Abstract

21 Skin Lies & The Naked Truth is structurally comprised of forty-two pieces of short fiction varying in both length and subject matter. Presumably then, 21 are lies and 21 are the truth. Some are one-page, somewhat-isolated stories in miniature, but there are also longer, episodic pieces--each and all of which should be readable as stand-alone prose, or alternately as parts of a whole. The thesis will synthesize multiple voices, perspectives and narrative modes. 21 Skin Lies ... is concerned with investigating personal and textual transitions, the interchangeability of pronouns (and therefore identities) and the search to order fragmented experience into sense. It explores the journey towards becoming a hu(man) (be)ing, the second-handedness of most first-hand experience and the self as component of the world. Repetitions, or leitmotifs in the text include: open salt water, mermaids, classical and popular culture as reference marks, the "twinning" of ideas and phrases, facets of the so-called digital age and selected portions of the lives of North American gay men between about 1965 and 1997. This collection of short fictions is mostly set in 1995 Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Themes also include racial and sexual difference, facets of love and life (conducted even between "you" and the narrator), disease and premature death, finding beauty in garbage and vice versa, popular music and narrative self-identity.