Shakespeare and turning tolater versions of the play—the postcolonial Une Tempête of AiméCésaire, the science fiction of Forbidden Planet—when the officemanager opened the door. "You have to come right now." I staredacross the table at my eager Mirandas and said, quietly, "I thinkwe'll have to stop."

I took the call in the department office, and before I even heardthe doctor's voice I knew that Dad was gone. I called my wife,walked to my car without my coat in the rain, and drove to thehospital.

Driving.

As a child I never slept. At night, Dad would pile me into thecar (no baby seat, no seat belts, a cigarette held out the window)and drive for hours till I dropped off. Sometimes, he would singas he drove, his tuneless voice repeating the same nursery rhymeover and over.

I had a little nut tree, nothing would it bear,
But a silver nutmeg, and a golden pear.

And then I would awake in my own bed, not knowing how I gotthere, the smell of Kents hanging on my pj's like a caul.

Some nights, we'd all go out—Dad, Mom, my baby brother—justto fill the time. Whenever we got out of the car, my eyes woulddart right to the ground. I'd pick up anything: a rusted bolt, a spentflashbulb, string, wire, pennies. I was collecting material for somegreat project, a machine that would transmute these scraps intoa mystery, or that would reanimate the tossed-off body parts ofold equipment. Every now and then, there'd be a real find. Once,when I was six, we drove out to Long Island to an Alexander'sstore to buy my mom a fur coat. In the parking lot, I found apiece of jetsam from another car. It may have been a solenoid, ora carburetor valve, or a gear. Whatever it had once been, it turnedinto a talisman in my pocket, and I held on to it on the ride back,as I fell asleep against Mom's new mouton coat.

And then, after we moved to Boston, there were the endlessdrives returning to New York to see relatives or friends. We alwaysdrove at night. Eight p.m. and the dinner dishes done, my fatherwould announce, "Well, I don't know about you, but I'm readyto go." And sure as simpletons, my brother and I would jump up.Sure, let's go, what an adventure. Let's drive all night back to NewYork. In those days, the two-hundred-and-forty-mile trip tooknine hours, over old US highways, turnpikes, and toll roads. Stopsalong the way, great empty cities like Hartford, trucks, backups,midnight snacks. Then the wall of traffic when we reached Co-opCity. Finally, the place we'd stay. "You're father was too cheap,"Mom would say, "to spend a night in a real hotel. We always livedon handouts." But that was the way then. You were expected todrop in, you expected people. Anyone could come at any time.Keep the fridge full, you never know when guests might showup. When we moved to Boston, we kept the fridge full for threeyears. No one came.

One day, when I was in eleventh grade, my friends and I droveto Kentucky from Pittsburgh. It was one of those vague Saturdaysof late high school, one of those I-don't-know-what-do-you-want-to-dodays, and we piled into our old Renault and drove. Justdrove. South, through Pennsylvania coal country, West Virginiahills. Cars up on blocks in gas stations for sale for seventy-fivedollars, farm eggs a nickel apiece. We stopped at a roadside placewhere my friend, to my horror, ordered a liverwurst sandwich,and I don't know what I had but I pulled a twenty out of my walletand the counter fell silent, like they'd never seen one before, andwho was this kid with the Pennsylvania plates coming in withhis buds and a twenty.

But that's what I learned from Dad: to pull a twenty from yourwallet like it's magic, to show up out of nowhere and amaze thecrowd and disappear.

Years later, I was listening to an interview with Shari Lewis onthe radio, and she went on, not about Lamb Chop or her bangs,but about her dad. He was a founding member of Yeshiva University,and in the evenings after classes he would teach her magictricks. "My father," she reflected, "was like the official magicianof New York." Passing a closet one day, "Daddy heard my sisterscreaming to be let out. He opened the door, and my sister wasnowhere to be seen." Shari had discovered her ability to throwher voice. Her parents put her onstage at eighteen months. "Myparents were school teachers. They ran summer camps, and I wasput onstage with a crepe-paper bow."

My father was the unofficial magician of New York. He did nojuggling, no ventriloquism. Unlike my friends' fathers, he couldnot fix a leak, start a lawn mower, or change a broken lightbulbwith a raw potato. He worked, instead, his magic in the car. Thetheater of his majesty was the front seat, as he drove almost withoutlooking, talking to me next to him, waving at strangers outthe window. I swear he had a third eye in his left ear; otherwise,how could he see the road?

