Indentations and other stories / / Joe Schall.

• VerfasserIn: Schall, Joe,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : New York University Press,, [1990]; ©1990
• Year of Publication: 1990
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (184 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

Indentation and Other Stories is a collection of nine stories ranging from the wildly funny and idiosyncratic to the downright bizarre. The title story features a pathological dentist who seeks a quirky catharsis by decorating his apartment in hygienic dental paraphernalia. Other tales frolic through the lives of characters who border on the delightfully absurd: a woman, after going through menopause, struggles to recreate her menstrual periods by altering her diet; a former New York street reporter, fired because of his "ideals," aspires to become a credible street person and decides, tentatively, to have a religious experience; an English major turned psychologist writes a pseudoscientific "article"—complete with footnotes and a University of New Jersey cover letter—which argues, by example, for the use of figurative language in scientific journal writing. Other stories are more humanizing: "The Perils of Asthma" is a sympathetic lok at a twelve-year-old boy struggling to grow up amidst his perplexing asthma, his eccentric Catholic parents, and his mystifying quasi-erections. All of the stories are grounded in the allure of language, the luxuriance of detail, and the celebration of human compulsion and obsession.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Indentation -- The Perils of Asthma -- Radiator Dreams -- Figurative Language. Bridging the Scientific-Rhetorical-Rat Gap -- Mediacrity -- That Thin Line -- A Different Letter -- Wide Arcs and S Curves -- Good for Running to the Ends Of