Abstract

ABSTRACT
Everything’s Just Wonderful
Miki Laval

My thesis is a collection of short stories that serves to highlight the psychological space revealed, altered, or bent in a moment of crisis. Influences include George Saunders, Etgar Keret, and Russell Banks and these authors’ ability to present and reveal contemporary personality through voice. The narrators in the collection vary in age from early twenties to late middle age and often have a false sense of the certainty of things. Once psychological conflict is placed in their path their self-talk reveals multilayered and conflicting rationales employed during a crisis. At times, a comic protagonist has a less dramatic but more ironic/traumatic encounter that still manages to disturb and unsettle them. Shorter pieces in the collection look at the commodification of beauty, as well narration itself as a product or service.