Daniel Stern has been leaving his individual mark on the 
American short story for the last dozen years in four 
distinguished collections, starting with the acclaimed Twice 
Told Tales. Now in his fifth, Stern has offered a novella and 
seven stories dealing with his major themes: the life of the 
senses, the life of art—with special emphasis on the art of 
music—and the comic and lyric results when the two lives cross 
paths. From contemporary Paris to the New York of the fifties, 
from the way the mind works to the way the heart sinks or sings, 
these stories wend their magical way.

"Stories by a man who has told many, and the telling of those 
others has shaped these new ones. He wants, now, to articulate 
contradictions, not resolve them. No resolutions here, only the 
wisdom of hindsight and the comedy of loss. 'Afterwards,' Stern 
says, 'that unavoidable word when telling about sex afterwards I 
lay listening. . . .' These stories are what is heard—overheard."
—Richard Howard

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DANIEL STERN is the author of nine novels and five short story 
collections. His first collection, Twice Told Tales, won the 
Rosenthal Award for literary excellence given by the American 
Academy of Arts and Letters. He is currently the Cullen 
Distinguished Professor of English in the creative writing 
program at the University of Houston.