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‘An ad that pretends to be art is — at absolute best — like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you. This is dishonest, but what’s sinister is the cumulative effect that such dishonesty has on us: since it offers a perfect facsimile or simulacrum of goodwill without goodwill’s real spirit, it messes with our heads and eventually starts upping our defenses even in cases of genuine smiles and real art and true goodwill. It makes us feel confused and lonely and impotent and angry and scared. It causes despair.’

My father, who had flown in World War I, 
Might have continued to invest his life 
In cloud banks well above Wall Street and wife. 
But the race was run below, and the point was to win. 

Too late now, I make out in his blue gaze 
(Through the smoked glass of being thirty-six) 
The soul eclipsed by twin black pupils, sex 
And business; time was money in those days. 

Each thirteenth year he married. When he died 
There were already several chilled wives 
In sable orbit—rings, cars, permanent waves. 
We’d felt him warming up for a green bride. 

He could afford it. He was “in his prime” 
At three score ten. But money was not time.

(Source: madison-avenue1964)

Another way fathers impact sons is that sons, once their voices have changed in puberty, invariably answer the telephone with the same locutions and intonations as their fathers.
…

His way of answering the phone sounded like ‘Mmmyellow.’

‘I want to tell you,’ the voice on the phone said. ‘My head is filled with things to say.’

Hal held three pairs of E.T.A. sweatpants in the hand that didn’t hold the phone. He saw his older brother succumb to gravity and fall back limp against the pillows. Mario often sat up and fell back still asleep.

‘I don’t mind,’ Hal said softly. ‘I could wait forever.’

‘That’s what you think,’ the voice said. The connection was cut. It had been Orin.

‘Hey Hal?’

The light in the room was a creepy gray, a kind of nonlight. Hal could hear Brandt laughing at something Kenkle had said, off down the hall, and the clank of their janitorial buckets. The person on the phone had been O.

‘Hey Hal?’ Mario was awake. It took four pillows to support Mario’s oversized skull. His voice came from the tangled bedding. ‘Is it still dark out, or is it me?’

‘Go back to sleep. It isn’t even six.’ Hal put the good leg into the sweatpants first.

‘Who was it?’

Shoving three coverless Dunlop widebodies into the gear bag and zipping the bag partway up so the handles had room to stick out. Carrying all three bags back over to the console to deactivate the ringer on the phone. He said, ‘No one you know, I don’t think.’ 

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the combination best of times and worst of times