Unified Field Theory: Stories - Softcover

Soos, Frank

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0820335185 ISBN 13: 9780820335186

Publisher: University of Georgia Press, 2010

Synopsis

The short stories in Unified Field Theory capture characters in the middle of their lives as things fall apart. Jobs, marriages, and hopes disintegrate under people while they seek strategies and explanations. Some look for something larger than themselves, while others get in their cars and drive as if motion alone might offer a solution.

In "When the Hoot Owl Moves Its Nest," a surveyor blames the wreck of his marriage on his inability to interpret old-fashioned signs. In "If You Meet Buddha by the Road," a bicyclist seeks peace, and perhaps finds it, in Buddhism, while his ex-wife grieves for her lost youth. In the title story, a warehouseman seeks to overcome resignation through his misconception of particle physics: "We all hold that plane up there by an act of collective concentration. Each and every one of us looks into the sky as we drive along in our cars, go to the bank, mow the grass; and, with our looks, little by little, we help that airplane make its way."

Frank Soos's stories do not move toward epiphany. The men and women in Unified Field Theory have moments of emotional or intellectual recognition, but their lives are too complex for these moments to suggest long-term alterations. Plots double back on themselves, portraits are enriched through layers of detail, and readers achieve a growing understanding of each character's possibilities and limitations. The stories suggest a way of thoughtfully and emotionally participating in other people's worlds.

About this title

About the Author:

FRANK SOOS, a native of Virginia, is the author of Unified Field Theory, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. He is a professor emeritus of English at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.

From Booklist:

This debut collection of seven stories is the latest winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. Reading each of these gems is like focusing a microscope on a particular attitude or manner of the human condition. The characters, while cognizant of an ethical black and white that affects their lives, ultimately exist and move about in the foggy, dominant grays of reality. Uncertainty rules, sometimes bad decisions weigh heavily, and people often misfire with one another--especially spouses and lovers and exes for whom familiarity has indeed bred contempt. There is Nickerson ("Nickerson's Luck"), an accountant whose luck is certainly the residue of his design. Blind to the decisions that circumscribe his own life, he nevertheless understands that "people who loved him were in pain." In the title story, Hawkins, forever unable to please his father, comes to terms with the older man's gruffness and infidelities, his mother's newfound independence and religion, and his sometime, mostly platonic girlfriend, Bjorn Toulouse, whose self-endowed name best signifies the kind of ironic deflation upon which most of the characters teeter. Frank Caso

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0820335185
• ISBN 13: 9780820335186
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192