Customer Reviews

Misgivings: My Mother, My Father, Myself

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This spare, 170-page prose work is not a memoir in the usual sense of the word: it is a collection of visceral memories, some extended, some quite brief, all of which hinge on the author/poet's intensely felt relationship with his mother and father. A wide-ranging portrait of a mid-century East Coast Jewish family, Williams calls his work an "autobiographical meditation." I began reading quite skeptically, wondering why a man of age 63 would still be so caught up with family issues -- especially his unblinking descriptions of his long-dead parents' worst characteristics. But as I proceeded, I was surprised to find this seemingly self-centered meditation seeping into the musty recesses of my own memory and experience. His language is burnished to a luster; he can conjure memories of a child's-eye view from the top of a see-saw or a momentary parental rage that has stayed with you over decades. Thus I came to find the work transformative; persuasive in the way that a poem can take you somewhere you weren't planning to go. I am going to recommend "Misgivings" to all my grown-up men friends.

C.K. Williams explores the unbreakable bonds between parent and child, in this most intimate book. Each chapter presents a scene, and a memory or observation. And those scenes tell a story of a father-son relationship rife with turmoil and misunderstanding.

Many will be able to relate to a complicated parent such as Williams father. The author notes (p.7) that there were years when his father treated his wife and children as employees, or worse. "He tormented all of us, sometimes by his criticism, by the way he had of letting you know you weren't meeting his expectations, sometimes by his inscrutability and unpredictability, you had no idea from one day to the next how he'd respond to you..."

Williams plumbs the depth of memory- the indelible hold that parents have on their children's psyche's long after their passing from the earth. He examines the ways in which he became like his parents.

"I have my mother's tendency to brood on causes, her passion to find reasons, and though I don't like having to say so, her need to lay blame. From my father the urge to despise and dismiss anything that doesn't meet my expectations" (p.130).

Williams then questions whether these tendencies were absorbed by having them taught to him, or somehow embedded deep within his genetic makeup. Aren't these questions we have all asked ourselves at one time or another?

And on his father's death, (p.168) Williams writes of forgiveness:

"Perhaps forgiveness is a process more than an emotion, perhaps it's meant to make us discover those other conditions within ourselves, love, belief in love, to which forgiveness itself is incidental: perhaps forgiveness once accomplished becomes a condition of existence, a reality as ineluctable as our physical and mental being."

I found this to be a book to be read when in a reflective, melancholy mood. It is deep, poignant and cerebral. I have returned to it at times, when thoughts of my own parents welled up. It honors that most monumental of ties, says much about the grieving process, and the ways we can understand, come to terms with, and in some instances, overcome our heritage.