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It is invigorating to fight one’s stepfather, if the fight is just, but the victory doesn’t bring as much treasure as a battle with one’s father. A son says: “He looks like me. And so I win some battles with myself if I win a battle with him.” Yet even to start it, even to shout about an injustice, makes the son feel that an event has taken place. When the son fights his own father, tells him to go to hell, rages at him, something is accomplished by the act no matter what the father says back to him. The son still wins. He said the brave thing, did the brave thing, and the self-assertion toward his father helps center all his life.
-- Robert Bly
painter
John Currin and
son
novelist Mickey Spillane and son
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