Director of the World

The characters in this collection of short stories are often distanced, lonely or displaced from others and the events around them, yet they are always ready to act, to become involved with others, and to change. In "The Eyes of Others", a woman, stopping at a Howard Johnson's during a trip, becomes fascinated by the meeting of two strangers and attempts to connect with them as she has been unable to connect with her own family. Implicit in these stories is a rootlessness that gives way to yearning and a passion for remembering. In the title story, a disturbed child whose father has recently abandoned the family, attempts, in language reflecting her shattered sense of the world, to recapture some of their last experiences together. These characters, and others in the collection, attempt to make sense of their broken lives and shattered thoughts. As John Wideman writes of the stories, there is "a sense of commitment to the struggle of making silent world speak, of forcing what is threatening or evil or destructive into some form we can see and conjure with". "Director of the World and Other Stories" was selected as the winner of the twelfth Drue Heinz Literature Prize for short fiction. The collection was chosen from 279 manuscripts submitted by published writers to the contest and read anonymously by the screening judges and the final judge (John Wideman).


Genre: General Fiction