| The stories collected here as Tell Hello to the Angels of Epistemology are all "big head fictions." They are at once indebted to Jorge Luis Borges' "ficciones" and the work of different literary/critical thinkers. Together, the collection presents an argument about contemporary communication, from the question of "How can I know what someone else is thinking" at the center of "The Bowling Shoe Diaries" through the end of "Vox Poppet" when the only appropriate communication is to repeat sweet nothings.;The stories engage a number of themes and forms to explore different critical conceits. Some stories, such as "Second Honeymoon," "Some Facts about Life and Death," "Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Bifurcated Brainiac," and "The List of My All-Time Top Ten Favorite Movies," are primarily interested in structural experiments, and as such are mostly informed by Roland Barthes and Peter Brooks as they attempt to interrogate the way stories mean. Stories like "Bowling Shoe Diaries," "Xmas is the Season for Giving Presents," "'The Beagle has Landed,'" and "The Ballad of Michael Shannon" use Bakhtin's insights into the nature of the polyphonic to explore ways in which stories can exceed their narrative limits. Others, like "Tell Hello to the Angels," "Baby Juju," "The Gospel According to Chippendales," and "Vox Poppet" are primarily interested in the way that performance, stripped of any narrative function, can move the stories further beyond its confined narrative grounds, and also how authorial performance can change the way we read stories.;Each of the stories engages these ideas to different degrees; the classification offered above is merely meant as a starting point towards understanding how these stories mean. The collection is preceded by a critical introduction where these critical constructs are interrogated at greater length. |
