Sins of the critic?

I've been digging through a pile of New Yorkers, looking for stuff worth reading, and I came across James Wood's review of memoirs by the kids of famous American white male authors which focus on their dads:  Susan Cheever, Janna Malamud Smith, Alexandra Styron, and Greg Bellow.

According to Wood, Cheever, Malamud Smith, and Styron all basically offer up exculpatory narratives:   dad was in one way or another caught up in his own greatness and a difficult person, but it's OK in the end because he was a great writer and that's what he was put on this earth for, that was his calling, and he preferred to live sub specie aeternitatis than to focus on his kids. Wood is down with that.

But he devotes most of his review to ragging on Bellow, who was really angry at his dad.  And I get that, several hundred pages of somebody excavating the grievous misdeeds of their parent for all kinds of perceived ills gets old.  But it also got old in the review, and I had to ask myself, why is Wood -- who has been called the greatest living literary critic and who basically lives the dream as Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard, contributor to the New Yorker, and who knows what other cool stuff -- so focused on this, and why does he need to defend Saul Bellow against his son with such gusto?  I kept reading, really, only to try to figure that out.

And I had to wonder, is Wood being defensive because someone has accused him of being a bad parent, or because of guilt in thinking that he might be?  Or has someone leveled the same charge at his wife, Claire Messud, who is herself an extremely and justifiably successful novelist and -- as someone who I went to college with and of whom I remain fond, though I haven't seen her for years -- is someone that I just can't see being a bad parent.  Don't get me wrong, I get the guilt part.  I feel a little guilty that I'm up here writing now and not down doing something with Graham or the rather reclusive Natalie.

Ultimately, we all have to make choices in how we allocate our time.  Do we strive to be "great" and see our names reflected in lights and in the broader swoop of history, or do we focus down on the young people we bring into the world, should we choose to breed?  It ain't an easy question.  And it's a loaded one for me, as someone who's dad drifted off when he was about my age and tried to carve out his own path as a poet and really craved the recognition of the value of his art from others, though he could never figure out or acquiesce to the stark realities of the blocking and tackling it would take to actually gain wider acceptance.

It's a tough one for me.  I think about focusing on my writing, now and again.  But the fact is, Natalie needs braces and we need to upgrade our HVAC ductwork in the basement, and I'm pretty much signed on for the parent thing.  Time to go shoot some hoops across the street with Graham. Maybe go buy some new sneakers.  And trim his hair around the ears.