The Portable Phonograph (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Walter Van Tilburg Clark
- First Published: 1941
- Type of Plot: Fantasy
- Time of Work: Unspecified
- Setting: Western United States
- Principal Characters: Doctor Jenkins, An unnamed musician, A middle-aged writer, An unnamed middle-aged man
- Genres: Short fiction, Fantasy
- Subjects: United States or Americans, Intellectuals, Authors or writers, Music or musicians, Literature, Doctors, Human race, Human behavior, End of the world
- Locales: West (U.S.)
The Story
The story opens at the end of a desolate, late autumn day in the aftermath of a great war. The landscape is a vast, empty prairie, with nothing but the fading traces of battle to be seen. Civilization is dead, and few survivors have been reduced to a primitive state. In an earthen cave, four men huddle by a small peat fire; what wood there is must be saved for the coming, deadly winter. Doctor Jenkins is wrapping up four books from which he has been reading: the Bible, the works of William Shakespeare, Herman Melville's Moby Dick: Or, The Whale (1851), and...
[The entire page is 1435 words long]
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