Pantheon

Pantheon is a collection of short stories based all across Southern California’s Antelope Valley. Filled with innumerable allusions to Greek Mythology, the stories herein depict a motley crew of quirky characters and existential collisions. 


From the politics of neighborhood cliques to the shenanigans of wily / wayward teens, from immemorable high school parties on hot desert nights to street racing antics, from melancholic garage sales to intrepid work commutes (a modern retelling of The Odyssey), from bowling alley hangouts to quotidian elderly routines, from taking the garbage out to confronting nihilism in a generic hotel room, from a schizophrenic outcast to a feeble old woman, the stories within Pantheon never cease to shift into entirely new terrains, ever rummaging through surrealistic incidents that occur on the periphery of life, ever fascinated by the margins, by even the plight and triumphs of random inanimate objects. 


Eclectic, dense, literary, and highly rewarding to anyone with a penchant for dissecting subtextual references, this sprawling anthology fuses the heroism and pathos of classic mythologies with the tedium, the heartbreak, the longing, and the aimlessness experienced every single day by residents of a town that sprouted out of a barren wasteland on the outskirts of L.A. 


Conflating the ordinary with the epic, and the historic with the present, Pantheon is a literary contribution for the ages.