The majority of the protagonists in CivilWarLand in Bad Decline live in a state of perplexity and uncertainty about how to deal with the myriad hardships life in contemporary America bring their way. The most common difficulty these characters face is how to get by at dehumanizing jobs that don’t offer enough material and non-material rewards. The title story’s protagonist kowtows to his boss by hiding the bodies of people their psychotic security officer, Sam, has killed; he does this because unemployment is high and he fears being laid off and, in turn, being unable to support his family. In “Isabelle,” we see an entire neighborhood negatively impacted by white flight, with those left in the wake losing their jobs, seeing crime increase, and having racial tensions flare. In “The 400-Pound CEO,” Jeffrey, morbidly obese and consistently verbally-abused by his co-workers, finally snaps and kills his sadistic boss. In “Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz,” the protagonist makes ends meet by selling the memories of others to a local school for gifted students, thereby taking away one of the most individualized things possible: another person’s lived experience.

Corporate culture and procedure, along with profit, is the bottom line of the worlds these characters inhabit;

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