Shawn Shook is a thirty-something bookstore employee plans to revive his great uncle's Cold War-era short stories; unfortunately, inertia engrosses Shawn Shook, who employs booze and a box of waterproof markers as tools to cope with a personal tragedy. The impotent protagonist covers the walls of his rented apartment with stories that serve no purpose other than narcissistic self-therapy. Shook surrounds himself with the words of others, and sadly perpetuates his "vortex of language" without realizing that, as his prized Oxford English Dictionary could tell him, words are defined as distinct...