I Had A Father: A Post-modern Autobiography

by Clark Blaise

The author looks back on childhood and his relationship with his enigmatic father, and attempts to learn more about both his father and his family heritage

Genres: Memoir, Canada

204 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1994

About the author

Clark Blaise, OC (born 10 April 1940) is a Canadian author.
Born in Fargo, North Dakota, he currently lives in San Francisco, California. He has been married since 1963 to writer Bharati Mukherjee. They have two sons. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, Blaise was also the director of the International Writing Program. While living in Montreal in the early 1970s he joined with authors Raymond Fraser, Hugh Hood, John Metcalf and Ray Smith to form the celebrated Montreal Story Tellers Fiction Performance Group.
In 2009, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada "for his contributions to Canadian letters as an author, essayist, teacher, and founder of the post-graduate program in creative writing at Concordia University".

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a long time to get into this book, and to finish it, but I finally did get into it, and finish it. Former U of Iowa Writers Program faculty member Blaise writes about his father, a philanderer, a liar, not warm or personable, not a talker, and he pieces together a life from scraps of memory and pieces of information gleaned from others here and there. His father left his mother and married several other times, and Blaise didn't even know if he had siblings, who many of his step-relatives were at all… but he remained obsessed all of his life with his Dad and roots, and how it is he became a writer when his Dad almost gave him no information… A good writer writes this book Blaise called post-modern because the narrative is so sparse, so fragmented, so doesn't add up to anything like a biography.. it's more autobiography/memoir of a son at 52 in search of his father, constructing him and himself in the process. I didn't love this book but like the idea of it, of this fragmented process, and getting to know Daddy, not Daddy dearest, but Daddy who he happened to get, kind of, as in maybe he didn't get much of a father, though they did connect at different times…. and powerfully. His other raised him; why doesn't he write about her, she deserves the tribute! But that isn't the point; his father was a mystery to him, an enigma. Finally, there's quite a few insights into writing and family and identity in it.

[Caroline Barron · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I think our past never dies, and our future is forever claiming its place. I believe memory is but a form of futurity. My memories are pushing me forward. We are born whole, we fragment, but we try to re-compose."

In "I Had a Father" Clark Blaise tries to re-compose himself through discovering who his father really was: Romeo? Wife-beater? Furniture salesman? Boxer? Genius? Blaise is heartbreakingly honest about his feeling of being the wrong son for his father, his mixed-up cultural identity and his surprising experiences of racism as an adult, having married India-born American writer Bharati Mukherjee.

At times the descriptions of places and cultural landscapes within those places (Canada/Quebec and America mainly) drew my attention away from the story. However this did give me an insightful view of the cultural chasm between Quebec and the rest of Canada, which I hadn't know much about.

I discovered this book through Sven Birkerts' analysis of it in the brilliant "The Art of Time in Memoir".

[Dawn Davies · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty powerful book. This memoir is structured differently than most chronological memoirs. It reads "in pieces," as more of a collection of stand-alone essays than as a straight narrative. I like reading collections like this, ( heck, I wrote and published a collection like this in 2018) because you can see small themes, facts, or topics mentioned different ways in different chapters.

I love how he writes about Florida. He describes old Florida in the way that only a child raised there can pull off.

I don't feel like I know the father any more after reading, and the mystery of who he was wasn't satisfied for me, which may be deliberate, as I don't feel the author came to any real resolution about how to handle the emotions he is left with. I have legit respect for Clark Blaise and will happily look for more of his work.

[Joyce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clark Blais' reoccurring theme in all his writing is a sense of loss for home and overpowering guilt. He is an enigmatic man whom I met a few times at the UoT reading series. Have you ever known someone in conversation that gives you the distinct feeling he's laughing at you regardless of what you are talking about. One of those people who you're sure knows everything about life. That is Blais. One time he signed his book If I Were Me with a teasing 'don't start with Doggiestan..one of the stories in the book. Well!!