Set in a professional baseball game, a Hollywood television studio, the Scrabble Championships, and the moments after a beheading video, the characters in seven stories present in this book propel and define themselves into a world where the American spectacle discourages sincere communication. A television showrunner, Hulk Hogan, a man who watches a beheading video, lovers scared of loving each other, a couple who can't explain the grief they feel over their lost child, the people in these stories are seeking to understand the absurdity and magnitude of what it means to be an American, to be human, to exist at all. These stories hope to capture the sense of loss within everyday communication that's been hijacked by popular culture. How can we know what love, joy, intimacy are when they've been trademarked?