Re: Bessie and Les
Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Sat, 27 Jun 1998 00:38:39 -0400
> Uhm, perhaps this is a question with a common and popular answer, but as a
> relatively new reader, I'd like to ask if there was a particular reason why
> the Glass kids called their parents by their first names instead of "mother"
> and "father", or rather, more often than. My guess is it's due to the family
> being so public and all of them being performers of some sort. Anyone,
>please?
I've always seen it as a mark of their precocious and capital-s
Sophisticated Urbane Syndrome. You get a house full of enfants terribles
and stick 'em here in New York, and that's one of the results. (How about
people who grew up elsewhere? Did you have one or two irritating families
in which the kids were encouraged to call their parents by their first
names?)
I don't mean that the Glass kids were irritating -- I love watching Zooey
joust with his mother -- but it was awfully annoying to be around the one
or two "progressive" families I grew up with, to watch the parents treat
the children as peers. It may have been noble as a way of raising kids,
but it didn't yield such good results in my neighborhood.
And sure, I'd say that the show-biz and vaudeville spirit helped create an
atmosphere where calling their parents "Les and Bessie" were perfectly in
tune with kids in the Glass household.
--tim o'connor