We would drive for hours around Brooklyn, often with one ofhis friends (usually a former student who, now in his twenties, hadlittle to do but cruise the city with a teacher and his kid), downPitkin Avenue to Jacks, looking for two-dollar sport coats, or tothe Knox Hat Shop, where rows of dark felt hats lay like corpses.I never remember my father wearing a hat, though. It was all partof his magic: the pompadoured hair, the high forehead. He didn'tneed a hat to pull anything out of. Some days we would walk intoa restaurant, and people would turn, as if they'd expected us. We'denter elevators, he would count to three and snap his fingers, andthe doors would close. How did he do it? One night, when I wasseven, we drove deep into Manhattan, parked, and came upon theUnion Carbide Building. Inside, there was an exhibit about atoms,chemistry, and power. A model of a uranium atom spun inside agreat blue plastic globe. It was like being taken on a tour of matter'svery heart, and I held his hand as if he were my Christmasghost flying me over unexpected streets.

I grew up longing to relive his skill. Once at a conference inthe 1980s, I turned the corner of a book exhibit with two graduatestudents in tow, only to find a champagne reception in progress fora newly minted author. We were all handed glasses as if we hadbeen expected, and I turned to my students and smiled. "Like howI did that?" There was the time, when I was teaching a freshmanseminar at Stanford, that I trooped the students into downtownPalo Alto for a final lunch, and before we could hit the restaurant,we were accosted by a famous TV anchor with a mike: what didwe think of the Starr Report? It was breaking news, and all thestudents spoke into the mike, on camera, with a poise that camefrom years of suburban assurance, and I said to them, when it wasover, "How many other teachers get you on TV?"

And then there was the night when I was eight when Dad failedto come home. Just months before, he had bought a new, silverFirebird convertible. We'd put the top down, cruise around, andput the top up (that was a day's play). He always said he couldnever afford that car, but he bought it anyway. It stood out likean open zipper on the dull street of my third grade. And then,one night, he did not come home. We went to bed. Mom wokeme up at six or seven in the morning to say that he'd been in abad accident, but he was fine. What happened? He had gone to ameeting—an investment club? a teacher's union thing? a templeboard group?—and when it was over, the car wouldn't start. Hehad called for a tow, was sitting on the hood smoking a cigarette,when something possessed him to get back inside. And then thecrash. A drunken driver, we were told, plowed into the parkedcar, with Dad inside it, sending the whole thing skittering downthe block, the emergency brake still on.

The car was totaled (the first time I'd heard that word). Nothingsalvageable. The next day, he went out and bought the dullest,most anonymous car he could find, a deep green Chevrolet Impala.And that summer, we drove to Boston in it.

Fifteen years later, after the divorce, we reconvened for mybrother's Princeton graduation. Mom and I sat there in a dormroom, waiting for Dad to pick us up and take us to the ceremony,and she opened up.

"That accident. Please. There was no meeting. It had been atryst. You know what he is. I knew it when we married. I broughthim home to meet my mother after we were in the Brooklyn Collegeproduction of Blithe Spirit together. She said to me, 'Whois this man who is an actor?' And at the wedding, Aunt Gussiecame up to me and said, 'You know, he's a fagelah.' Well, whatdid I care? I wanted to get out of that house, and he married me.My father was sick. God, how I still miss him. He sold chocolatesand smoked cigars. He taught himself to sing by listening to JohnMcCormack records. He loved to dance. Six weeks after I married,he was dead.

"To his credit, your father got me going after that. He forcedme to finish college, forced me to get that master's degree, shovedme out of the house to go to work. We had a good time, acting inthe plays at night and then going to the Garfield Restaurant forcheesecake. But then you were born, and then your brother, andeverything changed. He was never home. And when he was, hebrought his boys with him. The year you were born, he was teachinga ninth-grade class at Huddie Junior High, and all the kidschipped in and got you a blue blanket. I still have it. They wereyour first babysitters. Then they became his friends. It was fun atfirst, but after a while I knew what was going on and resented it.He'd bring home these men, now in their twenties, and I'd haveto make them dinner while they sat around, and I would have towatch them worship him. Him. A ninth-grade teacher.

"Here's what I think: one night he was going off to meet someone,and someone else had heard about it and they set out to gethim. Someone tried to kill him plowing into the parked car likethat. Maybe it was one of those boys, or an angry dad, or somebodyfrom school he made a pass at. It doesn't matter. I'm telling you,that's why we moved to Boston. How he got into Harvard is amystery to me. And the only way he got that degree was becausethe dean of the school, who saw right through your father, waskilled in a plane crash. So they had to give him the degree. Youwonder why he couldn't get a job back in New York? Everybodyknew.

