Fiction. Jack Ruineux, projectionist at a run-down movie theater in Philadelphia, struggles to reconcile Hollywood imagery with his dreary quotidian existence. Alienated from his family, haunted by dark memories of his youth, Ruineux casts himself into an inner world where history, myth, memory, and nostalgia blend in whims of self-reinvention. His concerned lover attempts an emphatic understanding, and seeks to "fill in the gaps" of his broken narrative in order to make whole a Ruineux with whom she can enjoy a profound connection.

Author City: TOWNSEND, MA USA

Edward Desautels lives in Townsend, Massachusetts. He has worked as a bartender, rockabilly guitarist, nightclub manager, movie theater projectionist, feature writer, and technical editor. His fiction and hypertexts have appeared in Haydens Ferry Review, Little Magazine, Pennsylvania English, and on the CD Gravitational Intrigue: an anthology of emergent hypermedia.