Bootleg Music and Other Stories

These six autobiographical stories range in time from 1929 to 1958 and in location from Lynchburg, Virginia to New York City. Engaging events are interspersed with reflection and analysis, but the story line is always the dominant element as we meet a struggling amateur athlete, a misbegotten short order cook, a disastrously incompetent military policeman, a victimized piano instructor at the Juilliard School of Music, a bar fly, and a struggling songwriter. Readers may well find experiences that feel familiar as they return to them more than once and share them with others. ROBERT W. MILES, a resident of Santa Fe, New Mexico, has a master's degree in English, a library science degree, and many years experience in writing the music for musical theater works that have been produced in regional theaters throughout the United States. He has published many reviews of books about music in "The Sewanee Review" and has published articles on music in "The New Republic." By contrast, the autobiographical stories in this volume, though not devoid of serious thought, are relaxed, informal, and often amusing. Miles is the son of the late Reverend Robert Whitfield Miles, DD, twenty-five of whose sermons were published by Sunstone Press under the title "Eyes Forward: Messages for Today from Yesterday."