Stefanie I like that connection you made! From what little I know of DQ I would say that it is fitting. I was very moved by the father because he really was in his own world. And, I’m still curious why Adela of all of the people in the house was the one who would try to thwart him.

I’m curious about Adela too—I noticed that the very first page of the book compares her to Pomona ("On those luminous mornings Adela returned from the market, like Pomona emerging from the flames of day"), and I looked Pomona up and found she is a goddess of fruit trees, gardens, and orchards.  Wikipedia says she is associated with the blossoming of trees and with abundance, and also known for carrying a pruning knife.  So—what to make of this?  I’m not entirely sure; I suppose if she is associated with abundance and with fertility and growth, she is in opposition to the father’s insanity and impotence (of mind)?  This casts the father in a more negative light.  But maybe the best way to see it is as a conflict—a conflict the boy is experiencing—between the new life Adela offers (clearing out or pruning away the old) and the loyalty he feels toward his father.

The DQ comparison is interesting. Don Quixote is self-deluded, everyone knows him to be such, but still they are drawn into his plans and quests, and even enable him. I’m not sure the father in Streets is self-deluded — it’s the boy who makes his father mythic. Nor do I think he’s being enabled — certainly Adela fights against that. It’s true, however, that they’re both made out to be larger than life.

It’s my understanding that Adela is a servant, not family. As an outsider, I think she’s the only one equipped to “thwart” him—she sees him more objectively, her perception isn’t coloured to the same extent by his emotional role as father or husband. (Don’t we let love or family bonds excuse our relations’ foibles?)

The boy does contrast them—Adela’s earthiness, firmly grounded in reality, whereas Father has something of the life of the mind, the esoteric. It’s not exactly an either/or, indeed the boy/narrator puts these elements in balance by the language and images he uses.

But there is always the question in DQ, at least there was for me, if he was self-deluded or truly mad. I found myself wondering the same thing about the father here. You are right, the family here does not enable the father, they just ignore him. I understood Adela to be a servant too. I see her as sort of comparable to the priest figure in DQ. Admittedly it isn’t an exact comparison between the two books, but the father for me represents imagination and dreams as he attempts, heroically, to lift the family out of the mundane boredom of the everyday. Perhaps a similarity in spirit is what I see.

Stop on over at my blog to vote on the next Slaves of Golconda read—you can vote here

Hi.  I haven’t read Bruno Schulz but I did read Ozick’s The Messiah last year.  I found it just about perfect.  Highly recommended.