Summary of Susan Faludi's In the Darkroom

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 I was investigating my father, who had absconded from my life, in 2004. I was preparing an indictment, but I ended up as a witness myself. I was writing a book about my father, but he seemed pleased to be captured on the page.

#2 My father, who had always been a fan of Mitteleuropean royals, had decided to change his image. He had had enough of impersonating a macho aggressive man that he had never been. He had started going by the name Stefánie.

#3 I had no idea how my father could have such an extreme inclination to be alone. He had always been a force to be reckoned with, and I had always feared him.

#4 I was 14 years old when I joined the junior varsity track team. I had developed a preference for solo sports. My father insisted that I join him for track practice, which I did not want. He took pride in small scams, and he would often talk about it as if mid-conversation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822517950

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Insights on Susan Faludi's In the Darkroom

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I was investigating my father, who had absconded from my life, in 2004. I was preparing an indictment, but I ended up as a witness myself. I was writing a book about my father, but he seemed pleased to be captured on the page.

#2

My father, who had always been a fan of Mitteleuropean royals, had decided to change his image. He had had enough of impersonating a macho aggressive man that he had never been. He had started going by the name Stefánie.

#3

I had no idea how my father could have such an extreme inclination to be alone. He had always been a force to be reckoned with, and I had always feared him.

#4

I was 14 years old when I joined the junior varsity track team. I had developed a preference for solo sports. My father insisted that I join him for track practice, which I did not want. He took pride in small scams, and he would often talk about it as if mid-conversation.

#5

My father was a volunteer ambulance driver, and he would always rush to the scene of any accident. He would never look back, even when the police told him not to.

#6

My father was a paragon of the weekend man, always working on some sort of home project. He built a stereo and entertainment cabinet, a dog house and pen for our Hungarian vizsla, a shortwave radio, and a jungle gym.

#7

I was going to visit my father in Hungary in 2004. I had never met him, and I was afraid of how changed he would be. I was also afraid of the possibility that he would still be there, skulking beneath the dress.

#8

Malév Air #521 landed right on time at Budapest Ferihegy International Airport. As I waited by the baggage carousel, listening to the impenetrable language, I considered whether my father’s recent life represented a return or a departure.

#9

I had begun the list of questions the day I’d received the Changes e-mail with its picture gallery of Stefánie. I had to look up my father’s number in an old address book.

#10

My father had always operated on two modes: either he said nothing, or he was a wall of words, a sudden torrent of verbiage on the most impersonally procedural of topics. I had to stop trying to cut through his verbal eruption and just listen.

#11

I was greeted by my father’s ex-wife, who was now a woman, at the airport. We exchanged an awkward hug. Her breasts seemed to me less bosom than battlement. I wondered at my own inflexibility.

#12

After 27 years, I met my father in an airport parking lot. He was driving a VW California Exclusive, which he had bought new in Germany. It was the biggest model they made. He had a doll-sized kitchenette, a