Mortal Coils
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Mortal Coils is a collection of five short fictional pieces written by Aldous Huxley in 1922.
The title uses a phrase from Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1:
- ... To die, to sleep,
- To sleep, perchance to dream; aye, there's the rub,
- For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
- When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
- Must give us pause ...
The stories all concern themselves with some sort of trouble, normally of an amorous nature, and often ending with disappointment.
[edit] The stories
- 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 ultimately 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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