This is the world of the B list, and it is meaner -- and far more crowded -- than the A-list fairy tale described in celebrity magazines.
There was just too much going on in "Acapelorus (A Walrus Tale)," described in the program notes as a dance opera and "a poem of compassion for peace".
Her wildest tale described an adventure in Chicago on a winter night in which she caroused until 3 a.m. with two folk-singing colleagues, one of whom gave her a handgun for protection during the walk back to her hotel.
One tale describes how Tommy Vietor, an Obama press aide, hurt his shoulder in 2009, around the same time that Mrs Clinton broke her arm.
Shakespeare, in The Winter's Tale, describes Leontes and Camillo as having "speech in their dumbness, language in their very gesture".
He misquotes from his favorite movie, "Pretty Woman" ("I was living the fairy tale," his version of "I want the fairy tale"), describes elaborate office pranks, and urges companies to "make WOW a verb".
In the end the tale describes modern civilisation as a dance of death; its depiction of modern humanity lost in deadly labyrinths of its own making has been influential on at least two generations of science-fiction writers, including Greg Bear, William Gibson, Dan Simmons.
Tracey Fern ("Buffalo Music," "Pippo the Fool") turns a slice of a scientist's biography into an American adventure tale, describing how Brown and his rivals at other museums raced to find the best fossils and to discover new species.
Another poignant tale describes how his 3-year-old son was shot dead by a Yankee soldier for waving a small rebel flag – an impossibility, considering Ferguson's only son had died of illness in 1847.
Indeed, Brecht spoke slightingly of the project in large part because Weill made it his own; it's less a piece of up-to-date agitprop than a timeless morality tale, describing an Everyman's downfall in an unusually diverting hell on earth.
Walpole's short tale describes the supernatural punishment of a usurping Italian feudal prince in a haunted castle packed with what we now consider standard fright stock -- secret doors, gloomy tunnels, haunted suits of armor, portraits of ancestors jumping out of their frames.
