Ghosts and goddesses beckon Lev Ockenshaw. Oh, bother. Fortunately, he’s got a pill for that. In 2014, Lev is happily telling campfire stories in Boston with his longtime friend, Stanley, and his coworker, Aparna. One day, he receives an anonymous, threatening email referring to the company where he and Aparna work. Lev reports the threat to his boss, but is not believed.
Invoking over 250 books, songs, and movies, Most Famous Short Film of All Time is a non/fiction-hybrid philosophical novel about:
- the nature of time
- the ever-present threat of gun violence in the United States
- the unhelpfulness of institutions and systems
- the importance of solidarity and transparency and being excellent to your friends
- belonging to Gen X or the Millennial generation
- being a fictional character and realizing you’re stuck in your own story
- the hazards of disclosing or not disclosing a gender transition you’ve already completed
- the neverendingness of the journey
- all 486 frames of the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination
- belief and unbelief
- prejudice, perception, and ethical action/inaction
- undoing/redoing decisions and trying harder
- reading as many books as you possibly can
- the role of playfulness, irony, and absurdity
- burning things that do not serve
"frank, sometimes satirical, and very introspective...I have a fondness for this book that I don’t know how to explain"
"one of the most profound, thought-provoking, and engaging metaphysical reads I’ve ever come across...enlightening, mesmerizing, and engaging"
"This insightful, multilayered hybrid challenges genre and narrative in its meditations on literature, philosophy, pop culture, trauma, gender, being, and the nature of time ... the book's real accomplishment is its deep study of what it means to be transgender in a world where categories are carefully constructed by what Lev mockingly calls the 'cis-tem' ... intelligent philosophizing on the nature of stories, identity, and being ... compellingly unique."
“fascinatingly baffling…I’m not quite sure what to call it…pushed the boundaries and experimented with the written word”
"This has got to be one of the most dynamic books...the layers feel like studying a film...mind boggling...the first page of this story had me gripped...[in] a bold yet nostalgic and casual way"
"a trip and a half...I would be binging this thing if I didn't have to go to work"
"...each of us play certain memories on a loop, especially traumatic ones, and those memories become our own privately famous 'films' that we examine, looking for clues, hoping to find answers."
"...as Short Film argues, everything’s a plagiarism on some level."
