"What are You Doing in My Dreams?" by Dawn Powell

Go on, now--run away from home. When they drag you back, try again. And again. So what if you're a little girl from a small town in Ohio who's set her sights on the bright lights of New York City. If you try hard enough, you'll get there--even if you can't leave all your memories behind with your old dolls. Read by Monique Saint Amant.

Much like the character in this story from 1952, Dawn Powell was a girl who just had to get out of her constrained home town and make the big time. Well, she never quite made the big time, but she did write and publish a great deal, despite failures and setbacks and alcoholism and poverty. Though frustrated with the literary establishment during her lifetime, Dawn Powell wrote on--and her works have recently been revived and celebrated. Not bad for a little girl from Ohio.

Monique Saint Amant has been an actress, brick mason, radio DJ, computer specialist, rock musician, businesswoman, model, and writer--and probably much more, if we only knew; despite it all she's quite modest. Lived all over the place, done most everything. She should write a book, right?

"The House of Asterion" by Jorge Luis Borges

In case you can't fully recall your Greek mythology, Asterion (or Asterios) was the son of the witch queen Pasiphae (wife of the Cretan king Minos) and a bull she happened to fall in love with. Asterion lived in an ingenious building constructed by the inventor Daedalus and spent his free time consuming innocent youths until Thesus put a stop to that nasty habit. Oh, yes, Asterion was also known as the Minotaur. This version of the story was translated by Andrew Hurley. Read by Scoot.

Undoubtedly one of the most important and influential writers of the last or any other century, Jorge Luis Borges is one of our two very favorite writers here at "Stories to Go" (the other one is coming up soon--can you guess who?). This Argentinian had such a vivid imagination and played such cunning games with mythology, philosophy, and history that we should probably just stop everything right now to study his dozens of stories one more time. Will you join us?

"Miss Brill" by Katherine Mansfield

Poor Miss Brill! She's stuck inside the confines of a Katherine Mansfield story, leading the frustrated, unfulfilled life of a Mansfield woman. Even attending a public concert can bring Miss Brill no lasting joy--and people will talk behind one's back so! Read by Denise Donnelly.

Biographical sketches of Katherine Mansfield invariably must point out how she was born and raised in New Zealand, sought the writing life in England, trysted with John Middleton Murray, and died painfully young and not quite fulfilled. This sketch will be no different. But we do want to remind everyone what an achingly beautiful writer of short stories she was, how she expressed even fleeting joy better than the best can express lasting sorrow, and how through it all she was able to keep one hand to the pen and one to her mouth, just barely stifling the grin that often flickered there.

This is Denise Donnelly's second contribution to these pages, and we wish to thank her for her patience and generosity. We hope that now you will search her name at your local bookstore.

"The Short Happy Life of Henrietta" by Evan S. Connell

Quite possibly a sort of tribute to Ernest Hemingway not just in title, Connell's story is similar in its abrupt violence and mordant sense of humor. Cruel to Arabs, very cruel to naive Nebraskans, this tiny tale of murder in the Bois de Boulogne is not at all typical of most of Connell's work, except perhaps in its sly artistry. Read by Scoot.

Known to many fans as the author of the psychologically revealing novels Mrs. Bridge and Mrs. Bridge and the historical study Son of the Morning Star, Evan S. Connell is another Midwesterner who found himself living in France in the 1950s (we think). Connell also has written much more experimental prose-poetry and a whole slew of incisive short stories. It's too bad that despite having loved his work for a long time we still know so little about him--probably he likes it that way.

"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" by Ernest Hemingway

In a clean, well-lighted cafe, late at night and just before closing time, the waiters and an old man debate life and death in a most Hemingwayesque manner. Read by Neil Miller.

This is one of Ernest Hemingway's most famous short stories, a typical example of his terse yet tender style, simmering with violence just beneath the surface. The author's adventurous, peripatetic life took him from Illinois to France to Florida to Cuba to Idaho, and a lot of places in between. This story was first published when he was living in Key West.

Neil Miller is an award-winning writer who teaches journalism at Tufts University; his last book is Sex Crime Panic, quite possibly set to become a major motion picture. He is currently working on a book about the discovery of a huge cavern system in Arizona.

A Solemn Confession

April Fool! Anyone who was paying close attention yesterday might have guessed that we were pulling a nether appendage with our small offering from one "Henry James." Actually, that overly mannered and nearly nonsensical prose was from the wicked pen of none other than Max Beerbohm, parodying the worst of James's latter-day excesses.

Please forgive us for this heinous deception and trust that we won't be pulling any such shenanigans again... No fooling! (Right?)

To make up for our iniquity, here's the real Max Beerbohm--pretending to be Max Beerbohm.

"A Vain Child" by Max Beerbohm

The grotesque 19th century children's book, Struwwelpeter (Slovenly or Shockheaded Peter) by Dr. Heinrich Hoffman, is the subject of this odd little bagatelle, in form somewhere between fabricated anecdote and fictionalized memoir. The story of a young boy lost in books with his head in the clouds certainly must have appealed to young Master Max! Read by Scoot.

Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm straddled the nineteenth and twentieth century with his satiric novels, such as the wildly funny Zuleika Dobson, and shorter essays and parodies such as this one, which is actually a self-parody in the best Beerbohmian style. While still a college student, he contributed to the infamous Yellow Book of the Wilde era. Though very English, he was partly German in ancestry, married an American, and spent the latter half of his life in Italy--so one could justifiably call him a humorist of international proportions.

"The Guerdon" by Henry James

A superb example of Henry James's late, most mandarin style, this little story concerns the meeting of royalty and a commoner--or something like that. (Do they ever really meet?) Of course, nothing much happens, but did you really expect that in late James? Read by Scoot.

From The Turn of the Screw to Daisy Miller to The Golden Bowl, Henry James has entertained generations with his novels of manners and morals (as critics invariably put it). Whether you prefer him with one lump of obliqueness--or two, or twenty, depending on which era of his you most worship--this once-forgotten and only recently discovered story is certain to interest even the casual reader. Here is your own guerdon.