He's one of the reasons I'm part of the Hollywood writers' strike.
I don't need a cut of Netflix executives' stock compensation. What I need — what I demand — is that they treat me and the people I love as though our lives and labor are every bit as significant as theirs. |
 | | Hilary Swift for The New York Times |
|
James Salter said that "to write of someone thoroughly is to destroy them." As a novelist, I sense that he's right, and if he is, then I long ago completed the Oedipal duty of destroying my father, having written about him, directly and indirectly, in novels, stories and nonfiction pieces for decades. Yet for some reason I keep beating the ground the old man's buried in. |
Most recently, I took a switch to Dad's grave with a guest essay I wrote about the Hollywood writers' strike. Seems there's no topic I can't shoehorn him into, huh? What you're reading now is supposed to serve as an enticement to read that essay, but really, these words are meant as an apology and a clarification. |
In the piece, I use an incident from my father's life in which he was mistreated by corporations to argue that a labor strike is not principally a fight between two entities but rather an assertion of dignity by one entity — workers. I believe that, and I think he would have, too. The irony is that in doing this, I risk giving the impression that my father was a capital-V Victim, when he was anything but. |
Over the course of his life, my father was, as many of us are, victimized by all kinds of big impersonal systems — the Catholic Church, the U.S. military and, yes, a corporate culture that subsumes humanity under the exaltation of profit. But never once did these systems or the cowards who hide behind them break the man. He was bloodied, sure, but just as surely unbowed, as anyone who knew him would clamor to agree. |
At the end of the day, it was my father's unwavering example of a life lived with dignity that compels me, over and over, to write about him. And it's the reason that, like his, mine is a union household, and one unafraid to fight to have that dignity acknowledged and respected. |
| READ RON'S FULL ESSAY HERE | | |
Forward this newsletter to friends to share ideas and perspectives that will help inform their lives. They can sign up here. Do you have feedback? Email us at opiniontoday@nytimes.com. |
|
No comments:
Post a Comment