Including Parker feels like a cliché, and I can’t imagine she’d appreciate that, but – she’s inescapable. Parker’s inarguably one of the finest stylists of short form writing – poems, reviews, and, of course, short stories.
‘The Wonderful Old Gentleman’ is Parker at her very best. It is set in a family’s hideously stifling sitting room, while the clan’s elderly patriarch is dying in a bedroom upstairs. As Parker can be, it is merciless from the opening lines:
“If the Bains had striven for years, they could have been no more successful in making their living-room into a small but admirably complete museum of objects suggesting strain, discomfort, or the tomb. Yet they had never even tried for the effect.”
As the story unfolds, we learn about the “old gentleman’s” oppressive presence, and the emotional and physical wear and tear he’s inflicted on the family. But is that enough to merit their hypocrisy as they sit, blandly exchanging platitudes as they wait for his death? This story is – like ‘A Telephone Call’ – torturous, as Parker conveys a crushing anxiety. Line by line, Parker’s one of the most cunningly quotable writers imaginable. But it is her ability to inflict emotion on the reader that makes her stories more than cruel caricature. We’re laughing at her characters, but somehow we feel the pain of being laughed at as well.
First published in Pictorial Review, January 1926. Collected in Complete Stories, Penguin, 1995
A Personal Anthology 