Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 15, 1995 TAG: 9504170036
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Take Brian Staples, brother of author Brent Staples of last year's popular "Parallel Time.''
``I was angered by it,'' said Brian, whose alleged early drug abuse is graphically described by his brother at one point in "Parallel Time." The author, by his own account, also used drugs.
``I felt betrayed by the book,`` Brian said. ``As beautiful a writer as he is, he did not have to choose that subject matter. This did not help any of us feel any better about ourselves.''
It was Thursday evening, at the Melrose Branch of the Roanoke city library.
And the family of Brent Staples - the New York Times editorial writer whose recollection of a childhood marked by violence, drugs and an alcoholic father received wide publicity last year - had come together to talk about his book. Published in 1994, ``Parallel Time,'' is due out soon in paperback.
The discussion was the first in a series of talks on relationships written about in books, said Becky Cooper, the library's manager. She said Brent Staples had expressed an interest in coming himself, but could not.
Some 25 or 30 people did come, however - to ask questions and listen to four of the author's seven brothers and sisters, and to his mother, Geneva.
During the hour and a half discussion, the Staples family talked about their troubled early lives - and their progress since.
And they spoke, with a range of emotions, of the portrayals of themselves and other family members contained in ``Parallel Time.''
A few of them wondered ``why?''
``It's very personal,'' said Brent's sister, Amina Al-Hindi, of the book. ``I'm a private person. If I was going to reveal something about my self, I would like to choose who I revealed it to.''
``Parallel Time'' begins and ends with the drug-related murder of one of the Staples brothers, Blake, in a Roanoke parking lot in 1984.
It also describes a childhood spent largely in an industrial town in Pennsylvania - and marred by the alcoholism of Staples' late father, Roanoke native Melvin Staples.
Years before his death, Geneva Staples had left her husband and moved back to the Roanoke area where she was raised, taking most of her family with her. Brent Staples, a college student at the time, did not come.
He has been an infrequent visitor since, he and other family members say.
``Parallel Time'' goes on to describe Brent Staples' matriculation at the University of Chicago (where he earned a Ph.D in psychology and shadowed - but never approached - the novelist Saul Bellow), and his rise to the editorial board of New York Times.
His growing estrangement from his troubled family is one of the most thought-provoking aspects of ``Parallel Time.''
Most of the family Staples shows in tatters some 20 years ago has since settled into jobs and families, members say.
``They grew up,'' mother Geneva Staples explained with a laugh of Staples' brothers and sisters.
Brent Staples' younger brother Bruce, a Norfolk Southern employee and father of home-grown basketball hero Curtis Staples, said ``Personally, I'm glad he wrote the book. The most important thing I think will come from the book is that it will help people who are in similar situations. Just because you're poor doesn't mean you can't be part of the solution.''
A sister, Christi Dillard, who works at the VA Hospital in Salem and has two children, said ``I wasn't surprised at his [Brent's] perception of some things. Reading his perceptions helped me to know him better.''
``I thought it was cleansing,'' Geneva Staples said of ``Parallel Time.'' ``And I'm glad he did it. He [Brent] was always an inquisitive child.''
Brian Staples, on the other hand, was incensed by the portrait of his father - who appears in ``Parallel Time'' as a hard-drinking truck driver who sometimes beat his wife and children.
``This is the way Brent remembered it,'' Brian Staples said. ``He [Melvin Staples] was a sweet, loving person most of the time.''
Brent Staples said Friday morning by telephone that Brian appeared at a reading in Philadelphia more than a year ago and said positive things about the book. Nor has he expressed unhappiness about it since, Staples said.
Staples said he attempted to write of his family candidly, but with ``love and affection'' - and believed the book had been received in that spirit by family members.
He does not regret writing ``Parallel Time,'' he said.
``That's only one person's opinion,'' Staples said of his brother Brian's criticism. ``People disagree about things. That's life, right?''
by CNB