Fiction Commons^™

Almost Touching, Almost Free, Dustin M. Hoffman

Dissertations

This collection of stories delves into themes of the working class. These stories of working-class characters range from realism to fabulism to experimental, because the story of working-class people is complex and always shifting. Some of the stories travel backward in time to shepherds and traveling crusaders, while others take on much more contemporary voices, speaking from the point of view of sex workers, carpenters, office workers, ice cream van drivers, and salesmen. If these stories have one thing in common, it is that the characters are searching for identity, for a concrete sense of self that seems to have …