sympathy for Marcel's Pa

Sympathy for Marcel’s father

We know the story, which is the story of why the story always shatters, never self-organizes, never closes on itself, never is the story. Marcel, an anxious child, can only truly calm his pacing heart and asthmatic and insomniac spasms by being kissed by Mama before bedtime. Of course, the real milk and honey would be Mama spending the whole night on a cot besides him as he sleeps. But the fly in the milk and honey is Papa, who operates as a ‘suppressor’, or so the Scientologists say (knowledge I have garnered from the tres disappointing sketch of Tom Cruise in last month’s Vanity Fair), and frowns at the codlings. Last night, advocating for the wee little pea to remain on his little foam wee little pea ship, instead of being borne by A. as we watched the first episode of Homeland that we had just downloaded, I had a flash of sympathy for Marcel’s pa. Surely he was thinking that Marcel would be much better off if he didn’t get milk and honey every time. And maybe Marcel would have toughened up – maybe, if his father had prevailed, he would have grown up to introduce the noir detective into France, writing sentences like: ‘And then I hit him with the butt end of the pistol. He seemed to want to protest, but with the scarf stuffed in his mouth, his words weren’t too clear to me.” --- instead of, well, choose your own favorite oceanic outpouring.

So it goes. Us father’s mean well.