The Narcissism of Small Differences

by Michael Zadoorian, Patrick Lawlor

2020

Set in bottomed-out 2009 Detroit, it's the story of Joe Keen and Ana Urbanek, an unmarried Gen X couple with no kids or mortgage, as Midwestern parents seem to require. Now on the cusp of forty, both work at jobs that they're not sure they believe in anymore, yet with varying returns. Ana is successful, Joe is floundering--both caught somewhere between mainstream and alternative culture, sincerity and irony, achievement and arrested development. The Narcissism of Small Differences tells of an aging creative class, doomed to ask the questions: Is it possible to outgrow irony? Does not having children make you one? Is there even such a thing as selling out anymore? By turns wry and ribald, kitschy and gritty, poignant and thoughtful, The Narcissism of Small Differences is the story of Joe and Ana's life together, their relationship, their tribes, their work, and their comic quest for a life that is their own and no one else's.