"Strange Antennae" and other stories

Strange Antennae and Other Stories is an original collection of seven short stories exploring the way imagination and intellect effect various characters' relationships to others and a larger world.For example, "Funeral March" is the story of a young girl who heroically convinces a snow-bound and despondent Rochester, NY that, in spite of the citizenry's gloomy premonitions, love is still possible. And yet this story's "Reprise" uses this same mythic-modern setting to subversively suggest that such optimistic and romantic conceptions of love are possibly impotent. "Strange Antennae" concerns itself with a young woman who attempts to "poke through" notions of what life is supposed to be about in a search for love and awareness.The narration often resorts to farce and irony, and the language itself turns to metaphorical stylistics. Both of these tendencies attempt to pit the imaginary against the real and also to poetically see the world afresh.Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 40-05, page: 1121.Chair: Kermit Moyer.Thesis (M.F.A.)--American University, 2001