Fourteen One-Act Plays

There is no greater joy than listening to your friends of many years as they bring these fourteen bundles of words to life for a laughing audience of their fellow play readers. The goal of this collection is to extend those feelings beyond the Midway Play Readers of Hyde Park, a group formed in 1946! But focusing once more on these concentrated literary efforts have provided a further, more intimate, emotion that is way out of proportion to their size. This aspect is captured by Vladimir Nabokov in a short essay he wrote, "On A Book Entitled Lolita," in November 1956. The preparation of this group of plays for publication has brought their author many returns to what Nabokov calls his "constant comforting presence." Here is what Nabokov tells us about that: "Every serious writer, I dare say, is aware of this or that published book of his as of a constant comforting presence. Its pilot light is steadily burning somewhere in the basement and a mere touch applied to one's private thermostat instantly results in a quiet little explosion of familiar warmth. This presence, this glow of the book in an ever accessible remoteness is a most companionable feeling, and the better the book has conformed to its prefigured contour and color the ampler and smoother it glows. But even so, there are certain points, byroads, favorite hallows that one evokes more eagerly and enjoys more tenderly than the rest of one's book." My further goal, then, is, hopefully, to give readers a chance to identify their own certain points, byroads, and favorite hallows.