Last Pages. Oscar Mandel

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      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.

Published by Prospect Park Books2359 Lincoln AvenueAltadena, CA 91001www.prospectparkbooks.com

      Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution

       www.cbsd.com

      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 word to my imagined readers

      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.

       STORIES

       TWO GENTLEMEN OF NANTUCKET

       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