The Unified Field of Loneliness

by Jared Marcel Pollen

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Pub Date Apr 17 2019 | Archive Date Mar 08 2019

Crowsnest Books

General Fiction (Adult) | Literary Fiction

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Description

After a series of unpublished books, a novelist becomes obsessed with the idea of uploading his consciousness into a cloud and asks a former student to document his efforts (“Encomium of Glass”). A brilliant but melancholy young architect travels to Ukraine with a colleague after the fall of the iron curtain and finds himself in a graveyard of Soviet monuments (“Suedehead”). And after being released from an Egyptian prison, a deprogrammed Islamist has a strange encounter one night at the MoMA (“The Lovers”).

These are just a few of the pieces that make up The Unified Field of Loneliness. From Paris, to New York, to Vienna, to London, these ten stories locate characters living in a condition of terror, solipsism and displacement in the technological age.

A Note From the Publisher

Jared Marcel Pollen was born in Canada. He studied politics and literature at the University of Windsor and received his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College in NY. His work has appeared in The Millions, 3:AM Magazine, Salo Press and Political Animal, among others. He currently lives in Prague.

Advance Praise

"The stories in Jared Marcel Pollen's debut collection proceed with a surgical intensity, as they endeavor to expose the crackling wires of consciousness itself. The Unified Field of Loneliness is a reminder that fiction exists in service to truth, a principle that Pollen embraces with courage, dexterity, and wit."

— David Hollander, author of L.I.E.

"Jared Marcel Pollen drills into moments that take both his characters and his readers far past the borders of comfort, where ordinary human maneuvering assumes transcendence. These stories traverse the intimate, the global, the lonely, the brutal. His vision is as clear as it is subtle. We’re fortunate to have him and this astounding debut."

— Nelly Reifler, author of See Through: Stories

"Jared Marcel Pollen's fiction is rich with mind with an intelligence both moral and mischievous. Readers of Helen DeWitt and Ben Lerner will find here another writer to admire."

— Brian Morton, author of Starting Out in the Evening