New Yorker Fiction 2014

A WRITER'S WIT
I am most fond of talking and thinking; that is to say, talking first and thinking afterwards.
Osbert Sitwell
Born December 6, 1892

Reverence for the Man

December 8, 2014, Tim Parks, “Reverend”: In this reverie, Thomas, a British man of fifty-eight, contemplates the life and death of his father, a minister. ¶ Parks uses a traditional and effective way of developing character, both of Thomas, who is recalling, and the recalled, Thomas’s father. As readers we drift with Thomas, in and out of his thoughts: growing up with a brother and sister; his father marrying Thomas and his wife, from whom he is now divorced; his mother. Thoughts of why Thomas didn’t believe as his father had. Thoughts of his father’s attempt to exorcise the demons from his brother’s life. Thoughts of what his father now means to him, now that he himself is reaching the age at which his father died. ¶ Thomas finally recalls an event from his youth, when the family vacations at the seaside. His father, with poor eyesight, calls out to Thomas who has swum further away from the shore.

“He’s worried for me, Thomas realizes. He’s worried that I’ve gone too far and may never make it back.”

This final line captures the essence of this father-son relationship, a perfect metaphor for how far Thomas would stray from the religious faith his father had tried to instill in him.

Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo is Parks’s most recent book.
[The magazine gives no credit for the story’s illustration.]

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