Three Stories and a Reflection

'Beware the pronouncements of the critic' is the warning message of 'Depth Wish' in which a promising young painter takes her notices catastrophically to heart. In 'A Battle' bystanders want a nonchalant, elegantly dressed challenger to beat their ugly little local chess matador who has doggedly defeated them over the years, but what exactly is the newcomer up to with his breathtaking Napoleonic flair at the chessboard? In 'Ma tre Mussard's Bequest' a man about Paris retires to the country and develops a world view that renders him all too soon and all too literally petrified. In 'Amnesia in Litteris', Patrick S skind's hilarious and compelling concluding piece, the author recounts 'a great forgetting' as he browses through his own well-loved library and discovers how few of the books he can actually remember.