72.8% of the person you love is: Stories

• Main Author: Gonzalez, Maria Neobie G.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2016
• Subjects: Creative writing; Fiction > Authorship; Authorship; Short story
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/5359
• Institution: De La Salle University

72.8% of the Person You Love Is is composed of 14 non-realist short stories that re-examine the limits of the human body by combining fiction with various forms, creating hybrid works that utilize images, lists, and other textual artifacts. As such, the collection is framed like an encyclopedic guide documenting the body's potential for weirdness, where realities are noticeably skewed. Five of the stories act as interludes that encourage readers to doubt what they know about the body, insisting on the odd to question fact and thus providing an interrogation of ones mortality. Between these are longer pieces that address the body's capacity to hold a plurality of selves and meanings while tackling basic human tragedies: loss, separation, the consequences of desire. Each story retains undercurrents of the uncanny, occurring in a world tilted just enough to depict how the ordinary can be twisted towards the strange. Accompanying the collection is Sometimes a De-Composition, an exegetic essay in three parts. It explores the authors influences, impetus behind the project, and the challenges she encountered throughout its creation. Its main concerns stem from the tension between the real and unreal in fiction. This is addressed through a discussion of the New Weird and New Wave Fabulism genres, in addition to the interstitial foundation of 21st century stories and techniques. The essay also raises questions about the physicality of the page, the hybrid possibilities of short fiction, and the possibility of the human body as a site for the weird and absurd.