On fathers, you really should read Le Carre’s A Perfect Spy - it’s clear that a lot of the driving force for this fine genre writer came from his relations with his father. Really puts you in mind of that Larkin poem (”They fuck you up, your mum and dad …”).

But of course for a daughter these things are problematic in a quite different way.

I’d think of it more as new journalism but as it’s a memoir maybe that doesn’t apply.

How do you interrogate stable narritives of identity and memory? You can say ‘hey they’re just an illusion’. But interrogate? Where were you last Saturday night, narrative?

Foucault wrote about the relationship between the structure of knowledge and the use of power. Why he’s so often cited in discussions about the creative arts is beyond me. He didn’t contribute much there.

Derrida ? What I said about postmodernism goes double for deconstruction.

Deleuze? Haven’t had the pleasure. After I graduated I didn’t want to read any philosophy unless the writer’d been dead for at least a hundred years.

Delillo? That’s what they say. Who cares, he rocks.

Nice piece tho’. Interesting character your dad.