So you see, my child, you were born into a divine conflict. Although you’ll be raised to think you live in a monotheistic community of faith, it isn’t so. There are countless other gods besides HIM, the ONLY god who keeps the whole shebang going, among them the god of the toothpick Eiffel Tower builders. And his clergy is also supported by the community; he too is given credit. Above all, you yourself will give your father credit. He is a high priest of the idle deity PLAY, one of those who invent their world in play: a WRITER. Now, how shall he present himself to you as such? You’ll have to tiptoe so as not to disturb him in his sacred “work.” And if you peek through the keyhole into the room where he has withdrawn as if into the holy of holies of his high priesthood, you’ll see him lying on the couch, smoking and staring at the ceiling if he hasn’t already closed his eyes and fallen asleep. It can also happen that you’ll hear him pounding on his typewriter like a wild man, and then—alas!—that all too rare flow of words will be dismayingly interrupted by the grinding sound of the page being torn from the roller and the crunch as it’s balled up and tossed on the floor. You’ll fear the stillness that follows, fear your pretty mother’s pallor. Haggard and disheveled, he—your father—will appear at the door, make a beeline for the bottle of cognac in the liquor cabinet, pour himself a drinking glass full, and down it in one swallow—

and although your mother will roll her eyes to the Savior above the ceiling, she’s so much under the spell of the myth of the work ethic, she’ll take just such a ostentatious performance of a so-called creative crisis as the occasion to compensate her for her disappointment in a husband without a steady income and benefits with the hope she places in his power as a creative artist. She will doubt him, but she’s too proud to admit that she was mistaken about him. But you’re going to feel like throwing up. You’re going to see through the false myth. Your father is nothing but a swindler. A confidence man. He may court you as other fathers court their sons. He may hold your hand and take you to Hagenbeck Zoo or rent a rowboat and go rowing on the Alster with you like a cabinetmaker locksmith carpenter lathe operator father with his son. You’ll take it as your due and know that your father is a parasite on the world by making a promise he can’t keep. (Why, oh why aren’t you Karl Nagel’s son!) You will see it in the eyes of your parents’ friends, relatives, and acquaintances that they don’t believe in his creative power any more than you do, although they also pretend that if—against all expectations—his promise should actually be realized, they will see therein the culmination and fulfillment of the myth of creativity: mythic, although useless. It would be the birth of a book! (Of which there are a few hundred thousand a year.) But you would know that your father is a swindler. And if they said, “What a great man!” an inner voice would say to you, “Yes, but unfortunately all too much a man!” Especially when he falls short.