Penetralia

Abstract

Penetralia is a short fiction collection that occupies the fissures between the minds and bodies of its protagonists. Each story involves an uncanny disruption of identity that results in personal, social, and sexual convulsion and collapse. The convulsions are many: a man finds wisdom in silence when he is numbed and unable to speak during a tooth extraction, a woman uses cuddle parties to escape her anxiety and obsessive rituals, Marlene Dietrich converses casually with a marketer licensing her image posthumously, a confused revolution strikes its first blow after a fertility clinic refuses to inseminate across racial lines, a renowned writer plagiarizes from a schizophrenic homeless man, and a stand-up comedienne listens for echoes of herself from the other side of the spotlight. The mundane combines with the bizarre to disorient and unnerve bodies that have palsied in the grip of a modernity circling back to feed on itself.