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The Size of the Universe
The landscape of this novel in stories—Joseph Cardinale’s first book-length work of fiction—is as familiar as childhood yet beguilingly surreal. The question of whether or not the child in the first fiction and the man in the last story are the same person—and whether any person is the same from one moment to the next—is perhaps the book’s main question. In prose as spare as it is meticulous, The Size of the Universe conjures an elegant labyrinth of time, space, and memory, in which a wavering self, a self on the verge of becoming nothing, seeks a safe haven from the throes of near-religious ecstasy. It is a debut work that is inviting, perplexing, and bold.
136 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 25, 2010
A Book of Wonders
Joseph Cardinale enters the world of written fiction not through a door of expectation but as a seer who drops out of the heavens with a completely fresh and unique and mesmerizingly broad spectrum of stories in this his first book, THE SIZE OF THE UNIVERSE. Attempting to imagine where the ideas for these odd and fascinating tales originated is far less important than simply jumping into any one of the six short stories this book contains. Cardinale finds terra firme wherever he sets his matrix for opening a thought progression that feels more important than a linear story line. He seems to be recalling the wild imagination of the quest for meaning of the universe as seen and evolved in the eyes of a child (some of these stories are clearly the related from the vantage of very young minds with ancient souls). And that is not to say these pages are ramblings of a mind exploring the vastness of the Universe: these are terse, beautifully sculpted stories with highly defined characters who happen to be in situations that open the windows for thinking about greater issues.
In 'The Singularity' a boy and his sister play hid and seek in the evening, a game that results in a fall from the boy's hiding place in a maple tree, a fall that frees the boy's soul to ascend into the heavens viewing the strange proceedings on the earth below: a stopwatch and a beam of light from the sister's flashlight contribute as much to the veneer of the story as the human characters. In 'The Great Disappointment' a mother and son are left in the upper portions and roof of their house after a flood has covered all else. Maps and quadrants and graphs are created to make some sense of their destiny until the two sense the presence of a moving creature in the water, a creature they call the Savior, who is caught by the mother's fishing line and resembles an orangutan. The conflict of keeping the Savior on the roof with the two finally results in the mother casting him back into the flood waters. The son ponders the Godlike qualities of the creature. The mother argues 'God wants us to feel disappointed in this world. He wants us to think we belong somewhere else.' The son replies 'I don't see a difference....between.. What God wants...What kind of world we think we're owed. This world and that world - I don't see how it matters unless there's a line between them.' To imagine a conversation such as this between the two remaining people on the earth after a huge flood helps us appreciate the depth of philosophy and skill of communication that lies in the hands and mind of Joseph Cardinale.
In 'Art in Heaven' Cardinale creates a conversation between a father and son about a number of odd sightings - a captured moth in a bottle, an escaped buffalo, a thirsty peace lily, a cave, the concept of running away from home- all transformed into a complex exploration of biblical events and the concept of God. 'You're still and atheist,' said Father./ 'I think so.' /'But you believe in life.' /'I have experiential evidence of life.' / 'But God is life,' he said.'/ 'Okay. Then I believe in God.' And the Father shares his concept of the Christ as just a man who took advantage of the expectations of the Messiah's coming and made himself Christ - a conversation so intricately fascinating that this story alone could be the driver for owning this book. Until of course another story appears upon turning the page that discusses a man whose wife has vanished and he finds solace in an Astronomy course. And in the paths of thought this examination of the universe opens the author places the words 'The point is simply that the line between what you are and what you're observing is erasable--that if you stare at an object all the way and without limitation you are no longer anything else. You're everything.'
Strange stories flickering with humor, with profound questions about questioning who we are and how we fit into the overall ether of the Universe, and tales that marry tenderness with religious flavoring and an audible plea for understanding the line between being and nothingness. Few authors can explore the interstices of the hungry mind with the palpable convictions of characters who could possibly be all around us the way that Joseph Cardinale so successfully does. He is a major talent given the evidence of this, his first book, and he is most assuredly a writer to watch.
Grady Harp
Joseph Cardinale enters the world of written fiction not through a door of expectation but as a seer who drops out of the heavens with a completely fresh and unique and mesmerizingly broad spectrum of stories in this his first book, THE SIZE OF THE UNIVERSE. Attempting to imagine where the ideas for these odd and fascinating tales originated is far less important than simply jumping into any one of the six short stories this book contains. Cardinale finds terra firme wherever he sets his matrix for opening a thought progression that feels more important than a linear story line. He seems to be recalling the wild imagination of the quest for meaning of the universe as seen and evolved in the eyes of a child (some of these stories are clearly the related from the vantage of very young minds with ancient souls). And that is not to say these pages are ramblings of a mind exploring the vastness of the Universe: these are terse, beautifully sculpted stories with highly defined characters who happen to be in situations that open the windows for thinking about greater issues.
