儿子与母亲：一位作家母亲的遗产

My mother devoted her life to teaching writers. Becoming one meant escaping the story she had written for me. BY GEORGE PACKER PHOTOGRAPHS BY AMY ELKINS 1. When I was 13, not long after my father had committed suicide, I asked my mother, “What’s the Oedipus complex?” “Why?” she replied at once. “Are you afraid you’ve got it?” Maybe. I wasn’t aware of wanting to murder my father, but in the four years after he suffered a massive stroke at 43, he’d been a volatile presence in our house, given to bursts of rage and tears, or rendered ominously mute by his paralysis. …