Well I'm 80% of the way through "Townie" which translates to about

280 pages (the Kindle doesn't have page numbers only locations & percent complete odometer). DubusIII has managed to get himself out of the bar fighter mode and into the story writer mode, and has just reached the point where "Pop" is mangled up on route 495. Here's what amazes me about this memoir so far. Dubus Junior ("Pop" the highly respected fiction writer, the "Writer's writer") has figured more & more over the course of the narrative, and that's understandable since a big chunk of most men's coming of age is coming to terms with our fathers - their absence, or shortcoming, or the pain their presence caused, how their presence or absence, words or silences drive us to be or not be certain things or ways. But here's the puzzlement: Dubus Junior ("pere" that is) is VERY clearly a latter-day Hemingway knockoff, what with the outback hats and the guns and the womanizing and the drinking and the general "true balls" ethic. But Himself ("Papa") has not been mentioned a single time, not as an influence on "Pop" personally nor as a writer, but the omission is glaring and can't help but be anything other than purposeful and intentional. I will not believe that the parallels aren't there, and haven't been noted. Artistically, I wouldn't put either of them in the same pew as Hemingway (and that's not disparagement, believe me). I just find it odd that such a GLARING parallel hasn't found its way into the narrative or ruminations thereon. Maybe AD fils doesn't know from "Papa" or else doesn't see him in "Pop." I dunno. Doesn't ring true there, somehow.