Names and faces
A brief World War II fiction story by Ernest Hemingway, written in 1956, is being published for the first time. The Strand Magazine confirmed Thursday that “A Room on the Garden Side” appears in its summer edition, which comes out this week. The story draws upon Hemingway’s experiences as a correspondent and combatant during World War II. “A Room on the Garden Side” is set in Paris in 1944, right after the city was liberated from Nazi control. Hemingway left numerous works unpublished at the time of his suicide, in 1961. The story itself has been little known beyond the scholarly community for decades. The magazine is a literary quarterly which has released obscure works by Raymond Chandler, John Steinbeck and others. “Hemingway’s deep love for his favorite city as it is just emerging from Nazi occupation is on full display, as are the hallmarks of his prose,” Andrew Gulli, the magazine’s managing editor, wrote in an editorial note. “A Room on the Garden Side” takes place in the Ritz hotel (Hemingway liked to say that he liberated the Ritz bar) and is narrated by a Hemingway stand-in called Robert, who shares the author’s own nickname — Papa. Robert and his entourage drink wine, quote from French poet Charles Baudelaire and debate “the dirty trade of war.”
Two North Carolina teens went overnight from singing on a street corner to sharing a stage with Grammy Award-winning singer Cyndi Lauper.
Mya Worley, 14, was singing on a street in Charlotte, N.C., last week with her 13-year-old brother, Ronald, on the keyboard, as they have done all summer under their father’s guidance, The Charlotte Observer reported. Two women stopped to listen and one suggested they had to get the teens “to play tomorrow.” With Lauper standing nearby, manager Lisa Barbaris approached Ronald Worley Sr. and asked if his kids would sing Lauper’s 1983 hit “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” with the pop icon at a concert. Less than 24 hours later, the siblings were at the 20,000-seat Spectrum Center in Charlotte. Mya sang the first verse and chorus of the song, which was rearranged by Lauper and Mya to be an almost-gospel-hymn-like number. The only musical accompaniment for her portion was Ronald Jr. on a keyboard. The crowd roared as Mya held the last note, then gave way to Lauper and the upbeat version known to nearly everyone. As thrilled as Mya and Ronald Jr. were by the experience, it was their father who may have gotten the biggest thrill. “I’m an ’80s child,” Ronald Sr. said. “I grew up listening to her music. I always loved Cyndi Lauper. … So this was just incredible. I tell you, it was so incredible. … Cyndi wrote some things down on paper for us, so I have a piece of paper with her handwriting on it that we’ll never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever lose.”