Laugh track

the long version

"Though David Galef is best known for his novels Flesh and Turning Japanese, he has also published over sixty short stories in magazines spanning the British Punch to the Czech Prague Revue, the Canadian Prism International, and the American Shenandoah.". "The fifteen stories selected for Laugh Track are an eclectic mix, from a haunting vignette called "You," about a seminal day in the life of the narrator, to "Triptych," the tale of an elementary school teacher whose men in her life include a precocious third-grader.". "In the title story, a failed comedian brings a recorded laugh track to his regular Wednesday psychoanalytic session. During the sometimes tortuous, often hilarious course of treatment, he finally succeeds in displacing his blocked impulses - to the extreme discomfort of his therapist." "In "Metafiction," a frustrated creative writing teacher finds that art begins to imitate life all too closely.". "In "All Cretans," a lovelorn tourist in Greece gets ensnared in a set of ancient philosophical paradoxes." "In "The Web of Mobius," what's left of a psychotic's life revolves in a bizarrely twisted circle." "Laugh Track offers fifteen different worlds - from a blocked expatriate author in Mexico, to a drug heist gone wrong in downtown Manhattan, to a love affair pursued at the last leper colony in the United States."--BOOK JACKET.