In the following essay, Humy discusses the disagreement between the narrator and her father about what a story should be, and how this disagreement relates to their differing views of freedom and predetermination.

"I would like you to write a simple story just once more...."

It seems a straightforward request to the narrator's aging father, although he does ask specific qualities of his story: "the kind de Maupassant wrote, or Chekhov, the kind you used to write. Just recognizable people and then write down what happened to them next."

This request is made in the second paragraph of "A Conversation with My Father," but we are already aware of the difference between the sort of story the father wants to hear and that which the narrator is in the process of telling. The father, like all aging fathers, is concerned with the past. His request is for...