This is the writer's voice, new fiction from The New Yorker, and Deborah Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Andrea Alexis read his story,

William, from the June 20th, 2022 issue of the magazine.

Alexis received the Wyndham Campbell Prize in fiction in 2017.

His novels include childhood, 15 dogs, and days by moonlight.

And his story collection, The Night Peace, was published in 2020.

Now here's Andrea Alexis.

William.

My dad, Robert off-to-horst, died seven years ago.

He was a successful doctor, and for most of his life, he divided the world into two categories,

what he thought useful, science, and what he thought frivolous, almost everything else.

It wasn't that he disdained other things, art, for instance.

It was that he couldn't see the point of pretending that knowledge, the fruit of science, was comparable to entertainment.

For the most part, we were in agreement about this.

But he was disappointed when I decided to study math at Amherst.

Math was tricky ground for him.

It could be useful, but was often frivolous.

He saw Math as the thin edge of the entertainment wedge, as if, once you engaged with Fermat's last theorem,

Reality TV was not far behind.

I mentioned Dad's preference for evidence-based reasoning, not because I have any grievances to air.

I loved him, whatever our differences, and I never doubted that he loved me.

It's just that I'd like it to be clear from the outset that my Dad was a rational person.

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