My Lousy Life Stories (Enhanced Edition): An Abstract Novel

This is an abstract novel in the sense that fifteen independent tales and essays depict a commoner’s unsettling fate and mind during his travels from city to city, while he staggers in the journey of life itself, satiates his curiosities, gets old, fights with his friends and family, encounters complex people and situations, and strives to make sense of it all. The stories do not follow a single plot or a sequence of related events. Instead, they follow the highlights of the protagonist’s life and thoughts in a series of intriguing and spirited moments during various stages of his existence. Meanwhile, his major challenges and observations through this mandatory journey reveal the depth of psychological dilemmas and distress that most humans must endure in the new era merely as a reward or punishment for being. In particular, the effects of our shoddy relationships per se ruin our spirits nowadays, while we also wonder about our choices and the purpose of our daily efforts and ambitions. Everybody is eager to find the meaning of life these days to no avail. We can never succeed, but this lifelong novel reveals how absurd life in all stages is if we just get the gist of it intelligently.