Our Fatherless World

Dave Eggers’s latest novel takes its lengthy title from the prophet Zechariah: Your Fathers, where are they? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? The novel is inverted Kafka, as if K. had been able to tie down his interrogators and depose them. 

Thomas, a disturbed and disappointed young man, kidnaps several people and holds them at Fort Orb to question them about what’s gone wrong with the world. Hard work doesn’t guarantee success anymore; the young are not inspired by great national causes; cops kill, cover up and get away with it; the people who make the rules keep changing the rules; we can’t fix the schools or send a man to Mars, but we can spend billions on both. “The vast majority of the chaos in the world is caused by a relatively small group of disappointed men.” 

It’s a familiar litany, but Eggers penetrates to a common thread. As the title suggests, many of the young grow up in a fatherless world. No one protects or inspires the young. Thomas was raised by his addict mother, and is mourning the death of his friend Don, also raised by a single Mom. Teachers mimic students instead of guiding them. Pedophiles prey on children from broken homes. Old men send young men to their deaths on the other side of the world. 

Eggers device wears thin, and after a few chapters one begins to wonder at the decision to put the prophetic word in the mouth of a deranged loser who blames the world for his failures. The prophecy itself begins to sound deranged. The book is saved by one character who listens sympathetically to Thomas. Late in the book, Thomas says, “You’re like a father to me.”

The novel contains some passionate and incisive passages, and I suspect it really does give voice to the frustrations of a generation. Frustrations to which we “fathers” should pay attention.

And there are some hilarious moments, such as this exchange between Thomas and his “father” figure. Thomas is speaking first:

“-When I see these massacres at malls or offices, I think, There by the Lake of God go I.

-Grace of God.

-What’s that?

-It’s ‘There but for the grace of God.’

-No. It’s ‘there by the lake of God.’

-It’s ‘grace of God.’

-It can’t be.

-Son. It is.

-I’ve always had this picture in my mind of the Lake of God. And you walk by it.

-There’s no Lake of God.

-It was like this huge underground lake, and it was dark and cool and peaceful and you could go there and float there and be forgiven.

-I don’t know what to tell you, son. I’ve been teaching the Bible for thirty-eight years and there is no Lake of God in that book. There’s a Lake of Fire, but I don’t think that’s the place you’re picturing. . . . You got your lakes confused.”