SHOOTOUT WITH FATHER

Hauser — an author still at work in her 90s — writes with pathos and irony. In this stinging novella charged with oedipal conflict, an artist named James does psychic battle with his aging father, a CEO and armor collector. When Father attends one of James’ openings for the first time and sees what he contemptuously calls ”my son’s…er…objets d’art,” James is both grateful and humiliated. But through his father’s letters to his mother, James gets an unprecedented view of the old man, whose botched boyhood dreams and thwarted homosexuality made him the empty shell he is.