Showing results for "The Work of Literature" in Contemporary Fiction

James Jones brings powerful emotion and expression to his reading of the famous passage from his celebrated World War II novel in which Private Prewitt plays a version of Taps that expresses "the requiem of the common soldier".

From the poignant novel about a troubled Southern family, written when he was 26, William Styron reads with tenderness about the disabled younger child finding joy in the magic tricks of a workman, as her mother looks on, knowing her child’s sad fate.

In the first passage James Baldwin reads with passion about the suicide of a young black man in despair. The second passage takes place at his funeral service, where Baldwin speaks with both anger and eloquence, in the voice of the minister attempting to comfort his friends and family.

"The Man Who Could Work Miracles" is a British fantasy-comedy short story by H. G. Wells first published in 1898 in The Illustrated London News. It carried the subtitle "A Pantoum in Prose." The story is an early example of Contemporary fantasy (not yet recognized, at the time, as a specific sub-genre).