In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know, Colm Tóibín (Brooklyn) focuses on how strained father-son relationships affected the art of Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats and James Joyce.
Oscar Wilde's exaggerated notions of class and talent were derived from Sir William Wilde's successes and unconventional life as a medical doctor and amateur anthropologist. Whereas scandal left Sir William unscathed, Oscar's life was destroyed by scandal and the inherited excesses of his parents, as documented in his prison memoir, De Profundis.
William Butler Yeats had the opposite experience. John B. Yeats, an artist and "the great talker," never finished a portrait that he started, yet the elder Yeats's letter-writing carried shades of genius found in his poet son's prolific output.
James Joyce suffered the most difficult childhood of the three, but he idolized his abusive and alcoholic father the most. Joyce immortalized John Stanislaus Joyce in the character of Simon Daedalus in The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Tóibín injects his essays here, originally delivered as lectures at Emory University in November 2017, with personal intimacy. He ties his experience on the streets of Dublin and as a student at Trinity College to the Wildes, Yeatses and Joyces. The artistic accomplishments of the sons may have outstripped those of their fathers, even as the younger ones revered and grudgingly sought the elders' attentions.
"In the world of sons then, fathers became ghosts and shadows and fictions. They live in memories and letters, becoming more complex, fulfilling their sons' needs as artists, standing out of the way." --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant