Acknowledged as one of the great stylists of modern Dutch literature, Gerard Reve has, since the 1960s, become increasingly mannered and increasingly explicit about his blend of religiosity (he is a Catholic convert) and sado-masochistic homosexuality. The maudlin and melodramatic elements of his plots are tempered by superior wit and irony. Characteristic of his new, consciously Romantic persona (he is fond of punning on the associations of his nom de plume: ‘rève’ = dream) is an archaic tinge to the language and the capitalisation of such key concepts as Love, Sex and Death. There is provocation as well as irony in some of his characters’ less than ‘politically correct’ pronouncements on, for example, race.


Parents Worry belongs firmly in Reve’s later mannerist period. It records one day in the life of the middle-aged writer Hugo Treger, who lives with his younger student lover, the graphically nicknamed Unicorn, and fantasises incessantly on the various young men he meets or imagines on his wanderings around the city, in his search for escape from human wretchedness into the realm of truth. That search leads inescapably through suffering, and ‘Through Pain to Truth’ becomes his motto. Even a visit to the confessional is an extension of his fertile fantasies of chastisement. The focus on ‘a day in the life of¼’ is reminiscent of the Christmas to New Year setting of Reve’s classic naturalistic debut De avonden (The Evenings) of 1947. But whereas the latter book ended with a consolation of sorts in the hero’s awareness that his trials are witnessed by God, Treger’s attitude at the conclusion of this novel is more one of flaccid resignation: Harald, the schooboy he would like to seduce, will never be tempted from the protective cocoon of parental concern.

‘He’s a good Catholic, that boy, you mark my words,’ Treger assured himself. ‘Next time he’s coming with me and then he may taste of Unicorn’s white love. And if he pleases Unicorn, he can stay. As long as he brings in a few pennies of his own, by his own labour or diligence, or whatever he does. Love asks no questions.’ No, the world wasn’t that bad a place to be. And a black or brown Catholic boy, he knew his place, he was loyal, industrious, he refrained from unchaste language and he was grateful when a white boy or man desired him and wished to satisfy his carnal lust on him.

Treger’s social and ethnological world-picture was not static, but knew growth and renewal so that one, at least according to Treger himself, could call it a ‘broad view on matters’. ‘No, narrow-minded I’m not,’ thought Treger, ‘and I have a big heart, because of my innate feelings of compassion.’

But the big teddy, naked and close beside him, as it kept on staring shamelessly at him, was still sitting there. He had to render the creature harmless before it came at him to do something, with its jaws, that could never be restored¼ Treger thought himself lucky that he had dressed himself completely the moment he had got up. Fetters, yes¼ He had to fetter the beast before it was too late¼ Luckily there was a coil of strong electric flex in the house, in a box in the kitchen. First muzzle his snout and then fetter his wrists and ankles. It was a question of summoning his courage, nothing else, and that would be no problem¼’ (p. 63, tr. Richard Huijing)