"It was no better in Boston. Those families we spent those horribleThanksgivings with—do you think those kids knew abouttheir fathers? There was that Frenchman and his family, and everychance he got he'd hug Larry and say things like, 'I love you likea madman.' And then there was that Englishman who worked inthe local school system. Do you remember that big old house inCambridge? Dad loved that man because he had an accent andan eye patch. When he first introduced me to him, I thought helooked like Claude Rains. Your father probably thought so too.You and your brother and the other kids were upstairs watchingTV, and the four adults were downstairs, cleaning up the dishes,and their hands touched.

"We could have had a life in Boston, too, but your fathercouldn't let it go. He did get one job offer out of grad school, atthe school of education at Texas A&M. I remember he came backfrom the trip, and his advisor came to dinner: Dr. Hunt, a wonderfulman, a Texan, Eisenhower's assistant secretary of education,a decent, decent man. He turned to Larry and he said, 'If you goto College Station there will be a cross burning on your lawn thefirst night. Think of your children.' And Larry thought he wastalking about being Jewish.

"If you ask me, the only way he got that job in Pittsburgh washe slept his way into it.

"The man was a liar. And a terrible driver. I can't get into acar with him, the way he talks and tailgates and weaves around.Is he really going to pick us up? I'd rather walk. It's a miracle hehasn't died in a car."

He died in a hospital bed. He had gone in for heart-valve surgery,his voluble Argentinean surgeon assuring me that it was allroutine. My father introduced me in Yiddish as mein zindel, thesurgeon smiled and babbled something about nachas, yichas, andsachel. He shook my hand and six weeks later—after losing thirtypounds, after a regime of Coumadin, after two return visits to havehis heart restarted—my father checked himself into the emergencyroom with back pain and just stopped living on the gurney.

I found the hospital and parked illegally on a side street, went inat the first door I saw, and found a desk. "My father passed away.I'm here to see the body." The nurse looked at me, unfazed, as ifI were picking up my dry cleaning. She asked my name, got onthe phone, and soon directed me to a room in another wing. Anelevator, two hallways, a double door, and then a suite of roomsaround a nurse's station. I mentioned his name. "Are you hisbrother?" No, I'm his son. Now she looked at me as if I'd lied, butshe got up and walked me to the room, pulled back the curtain,and left me there.

He lay in the bed on his back, his mouth open, his skin thecolor of old parchment. It was as if they'd hooked a vacuumpump to his navel, drew the air out of him, and then left him onthe mattress.

The doctor came in, a full ten years younger than me, shaken,his collar unbuttoned and his tie loose. "I'm very sorry. He camein last night with back pain, and we thought it might have beena kidney infection, so we put him on an IV drip of antibiotics andrehydrated him, and let him sleep." Now, reading from the chart:"The nurse checked in on him at noon today, and he was readyto go home. But when she came back fifteen minutes later he wascyanotic, in respiratory failure, asystolic. He was carted withoutresponse, and we declared him at 12:20. Do you want some timewith him alone?"

I signed the forms and authorized an autopsy.

I walked out of the hospital and found my car. A sodden parkingticket stuck out from under the windshield wiper, and I toreit up. Now it was pouring rain, the San Francisco streets pitchedup like waterslides. I inched out of my illegal spot, turned up thehill, and drove to his apartment building.

When Dad moved to San Francisco six years earlier, he wanteda great address—a number and a street that, when he mentionedit to someone in a store or on the phone, would cause them togasp or smile and recognize him for the master that he'd hoped tobe. The same as when he got his Harvard EdD, he put "Dr. LawrenceLerer" on his checks and flew as "Dr. Lerer"—until oneday (he'd regaled me with the story), someone had a heart attackon a plane, and he was called up to assist. It was certainly a goodaddress: a 1930s, faux-Spanish apartment building on the cornerof Pacific Avenue and Fillmore Street. With its wrought-iron gate,its Mexican tile floor, and its arched mosaic lobby, it looked, atstreet level, like a set for a Zorro movie. But the apartments weretiny and unrenovated. His still had the 1930s kitchen, with a bigwhite porcelain sink and enameled stove; the living room had oldsash windows; and the bathroom had the black-and-white tile ofa chessboard. When I first saw the place, the day he moved in, Ithought—well, that's it, he's finally found a place that looks likewhere he grew up. I changed my mind, the year before he died,when I was watching local news on TV. There was the building,and a reporter, and a story about a couple who kept pit bulls intheir apartment, one of which had attacked another tenant, awoman in a same-sex relationship, and about how the wholebuilding was full of gay men and women and run like a privateclub.

(Continues...)

(Continues...)

Excerpted from PROSPERO'S SON by Seth Lerer. Copyright © 2013 by The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 022601441X
• ISBN 13: 9780226014418
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 176