Tag Archives: The Godfather

Lessons From Literary Dads

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there! Don’t forget to tell a #DadJoke today.

What happened when two slices of bread went on a date? It was loaf at first sight.

Thank you! Tip your server on the way out.

Which brings me to four literary dads and what we can learn from them.

Atticus Finch

At the top of the list is, of course, Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird. A widower, Atticus is faced with the prospect of raising two young children without a mother. His daughter, Scout, presents a particular problem. She has budding prejudices as the result of her social environment, the deep South of the 1930s. She also likes to solve her disputes with boys by beating them up.

His greatest challenge is the heart of the book. It’s when he is asked by a local judge to undertake the defense of Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white girl. Atticus takes the case, knowing he is going to lose. So why does he do it? He tries to explain it to Scout:

“Scout,” said Atticus, “when summer comes you’ll have to keep your head about far worse things…it’s not fair for you and Jem, I know that, but sometimes we have to make the best of things, and the way we conduct ourselves when the chips are down – well, all I can say is, when you and Jem are grown, maybe you’ll look back on this with some compassion and some feeling that I didn’t let you down. This case, Tom Robinson’s case, is something that goes to the essence of a man’s conscience – Scout, I couldn’t go to church and worship God if I didn’t try to help that man.”

Lesson: Live by the higher ideals, even if they fail in some circumstances, or any hope for civilization crumbles.

Daniel Peggotty

In David Copperfield, Daniel Peggotty offers a crucial counterpoint to David’s cold-hearted stepfather, Mr. Murdstone, as well as the odious and oily Uriah Heep (one of the best character names ever). Daniel’s love and loyalty to his family is the epitome of paternal virtue. He is the brother of David’s beloved nurse, Clara Peggotty, and happily welcomes young David into his home, treating him as he would a family member.

In particular, his devotion to his niece, Little Em’ly, results in a sacrificial quest to save her after she runs away with James Steerforth. He declares, “I’m a going to seek her, fur and wide. If any hurt should come to me, remember that the last words I left for her was, ‘My unchanged love is with my darling child, and I forgive her!’”

Lesson: A father protects his family, no matter the cost.

Vito Corleone

Wait, what? Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather? He’s the opposite of Atticus Finch, operating on the wrong side of the law. He has murdered and ordered murders. Now as he ages, he knows the future of his family is in the hands of his youngest son, Michael. Here he is, warning Michael of an impending attempt on his life…and sharing his sadness at Michael’s fate.

So why do we care at all about Vito Corleone? He’s the head of a crime family, for crying out loud. I think there’s a literary secret here. You can pull for a character who is not entirely good if, within the story context, he is “better” than the other bad people around him. In the case of The Godfather, Vito has refused to partner with another Mafia family in the drug trade. This leads to his attempted assassination. Thus, Michael’s revenge is understandable within that story world.

Lesson: You can love your children, but crime still doesn’t pay.

King Lear

Boy, what a bad dad. Which shows us we can learn from the negative (the raison d’etre of tragedy).

Lear is the opposite of Daniel Peggotty. Instead of familial loyalty to all three of his daughters, he rewards vain flattery and punishes the one daughter who expresses love, Cordelia. It isn’t long before the other daughters, Goneril and Regan, conspire to strip him of his power. He’s left a wandering lunatic, and runs for Congress. (I may be misinterpreting that last point.)

Lesson: Pride goeth before a fall. So, despite what TikTok says, life is not all about you.

In the immortal words of Graham Nash, we must “have a code that you can live by/And so, become yourself.” Nash wrote movingly about the inspiration for this song:

The origin of the song came from my recent infatuation with art. I had begun collecting photographs around that time, powerful images that had an emotional effect on me. One, in particular, was a Diane Arbus image of a boy in Central Park. It spoke volumes to me. The kid was only about nine or ten years old, but his expression bristled with intense anger. He had a plastic grenade clenched in a fist, but it seemed to me that if it were real the kid would have thrown it. The consequences it implied startled me. I thought, “If we don’t start teaching our kids a better way of dealing with each other, humanity will never succeed.”

Enjoy your day, dads. You matter.

Write, and Live Forever

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Embed from Getty Images

Growing up in SoCal I was privileged to meet Ray Bradbury on a couple of occasions and hear him speak several times. He loved libraries, and one evening spoke at the local branch were I first learned to love books.

There he told his famous story about a meeting that changed his life. As he recounted:

One autumn weekend in 1932, when I was twelve years old, the Dill Brothers Combined Shows came to town. One of the performers was Mr. Electrico. He sat in an electric chair. A stagehand pulled a switch and he was charged with fifty thousand volts of pure electricity. Lightning flashed in his eyes and his hair stood on end….He reached out with his sword and touched everyone in the front row, boys and girls, men and women, with the electricity that sizzled from the sword. When he came to me, he touched me on the brow, and on the nose, and on the chin, and he said to me, in a whisper, “Live forever.” And I decided to.

And Bradbury does live forever…through his books! His wonderful body of work will always be there to be discovered by new generations of readers. In junior high I read The Illustrated Man. It fired me up to think that perhaps someday I could write things this marvelous. In college that desire got knocked out of me by some who looked at my attempts and sniffed and told me you cannot learn to become a writer. You either have it or you don’t, and I didn’t.

Only many years later did that desire re-emerge, and I knew I had to try and keep trying.

Bradbury’s work was still pulsating inside me, like electricity. I picked up his book, Zen in the Art of Writing, and the current got hotter. I started living forever.

We have various reasons we write. Of course, we all want to make some dough, but there are other reasons, not the least of which is the pure joy of storytelling.

And for others (like Mr. Steve Hooley) there is the desire to leave a legacy for our children and grandchildren.

When I started to get published, I knew I wanted to write books that my kids could someday look at and not be embarrassed. Or think, Dad wrote THAT???

One of the joys of being an indie writer is that my forever books become available within 24 hours of completion (meaning done, edited, corrected, proofread and with a good cover).

But one of the challenges of being an indie writer, especially for the impatient, is putting out a book, as Orson Welles used to say about wine, “before its time.”

I recall reading a piece by an early indie pioneer who posited that maybe the idea is to be fast and not worry about top quality. To wit:

Why write longer? Why write better? What’s the benefit?…Now, I’m not talking about releasing a book with errors in it; plot problems, story problems, typos, formatting probs, and so on…I’m talking about releasing a book that would average 3.7 stars from readers, whereas if I spent an extra month on it, I could average 4.2. Seems like a gigantic waste of time.

Admittedly this was a thought experiment, and presented a rational argument. I thought about it for awhile. Then decided I couldn’t do it. For me, the extra time is worth it because…living forever!

It’s like the corpse of Sonny Corleone, shot up at the toll booth. Don Corleone has the body taken to the undertaker, Bonasera. As the Don looks at the body, he begins to weep. “Look how they massacred my boy.” He wants Bonasera to use all of his powers and skills to make the body look presentable for Sonny’s mother.

Now, this metaphor is not perfect. I don’t produce corpses upon first draft (at least I hope not!) But I do want to use all of my powers and skills to make my books the best they can be. They will be here long after I’ve gone to my Final Review.

Do you think about that when you write? What your books will mean to others—especially those close to you—after you’ve gone? Do you have legacy in mind? Perhaps not, which is okay. I’m not advocating any one position. Let’s talk about it.