The 2008 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, Andrew Porter’s debut short story collection, The Theory of Light and Matter, transcends the seemingly small niche of critical appeal. His stories are Everyman stories: stories about growing up, about failure, about the power of newfound knowledge earned by a character’s quiet retrospection.
In "Hole," a young man recounts the disappearance of a childhood friend, resurrecting the old ghosts in an attempt to find new answers. Likewise, his story "Coyote" takes a similar approach, an adult stepping back into childhood to deduce the mysteries of his failed documentarian father. In "Riverdog," a younger brother attempts to rationalize his older brother’s inexcusable behavior, and in "Azul," a homosexual exchange student enters the lives of a married couple, complicating matters rather than reigniting the couples love, as they’d hoped.
At the heart of the collection is the title story, "The Theory of Light and Matter," which explores the boundaries and limitations of a student professor relationship, begging the question, What happens when what we want is at odds with what is socially acceptable?
However, "Departure"—awarded a Pushcart Prize in 2007—is in many ways the gem of the collection. Two boys spend a restless summer dating Amish girls and experience the nasty results of the intermingling of two very different cultures. A harsh, cold-hearted story, it refuses to shy away from anything, and instead, reveals the realities of a town divided by lifestyle differences.
Yet all of these stories function in the same manner: as a type of time travel in which the narrators are given second chances at rediscovering the hidden truths of past situations. And while the continual retrospection offers new insights, this technique proves successful to varying degrees. Porter’s only misstep, perhaps, is to fall victim to his strengths and repeat them too handedly. Many stories fall into the pattern of first person narrator issuing a crisp one-liner, followed directly after by a section break. His story "Storm" fits this formula a bit too nicely, and while the first half of the collection triumphs from this technique, it seems to wane in the latter half.
But thematically, the stories succeed in their continual attempts to rationalize irrational situations, perpetually testing the strength of the past while tying up the loose ends to make way for the future. Porter continually offer us glimmers of ”happily ever after” to characters who don’t necessarily deserve them.
Unquestionably, Porter’s stories compel the reader to examine the importance of reflection. We are given stories in which the lens is slightly obscured, the angle unnatural; stories in which the distance between event and the recounting of that event allows for the slowing of heartbeats, the return of breath, the calm surrender of grappling with an unchangeable past.