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.
Read more about this topic: Mortal Coils
Famous quotes containing the word stories:
“Every one of my friends had a bad day somewhere in her history she wished she could forget but couldn’t. A very bad mother day changes you forever. Those were the hardest stories to tell. . . . “I could still see the red imprint of his little bum when I changed his diaper that night. I stared at my hand, as if they were alien parts of myself . . . as if they had betrayed me. From that day on, I never hit him again.””
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“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)