Mortal Coils - The Stories

The Stories

  • "The Gioconda Smile" is a short murder-mystery story, which Huxley later adapted into a 1947 film called A Woman's Vengeance.
  • "Permutations Among the Nightingales" is a play concerning the amorous problems encountered by various patrons of a certain establishment.
  • "The Tillotson Banquet" tells of an old artist who was thought to be dead, and is "rediscovered", and an honorary dinner that is organised for him.
  • "Green Tunnels" is about the boredom of a young girl on holiday with her family. She develops a romantic fantasy, and is ultimately disillusioned.
  • "Nuns at Luncheon" is a second-hand story told of a nun falling in love. The story mocks the writer's process, a concept Huxley used in his novel Crome Yellow.

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Famous quotes containing the word stories:

    “Wags try to invent new stories to tell about the legislature, and end by telling the old one about the senator who explained his unaccustomed possession of a large roll of bills by saying that someone pushed it over the transom while he slept. The expression “It came over the transom,” to explain any unusual good fortune, is part of local folklore.”
    —For the State of Montana, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    “the tide lays down its wet throat
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