Mortal Coils
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mortal Coils is a collection of five short fictional pieces written by Aldous Huxley in 1922.
Mortal coils is an archaic term, meaning the activities and troubles of life. The stories themselves concern themselves with some sort of trouble, normally of an amorous nature, and often ending with disappointment.
[edit] The stories
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
- The first story, The Gioconda Smile, involves a short murder story.
- Next is Permutations Among the Nightingales, a play concerning the amorous problems various patrons of a certain establishment encounter.
- The Tillotson Banquet tells of an old artist who was thought to be dead, and is "rediscovered", and an honorary dinner 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 ulitimately disillusioned.
- Nuns at Luncheon is a second hand story being told of a nun falling in love. The story mocks the writer's process, a concept Huxley used in his Crome Yellow.
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| Novels | Crome Yellow • Antic Hay • Those Barren Leaves • Point Counter Point • Brave New World • Eyeless in Gaza • After Many a Summer • Time Must Have a Stop • Ape and Essence • The Genius and the Goddess • Island • The Crows of Pearblossom |
| Short Stories | Limbo • Mortal Coils • Little Mexican • Two or Three Graces • Brief Candles • The Young Arquimedes • Jacob's Hands; A Fable • Collected Short Stories |
| Poetry | The Burning Wheel • Jonah • The Defeat of Youth • Leda • Arabia Infelix • The Cicadias and Other Poems • First Philosopher's Song |
| Travel writing | Along The Road • Jesting Pilate • Beyond the Mexique Bay |
| Essays | On the Margin • Along the Road • Essays New and Old • Proper Studies • Do What You Will • Vulgarity in Literature • Music at Night • Texts and Pretexts • The Olive Tree • Ends and Means • Words and their Meanings • The Art of Seeing • Science, Liberty and Peace • Themes and Variations • Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow • The Doors of Perception • Heaven and Hell • Adonis and the Alphabet • Collected Essays • Brave New World Revisited • Literature and Science |
| Philosophy | Ends and Means • The Perennial Philosophy |
| Biography | Grey Eminence • The Devils of Loudun |
| Collections | Text and Pretext • Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience • Collected Short Stories |
