Acknowledgments

“The Monster in Winter” first appeared in New England Review, then in Lit Noir; “The Captain Is Sleeping” in New England Review; “The Mummy’s Bitter and Melancholy Exile” in Cranky Literary Journal; “A Theory of Time” in Caketrain Journal; “The Gaiety of Henry James” in Oyez Review and in Grasp (Prague); “Ideas of Space” in Conjunctions; “The Sleep Institute” in 3rd bed and in Sleeping Fish; “Love in the Steam Age” in First Intensity; “Ravished by Death” in The Collagist; “The Love of Stanley Marvel & Claire Moon” in The Paris Review; “To Each According to His Sentence” in Gargoyle Magazine; “Tango in Amsterdam” in New England Review; “The Brothers Ascend” in Lynx Eye and in Linnaean Street.

“The Love of Stanley Marvel & Claire Moon” received the 1979 Aga Kahn Prize, given by The Paris Review.

The author is grateful to the editors of these publications for their continuing goodwill. He is also happy to acknowledge his debt to Tod Thilleman of Spuyten Duyvil Press for publishing “To Each According to His Sentence” in the author’s Pieces for Small Orchestra & Other Fictions; to the National Endowment for the Arts for its award of a 2011 fellowship, to Erika Goldman, publisher of Bellevue Literary Press, for her high opinion of the work presented here; to Tobias Carroll for first having brought the author and his work to Erika’s attention, and especially to Gordon Lish, whose friendship was, for a long time, a stay against the gravity that eventually overwhelmed him.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.