{"id":5067,"date":"2020-04-03T19:28:54","date_gmt":"2020-04-03T19:28:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/floridareview.cah.ucf.edu\/?post_type=article&p=5067"},"modified":"2020-04-03T19:28:54","modified_gmt":"2020-04-03T19:28:54","slug":"visiting-eight-little-universes","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/visiting-eight-little-universes\/","title":{"rendered":"Visiting Eight Little Universes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quantum Convention<\/em>, by Eric Schlich<\/strong><\/p>\n

University of North Texas Press, 2018<\/strong><\/p>\n

Paperback, 192 pages, $14.95<\/strong><\/p>\n

Winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By the time I reached the end of the first page of Eric Schlich\u2019s Quantum Convention<\/em>, I was engrossed in the world created in the eponymous opening story, where the protagonist, Colin, attended a \u201cQuantum Convention\u201d of his alternate selves from parallel timelines, in search of \u201cPerfect Me,\u201d or at least \u201cHappy Me.\u201d Then, once Colin headed home, \u201cstep[ping] through from the Marriott lobby to the Days Inn lobby in my home uni,\u201d Schlich offered me seven more universes I wanted to step into and explore, from the revealing dreams of \u201cLucidity\u201d to the set of The Wizard of Oz<\/em> in \u201cNot Nobody, Not Nohow.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Schlich\u2019s talents extend beyond cool ideas to clever prose and layered characterization. He moves deftly from humor to tragedy, even expertly riding the waves of tragicomedy, making his stories fun to read without coming off as shallow or glib. \u201cMerlin Lives Next Door,\u201d for example, begins with a vibrant and funny scene in which the wizard of the title \u201csneezes and flies into last Saturday when I was doing some landscaping\u201d and the protagonist literally \u201cyelled at him to get off my lawn.\u201d With clever references to Arthurian legend\u2014and other well-known wizards\u2014\u201cMerlin Lives Next Door\u201d made me laugh a lot (pun possibly intended). But the story dips into pathos, as well, expressing the deep loneliness of an existence \u201cunstuck from time\u201d in which Merlin never stays in the same time period for more than nine months.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Schlich draws his characters with the same skill that shapes his prose, whether it\u2019s the young girl wrestling with her faith in \u201cNight Thieves\u201d or the stifled one-eyed narrator in \u201cJournal of a Cyclops.\u201d Actually, the characterization I enjoyed most in \u201cJournal of a Cyclops\u201d wasn\u2019t the narrator, Owen, but Darien, a boy whose attempts to befriend Owen offer the social contact that a housebound Owen desperately needs, but constantly hover on the edge of exploiting Owen\u2019s unusual \u201cbirth gift\u201d to impress other, cooler teenagers. Aware of this possibility, Owen struggles to take ownership of his atypical appearance, writing to his psychiatrist, \u201cIf I can survive this, I can survive anything.\u201d Schlich gives Darien more complexity than the average middle-school bully, showing how Darien\u2019s attempts to use Owen spring not from the standard Mean Girls<\/em> attitude of a popular kid but from Darien\u2019s own desire for the esteem of others.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Though most of Quantum Convention<\/em>\u2019s stories have modern settings\u2014often, but not always, with fantastical elements\u2014I would feel remiss if I failed to mention \u201cKeeners,\u201d the tale of orphan girls once paid to cry at funerals, not so much for the narrative of the keeners themselves but for the wonderful and, of course, tragic fairy tale of the banshee embedded within. In Schlich\u2019s version, the banshee is a beautiful young woman whose rotted, tongueless mouth disgusts all her suitors. The banshee\u2019s dying mother teaches her a sublimely beautiful song that must only be sung one night of the year, and complications ensue. Rather than spoil the ending with too much detail, let me say only that it involves a foolish king and a deaf gravedigger.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That said, Quantum Convention<\/em> isn\u2019t perfect. Schlich counts among the many writers who seem to struggle with endings, though he tackles them with more style and aplomb than most. While not every story in the book misses the mark at the end\u2014\u201cLucidity,\u201d for example, concludes right where it needs to\u2014Schlich tends to err on the side of ending his stories too early rather than too late, potentially frustrating readers, as in \u201cLipless,\u201d where I desperately wanted to see a final encounter between the married, bisexual protagonist and the straight man he\u2019d loved since college, one that would give both the character Marcus and myself some closure. Sometimes Schlich leaves a little too much work for the reader to do at the end of the story, as in \u201cNot Nobody, Not Nohow,\u201d where despite the strong shared motif of The Wizard of Oz<\/em>, I struggled to find the emotional parallels between the two protagonists: the actress reduced to a \u201ccrone\u201d by her role of the Wicked Witch and a young boy humiliated by his classmates for dressing up as Dorothy. While Schlich offers me decent conclusions to either Margaret Hamilton\u2019s storyline or the unnamed boy\u2019s, they still feel like two separate stories; the ending\u2019s attempts to tie them together fall short.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Despite this minor criticism, Quantum Convention<\/em> remains absolutely worth the read. As Colin learns by the time he leaves his own quantum convention, none of us are perfect, either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Schlich offered me universes I wanted to step into and explore …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":5072,"template":"","categories":[9,139],"tags":[1433,1434,1435,1436],"class_list":["post-5067","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-book-review","tag-dana-brown","tag-eric-schlich","tag-quantum-convention","tag-university-of-north-texas-press"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nVisiting Eight Little Universes - The Florida Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/visiting-eight-little-universes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Visiting Eight Little Universes - The Florida Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Schlich offered me universes I wanted to step into and explore ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/visiting-eight-little-universes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Florida Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2020\/03\/Detail-of-cover-of-Quantum-Convention-by-Eric-Schlich2.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"217\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"141\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/visiting-eight-little-universes\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/visiting-eight-little-universes\\\/\",\"name\":\"Visiting Eight Little Universes - 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