Conclusion: The Turn to the Father in Autobiography

Summary

God the father, land of our fathers, forefathers, founding fathers all refer to an origin or source, to what generated us, to an authority. We fall into the paternal line. Patronymic as identity.

—Siri Hustvedt, ‘My Father Myself’

Between states of belonging and alienation, you try to keep afloat […] You lose your father and the city you love. You bring both back to life, summon both to a distant country your children know as home. You discover or create this longing for your dead father, and reconstruct a lost city for him and you to inhabit. In between, the city and your father have become so abstract that you panic and try to pin them down in words; but when they visit you in dreams, their corporeality, their aliveness startle you. […] So begins your impossible project.

—Kim Cheng Boey, Between Stations

He goes with his father to Newlands because sport - rugby in winter, cricket in summer - is the strongest surviving bond between them, and because it went through his heart like a knife, the first Saturday after his return to the country, to see his father put on his coat and without a word go off to Newlands like a lonely child. […] So he is cast back on his father, as his father is cast back on him. As they live together, so on Saturdays they take their pleasure together. That is the law of the family.

—J. M. Coetzee, Summertime