SOURCE: Forester, John. “Father's Tales.” American Scholar 66 (autumn 1997): 533-45.

In the following essay, Forester's son reminisces about his father's often self-absorbed behavior.

My father, author of Captain Horatio Hornblower and other novels, was a storyteller, and I started reading his books when I was seven. He spent part of most mornings at the desk in his study, a ground-floor room that looked onto the front garden of our house in suburban London, and when he was in there all the household had to be quiet. No vacuuming, no loud shouting, not while Father was working. However, one morning I found him writing in three books spread out on the dining room table, each one held open by other books resting on the margins of the pages. He was marking the books with his pen, a desecration I had never seen him commit before. In our house, you never...