In 'The Singularity' a boy and his sister play hid and seek in the evening, a game that results in a fall from the boy's hiding place in a maple tree, a fall that frees the boy's soul to ascend into the heavens viewing the strange proceedings on the earth below: a stopwatch and a beam of light from the sister's flashlight contribute as much to the veneer of the story as the human characters. In 'The Great Disappointment' a mother and son are left in the upper portions and roof of their house after a flood has covered all else. Maps and quadrants and graphs are created to make some sense of their destiny until the two sense the presence of a moving creature in the water, a creature they call the Savior, who is caught by the mother's fishing line and resembles an orangutan. The conflict of keeping the Savior on the roof with the two finally results in the mother casting him back into the flood waters. The son ponders the Godlike qualities of the creature. The mother argues 'God wants us to feel disappointed in this world. He wants us to think we belong somewhere else.' The son replies 'I don't see a difference....between.. What God wants...What kind of world we think we're owed. This world and that world - I don't see how it matters unless there's a line between them.' To imagine a conversation such as this between the two remaining people on the earth after a huge flood helps us appreciate the depth of philosophy and skill of communication that lies in the hands and mind of Joseph Cardinale.
In 'Art in Heaven' Cardinale creates a conversation between a father and son about a number of odd sightings - a captured moth in a bottle, an escaped buffalo, a thirsty peace lily, a cave, the concept of running away from home- all transformed into a complex exploration of biblical events and the concept of God. 'You're still and atheist,' said Father./ 'I think so.' /'But you believe in life.' /'I have experiential evidence of life.' / 'But God is life,' he said.'/ 'Okay. Then I believe in God.' And the Father shares his concept of the Christ as just a man who took advantage of the expectations of the Messiah's coming and made himself Christ - a conversation so intricately fascinating that this story alone could be the driver for owning this book. Until of course another story appears upon turning the page that discusses a man whose wife has vanished and he finds solace in an Astronomy course. And in the paths of thought this examination of the universe opens the author places the words 'The point is simply that the line between what you are and what you're observing is erasable--that if you stare at an object all the way and without limitation you are no longer anything else. You're everything.'
Strange stories flickering with humor, with profound questions about questioning who we are and how we fit into the overall ether of the Universe, and tales that marry tenderness with religious flavoring and an audible plea for understanding the line between being and nothingness. Few authors can explore the interstices of the hungry mind with the palpable convictions of characters who could possibly be all around us the way that Joseph Cardinale so successfully does. He is a major talent given the evidence of this, his first book, and he is most assuredly a writer to watch.
Grady Harp
May 1, 2011
I'm going to be perfectly honest and say this book mystified me. The stories in it are beautifully written with a dreamy, existential quality that kept me reading even when I had no clue what the story was about. Therein lies the problem. Each story is written from the perspective of a narrator who grows progressively older with each story, beginning as a boy playing with his sister and ending with a man caring for his beloved wife with Alzheimer's. Each story is told in exquisite language with imagery that feels mythic and a palpable longing for God, or whatever unknowable other is shaping the forces moving the lives of the people in the stories. Whether the narrator is the same person in each is unknown and doesn't really matter. In one story he is a teenage boy stranded in a flooded world with only his mother and an orangutan. In another he is a young man talking to his father. In more than one a woman/wife/lover named Marie is there but we never really know who any of these people are. In one story the narrator has recently lost his wife and taken up astronomy, in another she is elderly and dying.
There were several times while reading I thought, "Maybe I'm just not intelligent enough to understand this book." I still wonder about that. It's a collection of beautifully written, dreamy stories with a deeply hypnotic quality but, in all honesty, I'm still not sure if I missed something.
There were several times while reading I thought, "Maybe I'm just not intelligent enough to understand this book." I still wonder about that. It's a collection of beautifully written, dreamy stories with a deeply hypnotic quality but, in all honesty, I'm still not sure if I missed something.
June 29, 2011
Joe Cardinale writes a good book. I can't wait for the film version.
April 11, 2015
First book to give me nightmares
January 5, 2019
As others have said, Cardinale's writing is tremendous; this is one of the best works of prose I have read in a long time. The stories combine a kind of immediacy or realism with a dimension so utterly different or estranging that the reader is kept in a wonderful state of tension -- at times confusion, though confusion in the best possible sense. This book has depth. Read it slowly, enjoy the beautiful language, the precision of the prose, the mystical spaces it opens up.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews