About the Book:
THE HYPOTHETICAL MAN is a darkly humorous collection of stories featuring an assortment of anonymous characters–A, B, and S–all with problems. They work undercover at an amusement park in Illinois or else they work at a secret government facility that would prefer not to be named. They attend a freewheeling sales meeting with death masks on the wall. Some raise pigs, others race goats. One lives in a suburban home where he watches his wife with another man. They are, together, misled, misunderstood, and mistaken often, but their pursuit of answers never ends.
Read an Excerpt:
Featured In June/July 2019 Issue: Summer Reads
“B: It’s not every day one receives a mailer from a mortuary service seeking one’s business. “Preplanning.” They said.
A: Sick bastards.
B: Was also wondering how preplanning was different than planning.
A: Preplanning is the planning we do before the planning. Preplanning should not be confused with planning proper. Planning
proper uses a whole different aspect of the human brain and mind.
And yes, the brain and mind are different, too. Just like the goat and the orange, or the candy and the girder, or the planning and the preplanning. In college, I majored in planning, thinking I would be a planning consultant, but I ended up being friends with a lot of people who were taking preplanning is how I know all this stuff.
B: This clears up much. Thank you. One further question, if I may trouble you. Is there postplanning as well?
A: There is a field called postplanning studies (which is something like preplanning, just with less pre- about it, if that makes sense), but many consider the field as “emerging.” Still, the better graduate schools offer coursework in postplanning, but the best you could do
is get a degree in planning (or, for that matter, preplanning) with a concentration in postplanning studies, though some employers do wonder about how quote-unquote committed the postplanning
studies students are to the field of planning (or, for that matter, preplanning). It’s still early is the point with postplanning. Not that it isn’t too early to plan. Or preplan.
B: So, if I’m hearing you right, there is an opportunity for pre-postplanning studies as well? To fill in that period when one is thinking about postplanning studies?
A: It has been suggested in some quarters, yes.”