Abstract:
Our lives are like smoke. They weave and wend, blend and shred on the breeze, disperse; one moment vividly here, the next moment gone from sight. In a broad sense, the stories in Life Like Smoke explore the differentiations between self and other, the loneliness inherent to being a singular human subject, and the miraculous fact of connection and union that occur nonetheless. They are also stories that explore the nature of human narratives, first in the vast expanse of the Patagonian desert, where the overwhelming narrative of nature threatens to destroy the human narratives that arise within it, and then in the city of Buenos Aires, where the deluge of human narratives constantly compete, spitting sparks, coming together, breaking apart. And, of course, these stories are whatever you make of them, yours to map onto or make associations with, to analyze, to viscerally feel. Flannery O’Connor says it takes every word of a story to tell what that story is about. I would go further. Every word of a story comes together with you, the reader, to continually create itself. So if you want to know what the stories are about, you’re going to have to go ahead and read them.
