Marlon Bain’s letters (Fathers and Sons)
I was told that in the year leading up to his death Dr. Incandenza was abusing ethyl alcohol on a daily basis and was working on a whole new genre of film-cartridge that Orin at the time claimed was driving Dr. Inc insane.
Context
Bain on the dead father, and notice how little he actually holds: "I cannot help you too much," "I was told," "Orin at the time claimed." The man who founded the academy Bain grew up inside surfaces in this letter almost entirely as absence and hearsay — a daily drinker working on the thing that would kill him, and reaching us only through Orin, the son Bain has just spent pages calling an unreliable witness. The insight is that even the people who lived closest to the house can touch Himself only through rumor and through a son who couldn't see him straight: the father is a report, never a presence.