LAST PAGES
Copyright © 2019 by Prospect Park Books
Author: Oscar Mandel
This book contains works of fiction and poetry. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress. The following is for reference only:
Last pages / Oscar Mandel
ISBN 978-1-945551-51-2 (paperback)
Subjects: Literature; poetry; essays; plays
Book design by Amy Inouye
Cover illustration by Hans Pape (1895-1971)
Printed in Canada
LAST PAGES
Stories, Drama, Poems, Essays
Oscar Mandel
ALSO BY OSCAR MANDEL
Fiction
Otherwise Fables*: (Gobble-Up Stories. Chi Po and the Sorcerer, The History of Sigismund, Prince of Poland)
Poetry
Otherwise Poems*
Drama
Collected Plays (two volumes)
Amphitryon (after Molière)
The Virgin and the Unicorn: Four Plays
Two Romantic Plays
Reinventions: Four Plays after Homer, Cervantes, Calderón and Marivaux
Non-Fiction
A Definition of Tragedy
The Book of Elaborations
Fundamentals of the Art of Poetry
Translations and Critical Studies
Philoctetes and the Fall of Troy
The Theatre of Don Juan
Five Comedies of Medieval France
The Ariadne of Thomas Corneille
Seven Comedies by Marivaux
Prosper Mérimée: Plays on Hispanic Themes
August von Kotzebue: The Comedy, the Man
The Land of Upside Down (LudwigTieck)
Art History
The Art of Alessandro Magnasco: An Essay in the Recovery of Meaning
The Cheerfulness of Dutch Art: A Rescue Operation
*Published by Prospect Park Books
CONTENTS
A word to my imagined readers
Stories
Two Gentlemen of Nantucket: A Romantic Episode of the American Revolution
Wickedness
Drama
The Fatal French Dentist: A Heart-Rending Tragedy
Twenty Poems
After Lunch
Adriana in Surgery
Misery
A Bus Ride in Paris
Horses
Flight 065
What Happened
Le Corbeau dans mon jardin
Should
On the Assassination of John F. Kennedy
My Cousin Stella
The Homburg-Hatted Man
Miracle Play
I Am No Jeremiah
Fool of a Freudian
Ennui
Sunday Twiddling Thumbs, Peevish as a Child
The Ostrich
Old Age
Epitaph
Essays
Unacceptable Poetry
Against Castrated Art
Concerning Imbecility
Otherness
To Be or Not to Be a Jew
Epilogue
Thoughts of a Melancholy Nonagenarian
About the Author
A GLANCE at the title of the last essay in this volume should give away the meaning of “Last Pages,” which, in turn, may suggest why the contents of my book are so shockingly heterogeneous in genres, in matter and in tone. I emptied my drawer and poured out what lay in it. Apology is useless. The voices are many. The author is one.
A Romantic Episode of the American Revolution
1
A BROKEN WINDOWPANE was the only blemish on the Weamish residence in Sherburne, one of the finest houses on the island—certainly the finest on Main Street, and one of the few in town made entirely of brick. As he sat that morning in his upper-story library writing a letter to his widowed mother, Judge Thomas Weamish frowned in anger and pain each time he looked up at the glassy wound. To be sure, rosy-cheeked and chubby in his morning robe and slippers, he appeared more like a man accustomed, at the lovely age of forty, to cheer than to distress. Yet these were distressful times, and Weamish was conscious of them as he concluded his letter, written in a consciously elegant hand, with frequent dippings of the pen into the inkwell. “For the rest, my dearest mamma, the weather today is all radiant sun, as if to invite a swift return from the mainland of one whom not a few among the natives of the island call the queen-mother of Nantucket. Speed, speed to these shores again, for our human storms require a hand