Anthony Robinson, in conversation with Tad Wise Father of the Man

The sons of famous men are notoriously hobbled by their fathers’ reputations. This was not the case, however, here in Woodstock, when one of The Maverick’s first writers, the struggling poet Henry Morton Robinson, emerged into literary stardom with a “book of the year novel” in 1950 entitled, “The Cardinal.” The reason being his only son Anthony Robinson failed to be intimidated by his father’s brief if spectacular career. ( Robinson, Sr, died at 61 and is remembered today more for his classic collaboration with Joseph Campbell : “A Skeleton Key To Finnegan’s Wake.”)

Instead a tenacious Anthony Robinson would himself write several admired novels and short stories, while becoming a local favorite professor of English Literature and director of the Creative Writing department at SUNY New Paltz. Even so, Tad Wise argues that the son of Henry Morton Robinson has– late in his own life—left us perhaps his most remarkable portrait by recalling his own boyhood “on the Maverick,” while yes, reproducing with uncanny accuracy and sympathy the vastly different experiences of a father and son, locked in a struggle rife with anger, resentments, begrudging love, and hard-won respect.

In Father of The Man, the younger Robinson, in fact, emulates a completely different set of mid-century American writers and—while including his own classic friendship with Maverick founder Hervey White—makes an impressive contribution to the Coming of Age American novel.

Wise will interview Robinson on…