This sweet short story is all about transforming the cunning and sophistication of disguise into pleasure, and on the act of revelation by an innocent man.
The cabman Iona’s son recently died. He desperately and unsuccessfully tries to have a talk with the people he meets and tell them of how shattered he is.
“The Red Crown” (1922) is told by the inmate of a sanitarium, who appears to have had a nervous breakdown over the death of his brother, an officer in the White army.
The hero of John Updike’s first novel, published when the author was twenty-six, is ninety-four-year-old John Hook, a dying man who yet refuses to be dominated.
The Emperor of France is about to fall asleep when he hears a rustling sound near his bed. Soon he hears a “deep groan” coming from the closet in his apartment…
