Literary Fathers and Sons

There are plenty of novels about fathers and sons; our catalog boasts 1,339 entries under the subject “fathers and sons – fiction.”  There are many excellent father-son memoirs too, including my own favorites: Fathering Words, poet E. Ethelbert Miller’s eloquent account of the speaking silences between he and his father; The Next Better Place, Michael Keith’s unforgettable account of running away from home, together with his deadbeat dad; and Nick Flynn’s inventive and disarming Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, in which the author is helping out in a homeless shelter when in walks his long lost pa.

No matter how contentious the paternal relationship can be, many fathers and sons sit peacefully enough alongside each other on our library shelves. Here are some of our favorite father and son writing duos:

Creepiest: Stephen King and Joe Hill. King is so weirdly prolific it is almost a surprise that he took time away from writing to make offspring, but it seems to have paid off for fans: his son Joe is an original and entirely disconcerting new voice in horror.

Most continuous: Arthur Waugh, sons Evelyn and Alec, grandson Auberon, and great grandson Alexander. Of course Evelyn’s the star of the family, but let’s not forget his son Auberon founded the Bad Sex in Fiction Prize. You can read about them all in Alexander’s memoir, Fathers and Sons: the autobiography of a family.

Wittiest: Kingsley Amis and Martin Amis. Both immensely talented and devastatingly funny: Kingsley’s Lucky Jim is easily one of the most hilarious books ever written; Martin’s The Information is a worthy successor.

Most confusing: Alexander Dumas père, and Alexandre Dumas, fils. It may be I only feel this way because our own library catalog doesn’t distinguish between the father, author of such perennial favorites as The Three Musketeers and The Man in the Iron Mask, and his son, who wrote La Dame Aux Camelias, known to the opera world as La Traviata.

Drollest: William F. Buckley and Christopher Buckley. The eloquent wit, the jaundiced eye, the dry withering delivery, they are like mirror images reversed: the political high pundit with a devilish wit begat a humorist with a political spine. See the Buckleys each meet their match in a mock version of Firing Line: regardless of your politics, their banter is priceless.

Most Cheeveresque: John Updike and David Updike. No, just kidding: that would be John Cheever and his son Benjamin Cheever, whose novels The Plagiarist and The Partisan both explore sons struggling under the shadow of famous literary fathers.

Do you have any favorite literary fathers and sons to share?