Robert York

It is later than usual when Mr. Proust finally sets aside his notebooks and lies back on his pillow. He doesn’t even bother to turn off the lights.

The doctor is describing to him the mechanism, more or less, by which his body is being destroyed.

Somewhere between Metz and Bastogne, the 11th Infantry happens across a tiny, secluded village, ravaged and abandoned, it would seem, in the previous Battle of France. They decide to set up camp. One of the regiment’s scouts, having earlier performed its reconnaissance, tells the rest of his platoon of a decent-sized house in the area, […]

His friends smile and applaud. Mr. Rossetti congratulates him. Mrs. Browning, too, politely admires the work. Mr. Tennyson asks about the progress of her own long poem, but she demurs. The others are happy to talk of their various ongoing projects. Eventually the conversation turns, as it usually will, to politics. Mr. Tennyson finds himself […]