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The Really Funny Thing about Apathy

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Chelsea Martin

November 2010

Sara C. Rauch

If you’re the sort of reader who likes a nice, linear plot and a trustworthy narrator, then Chelsea Martin’s charming collection of stories, The Really Funny Thing about Apathy, is probably not for you. If, on the other hand, you delight in the odd, the cerebral, the uncanny, and you love the possibility of language and the unexpectedness of the human brain, then by all means, go get your hands on a copy.

If you’re the sort of reader who likes a nice, linear plot and a trustworthy narrator, then Chelsea Martin’s charming collection of stories, The Really Funny Thing about Apathy, is probably not for you. If, on the other hand, you delight in the odd, the cerebral, the uncanny, and you love the possibility of language and the unexpectedness of the human brain, then by all means, go get your hands on a copy.

This slim volume, easily slipped into a pocket and enjoyed on the go, contains four short stories. These somewhat stream-of-conscious narratives follow the mildly deranged, somewhat neurotic, and very amusing thoughts of someone (could be anyone—anyone who has had a father or eaten at McDonald’s or felt insecure).

Take the opening piece, “At the End of This Story the Door Will Open and Under Eight Seconds will have Passed.” Like an increasingly complex game of Telephone, the story moves point A, “I heard a knock at the door and got up to answer it,” to point Z, to point Y, to point B, and onward; thirteen pages later, you have no idea if the door has been answered. But that’s not the point. The point is the labyrinthine, bizarre workings of the human brain. It takes twenty minutes to read a story in which only eight seconds have passed: how is that possible? In Chelsea Martin’s world, it is.

Or take the third piece, the sardonically titled “McDonald’s is Impossible.” With wit and weirdness, it begins, “Eating food from McDonald’s is mathematically impossible.” The narrator then traces, with a slightly psychotic intensity, the story through depression, sex, drunkenness, reading books (or not), in-school suspension, loyalty, and more, until the piece comes full circle.

Curious and perambulatory, these pieces are honest in the most endearing, unknowable ways. The Really Funny Thing about Apathy is a fun, fleeting romp through the strange language of the mind.

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