Private Lives and Glancing Blows: A Philosophy of Disconnection

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2009

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Abstract

The following stories, letters, and novel excerpt explore the impossibility of reconnecting

to the past. They examine moments in their characters' lives when the desire for such a

connection is quite strong--it means wanting to have potential, wanting to belong

somewhere, and wanting not to be lonely. Questions of truth in memory and perception

also emerge.

I explore this desire by situating characters at different points in their lives, so they are

looking back across varying distances: for the narrator in "Reasons I Got Up This Morning,

going back means a return to the day before, and in "Gustav Has Glancing Blow" it means

a return to childhood. The boy in "My Collector" wants entire histories preserved so that

they are alive forever and he can be part of them.

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