The book is where dad is

Simrita Dhir

Caddy got the box and set it on the floor and opened it. It was full of stars. When I was still, they were still. When I moved, they glinted and sparkled — William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury.

As a curious lover of literature, my father read and re-read books through childhood into teenage and adulthood. By the time he had hit his mid-twenties, he was vastly well read. And when it came time to select a book to critique for his doctoral dissertation, he narrowed down on one of the most complex novels ever written — Nobel Laureate William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. The novel has since become the much-loved thread in the fabric of our family narrative.

I took a dive into the novel, a little prematurely while still in my teens, the old American South, Harvard College and the River Charles springing alive in my mind, the many narrators in the story jumping to whisper to me, twirling around in time. On stepping into my 20s, I re-read it. And then, as chance would have it, in 2004, I came to visit Faulkner’s home in New Orleans. It now houses the Faulkner House Books, lauded by writers and collectors as America’s most charming bookstore.

Strolling through the bookstore aisles, the Mississippi river rippling along to gurgle in my mind, I reflected on my father’s almost obsessive preoccupation with Faulkner at a seminal time during the formation of his adult consciousness and how that contributed in subtle and not so subtle ways, to the making of the man and the father that he became — intense, questioning, cautious and always compassionate.

The morning that I spent in that quaint bookstore is running vividly through my mind this Father’s Day. I have already pulled out my copy of Faulkner’s book to delve into it again. Among the many things that my father gifted me, I cherish the love for that book.

Gazing at the book cover, many questions pop up in my mind: How well does the master storyteller hold his ground 50 years after his death? Somehow, it seems like a good question to be thinking about — the answer to which doesn’t really elicit much thinking.

I would like to believe that like a thoughtful father, Faulkner continues to inspire fortitude in the face of oppression, evoking a mindful revolution to fight against limitations of self, gender, class and race.

Even as I come up with that answer, I can see my father smiling. A father is a stream of thought, rising and ebbing in the mind, across miles and over oceans, a novel sitting right at the centre of it all. Like a spark that jumps the gap between generations, a timeless novel can connect hearts, forge bonds. Similar to the influence of a loving father, its impact is serious and significant, reverberating through time and memory, evoking reverence for the past and gratitude for the present.