Evidence of Things Unseen (Wiggins)

Evidence of Things Unseen 
Marianne Wiggins, 2003
Simon & Schuster
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780743258098


Summary
This poetic novel, by the acclaimed author of John Dollar, describes America at the brink of the Atomic Age. In the years between the two world wars, the future held more promise than peril, but there was evidence of things unseen that would transfigure our unquestioned trust in a safe future.

Fos has returned to Tennessee from the trenches of France. Intrigued with electricity, bioluminescence, and especially x-rays, he believes in science and the future of technology. On a trip to the Outer Banks to study the Perseid meteor shower, he falls in love with Opal, whose father is a glassblower who can spin color out of light.

Fos brings his new wife back to Knoxville where he runs a photography studio with his former Army buddy Flash. A witty rogue and a staunch disbeliever in Prohibition, Flash brings tragedy to the couple when his appetite for pleasure runs up against both the law and the Ku Klux Klan. Fos and Opal are forced to move to Opal's mother's farm on the Clinch River, and soon they have a son, Lightfoot. But when the New Deal claims their farm for the TVA, Fos seeks work at the Oak Ridge Laboratory—Site X in the government's race to build the bomb.

And it is there, when Opal falls ill with radiation poisoning, that Fos's great faith in science deserts him. Their lives have traveled with touching inevitability from their innocence and fascination with "things that glow" to the new world of manmade suns.

Hypnotic and powerful, Evidence of Things Unseen constructs a heartbreaking arc through twentieth-century American life and belief. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—September 8, 1947
• Where—Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—Manheim Township High School, Lancaster
• Awards—Whiting Award, 1989; Janet Heidiger Kafka Prize
   for best novel written by an American woman, 1990
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California


Marianne Wiggins was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and has lived in Brussels, Rome, Paris, and London. She is the author of ten books of fiction, including John Dollar and Evidence of Things Unseen, for which she was a National Book Award finalist in fiction, as well as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won an NEA grant, the Whiting Writers' Award, and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. She is Professor of English at the University of Southern California. (From the publisher.)

More
From a 2005 Barnes & Noble interview:

Q: What was the book that most influenced your life or your career as a writer—and why?

A: Hands down, this was Tillie Olsen's Silences. It was published soon after I turned 30, when I had one book in print and had not really found my canvas nor my voice. I was at a turning point in my life, not knowing if I could make a "career" of writing and having a young daughter to support on my own. Olsen's masterpiece is not so much "written" as gasped — her passionate engagement with the subject of women writers grips you physically like a madwoman on a bus demanding your participation in her cause. I read it in the kitchen, I read it in bed — I still read parts of it at least once every month.

Q: What are your favorite books, and what makes them special to you?

A: When I moved back to the United States after living 16 years in London, I had to ship all my possessions to California through the Panama Canal. I'll always remember the look on that Allied Movers agent's face when he saw my shelves of books: over 300 cartons' worth, and that was after I weeded out the out-of-date travel books to places like Burma and Romania that I had bought for research for my novels. I'm going to have to sidestep this question, adapting my sister's line. She has five children and frequently, sincerely, says, "I love ‘em all." (Bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)

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Book Reviews
There is roughness in Evidence of Things Unseen, an occasional grandiloquent reach beyond its fictional grasp. Rarely, you sense Wiggins spurring her story to lift it to the next stage, or chivying a sentence to snare a sublimity. This time, though, she has schooled her winged horse to transport human riders.
Richard Eder - New York Times Book Review

This nice little story would be quite sufficient for a delightful reading experience, but Wiggins has a more ambitious agenda. Foster's name (Ray, as in X-ray) is a not-too-subtle clue that he will have some symbolic role to play, and sure enough he functions as a modern mythic figure in the final third of the book, when the science that enthralled him becomes his nemesis.
Charles Platt - Washington Post

Hideous tragedies are nothing new in Wiggins' work; her warm portrait of abiding love embedded in marriage is the real surprise. Brilliantly charting the shifting currents of Fos and Opal's relationship over two decades, Wiggins gradually leads us to the understanding that while, for Fos, his wife is enough, Opal can't be entirely happy without the baby they have failed to conceive—and her husband knows it. With this poignant, realistic portrait of two people who love one another deeply but not equally, Wiggins may have tapped a vein of common humanity that will bring Evidence of Things Unseen a wider audience than her earlier work.
Wendy Smith - Los Angeles Times

