Short stories by Willard Marsh

Willard Marsh (1922-1970) was born in Oakland, California, son of Louis and Goldie (Greene) Marsh. While in Oakland High School he displayed a virtuosity with trumpet and trombone which led to an era as musician-impresario -- the launching of Will Marsh and the Four Collegians in an Oakland roadhouse -- which subsequently financed his education at the State College at Chico.

During World War II, while serving U.S. Army Air Forces (1942-1945) in the South Pacific (advanced to staff sergeant), he began to write and subsequently acquired degrees at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop (B.A., 1959, M.A., 1960). Marsh married George Rae Williams (a former actress at Pasadena Playhouse), September 4, 1948.

He taught at Winthrop College, Rock Hill, SC, assistant professor of English, 1959-1961; University of Soutern California, assistant professor of English, 1961-1964; North Texas State University, Denton, assistant professor of English, 1968-1970. He was a free-lance writer in Mexico before, between, and after these years, placing stories in more than seventy periodicals, including Antioch Review, Furioso, Prairie Schooner, Northwest Review, Yale Review, Esquire, Playboy, Transatlantic Review, and Saturday Evening Post. His stories were selected for such anthologies as the Foley and O'Henry collections.

Listing 2 stories.

A middle-aged tax consultant who is dissatisfied with life has a night that begins with a wrong address and ends in a liquor-fueled spoken-word poetry party.

A divorced playwright living in an expat community in Mexico spends a night ricocheting between a dilettantish friend's household, his play, his ex-wife, and his own demons as he descends into an intense marijuana high.