|
novelists, site w, alkaholiks dvd, full text, recording and reproducing, atoms, build, hardcover, over eating, newman, oldies, trial, ubo.net, by troy ward, john cusack, singer, community, books, pg 13,
|
Many of the situations described in the stories are not of the concrete world we live in, but evolve with a nightmarish logic, invoking feelings that we all have experienced in dreams. Witness the "Report on the Shadow Industry" with its baffling but somehow deeply familiar description of a society period film buying boxes of "shadows" - are they consumable goods, period film or hopes, or dreams? Also fascinating is "Conversations with Unicorns", a strange fable of unicorns discovering truths about their own mortality. More disturbing still is "Life & Death in the South Side Pavilion", a surreal tale of period film a man minding horses, who finds that a horse dies every time he makes love, and is trapped in his situation by guilt and an unyielding authority figure. Allusions to intrusive and dominating political systems or other sorts of authority lend a sense of powerlessness and struggle to other stories including "The Fat Man in History".
|