Redoubtable Wiggins, always fearless in choosing subjects for her work (John Dollar; Almost Heaven) here tells the story of the atomic bomb through the eyes of one average Joe, amateur chemist Ray Foster, or "Fos," of Kitty Hawk, N.C. His fascination with "the kinds of lights nature can produce, the ones not always visible to man," serves him well in lighting the trenches during the Great War in France. When it is over, fellow soldier "Flash" Handy invites Fos to help him start a photography studio in Knoxville, Tenn. In a fated moment, Fos falls in love with a glassblower's daughter, the unflappable and luminescent Opal; they marry, and Opal helps run the studio. Meanwhile, Flash turns out to be a man with many secrets, one so tragic that it separates him permanently from Fos and Opal. Their sorrow at Flash's fate is somewhat forgotten when, after years of infertility, they are granted a baby, named Lightfoot. They move to land Opal inherits in rural Tennessee, but after it is claimed by the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1942, Fos finds a job in Oak Ridge with a government lab that, unbeknownst to him, is on deadline to create the atomic bomb that will be dropped on Hiroshima. In response to that horrific event and other heartache, the Fosters do something desperate that only serves to betray their nine-year-old son. Lightfoot proves to be more courageous and determined than Fos or Opal ever were, and finally finds the only person left in the world who can help him. Wiggins fits her lyrical prose to a distinctly rural, Southern cadence, easily blending the vernacular with luminous imagery, adding bits of poetry, passages explaining scientific phenomena, interpolations about the Scopes trial and even references to Moby-Dick, which serves as a leitmotif. By the time she brings the narrative full circle in a masterful and moving plot twist, she has succeeded in creating "literature as an ongoing exploration of the human tragedy-man's condition." Wiggins comes into her own with this novel, her best book to date. Higgins's last big success was with John Dollar, in 1989. This new novel has the potential to eclipse it, so long as it gets the review coverage it deserves
Publishers Weekly

Wiggins (Almost Heaven) here links her themes with those of Melville's Moby-Dick. The elusive white whale of this book is nothing less than the building blocks of existence, and the obsessed seeker is a believer in the promises of modern science. World War I veteran, longtime bachelor, and quintessential common man Ray "Fos" Foster meets Opal, the love of his life, during his annual journey to North Carolina's Outer Banks to observe the August meteor showers. They marry, and the intelligent but inexperienced young wife is soon deeply involved with both the Knoxville photography business Fos runs with a quirky, doomed Army pal and with Fos's dreams of scientific discoveries. Opal joins Fos in exhibiting his X-ray machine at county fairs, demonstrating modern technology to skeptical crowds by irradiating Opal's foot. Fos's reputation as a knowledgeable amateur gains him employment with the Tennessee Valley Authority-which eventually claims Opal's inherited farm for a dam, evicting the couple and their young son. In the early 1940s another, better opportunity seems to fulfill the family's faith in both scientific progress and the American dream: a good job and comfortable housing at Site X, a.k.a. Oak Ridge, TN. But when Opal falls mysteriously ill, the hideous, unintended consequences of Fos's well-meaning quest overtake and batter two generations. Strong characters, vivid settings, and extreme situations are described in masterly prose; this is another tour de force from a first-class literary novelist. Recommended for most fiction collections. —Starr E. Smith, Fairfax Cty. P.L., VA
Library Journal

A comprehensive love story stretches from the birth of X-rays to the detonation of the first nuclear weapons, and links it all with rural America between the wars. Ray Foster carries X-ray equipment in his truck and has "Phenomenologist" painted on the side. His experience runs the gamut of the expressions of war and the insidious technology of it; he was gassed by Germans in WWI, and is fascinated by all things headed toward atomic reaction, from firecrackers on up. Back in the States he becomes known as a photographer, but before long meets Opal, who can talk to him about nihilism, and explain what a "glory hole" is: the hottest part of a glassblower’s furnace. The two have chemistry, quite literally: "I like it when you talk your science stuff," Opal says. The newlyweds are soon off on the adventure of their marriage, first a return to Ray’s Knoxville, then to a farm Opal inherits. Their travels take them through a convenient tour of contemporary science: moonshiners, accidental electrocutions, Clarence Darrow arguing for Evolution, the Office of Rural Electrification, where Ray eventually comes to work. When a friend dies, a votive candle isn’t enough for these two: they toss a chunk of phosphorous into water to watch the light sink away. It’s an absence of chemistry that keeps Ray and Opal from starting a family of their own, but before long they happen upon a foundling they name Lightfoot. At her best, Wiggins (John Dollar, 1988; Eveless Eden, 1995, etc.) here belongs in the company of Eudora Welty. Still, the connection between modern science and Ray and Opal’s landscape can seem strained—"Like the Big Dipper, which has seven identifiable stars, the Tennessee pours through seven states"—and where would this story go if not to the tragedy of radiation poisoning for one of its principals? Still, the author brings these characters to life even as Ray (as in ray of light) and Opal (opalescence) begin to seem overtly apocryphal.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions
1. To what does the title refer? Does it have more than one meaning? From what source did Wiggins choose it?

2. What experience in your own life does the title speak to? What in your life gives you evidence of things unseen?

3. How does war in Evidence of Things Unseen shape the character's lives and how are we shaped by war now? What do you think Ray and Opal would have done if they had not met?

4. If Fos "were more like Flash, more cynical about the fundamental nature of mankind," might the events in Fos' life have taken a different turn?

5. Ray and Opal seemed to be bond together as one. They don't even communicate at certain times but yet they are connected to each other's feelings and thoughts. Is this unique to the characters or do couples/or close people really become that in tune with each other?

6. Would Fos have committed suicide if he could have foreseen the effect it would have on Lightfoot's life, or was his love for Opal too overwhelming?

7. Is Flash ultimately redeemed by the events that occur near the end of the novel? We find that he had overstayed his sentence in prison, citing his brother's unwillingness to hear his application for parole. How much of Flash's punishment is self-inflicted? Why did Opal seem to forgive him when he had so clearly not forgiven himself? Is he in fact making another prison for himself when he buys the derelict boat, or has he freed himself by guiding Lightfoot toward his future?

8. "In what ways, if any, do you think Lightfoot's life would have changed if he found out that Opal and Fos were not his real parents?" (Questions provided by publishers.)

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A second set of questons from the publishers:

1. Look at the McPhee quote at the beginning of the book. What is "The Curve of Binding Energy"? How does it figure in the story? Why does Wiggins use this to title three chapters?

2. Discuss "White Sands." What connection does it have to the characters and the story as a whole?

3. Talk about the character names. What do they reveal to you about the characters?

4. Recount Fos' "chance of a lifetime." (page 11) Thinking about the entire book, what is the relevance of the story on page 10 about the Curies and Becquerel and liquid radium? Why does the author include it at this point, so early on, in the book? Trace the life of Fos' x-ray machine and what he does with it.

5. What is your response to Wiggins' description of Opal and her glassblower father on pages 24 and 25? How does Opal first appear to Fos, and how is this scene significant?

6. How does Wiggins use Melville's Moby-Dick? Explore whether or not you need to be familiar with the story of Moby-Dick to understand Evidence of Things Unseen, and why. How do whales resonate throughout the story? Why does Opal's land-locked cousin make whales out of wood? Why is Lightfoot so attracted to them? Why is Flash so enamored of Melville's work?

7. Consider what Fos means when he says, "Family is a secret....That's what family is. A secret. From the world." Is there foreshadowing here, or illumination of the past? Why? What happens to Opal, Fos and Lightfoot? Discuss your reaction to Lightfoot's predicament at age nine.

8. Sharehow you responded when Lightfoot meets Flash. What does Flash mean when he says, "There are people for whom the past is important..."? (page 346) What kind of person are you?

9. Why is it so important for Lightfoot to find out about his past? What is your response when Flash tells Lightfoot, "The past doesn't hold the answers for you about who you are — the future does"? (page 360) Do you agree? Why?

10. Why do Flash and Lightfoot set out together across the country? What does it mean that "Lightfoot became more like Ahab on the bridge of the Pequod than he had ever been, steering only for the course in the direction of the thing he couldn't see"? (Page 352) Do you agree that Flash should not tell Lightfoot about his parentage? Why?

11. What does Ramona mean when she says "there are hundreds of stories out there...thousands. I can't turn the whole ocean into a sad story just for me." (Page 377) Why is this important for Lightfoot to hear? Why does Lightfoot go to White Sands? What, if anything, does this have to do with the opening section "White Sands"? What happens to him there?

12. Discuss the box that Opal was clutching when she died. Why is it called "The Box of Clues"? What is in it? What is the significance of these items? What do they mean to Lightfoot? To Opal?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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