ATOMIC ROMANCE
Bobbie Ann Mason
A READER’S GUIDE
An Interview with the Author
Q: An Atomic Romance is your first novel in ten years. Readers have come to expect your fiction to take place in a small town in Kentucky. Why did you change the setting for this novel?
Bobbie Ann Mason: I deliberately set this in an indeterminate place in the heart of the country to suggest that it could take place anywhere in America. Not just the romance in this romantic comedy, but the troubling hint of nuclear mischief that lies underneath it, a threat that affects us all, wherever we live.
Q: What is an “atomic romance”?
BAM: The romance between Reed and Julia is fired by a shared sense of wonder. They are essentially rational, looking to science to answer their questions. They are open to possibility and fun. They are entertained, not threatened by, the possibility of the indifference of the universe. They play with the nature of the basic, and extreme, contradiction of contemporary science: the order and design of the Einsteinian universe vs. the randomness and indeterminacy of the subatomic, found in quantum mechanics and string theory.
Q: Reed Futrell’s fascination with the cosmos is key to his character. Why did you choose to immerse Reed in this unconventional hobby?
BAM: Reed is a dreamer. He dreams of traveling through the cosmos in his zippy little “Reedmobile,” freed from gravity and time. He contemplates the images from the Hubble telescope. And he tries to make sense of his own exposure to radioactive elements by arranging on his computer screen images of the planets that those elements were named for.
The book is about aspiration, the yearning toward the ultimate. People always want to find some higher meaning or transcendence, especially nowadays, in our post-9/11 angst. Reed and Julia are more attracted to Stephen Hawking’s questions about time and space than they are to easy answers to who we are and why.
Q: Julia is the second player in this “romance.” Tell us a bit about Julia. Do you admire her?
BAM: Although Julia is practical, no-nonsense, not caught up in illusions, she dreams of making a scientific discovery that will cure disease. She is sensual and vibrant, ready to have fun with string theory or Hawking’s space-time. Julia says, “Who knows what might be out there waiting to be discovered?” I love Julia. I like the way she doesn’t care about her appearance and yet Reed finds her so sexy. I like her confidence.
Q: An Atomic Romance sets Reed’s working life in opposition to his love life. Why is Reed so dedicated to the plant?
BAM: Reed is proud of being a working man. Most of the characters Reed encounters are seen while they are at work—the mini-mart clerk Rosalyn, the gun shop owner Andy, Burl the Bobcat contractor, and numerous others. Reed believes his job is important because he helps maintain the safety of the plant. He works at a uranium-enrichment facility, which prepares fuel for use at nuclear-power plants. Formerly it made fuel for atomic bombs. During the Cold War workers proudly contributed to national defense, but the carelessness and haste in handling toxic waste created a nightmare of pollution for subsequent generations. Reed is struggling with the weight of his legacy.
Q: What inspired you to use a scientific motif in the novel?
BAM: It was inevitable, given the nature of Reed’s work. Working in the atomic industry, Reed is involved in the most deadly scientific developments in history. He has to come to terms with it and its history. He inherits a pride in working to defend the country by helping to build atomic bombs. Now, with proliferation, radioactive contamination, and the dirty secret we are afraid to talk about—nuclear terror—Reed has to consider what his job means. Moreover, he works for a corporation making fuel for power plants now, a peaceful if debatable process, but he has to go to the nucleus, so to speak, of the question: who were the scientists who thought of atomic energy? What were they thinking?
Q: How did you research the scientific aspects of the novel? Did you have to brush up on your string theory a bit?
BAM: My expertise doesn’t go beyond the popular books. I think I’m probably not even up to Reed’s level, but I can grasp enough of quantum mechanics to feel the wonder of it. Physicists must feel they are in the most exciting field in the world. Their minds must be afire. What was especially fascinating to me is the way the cosmos—the infinitely vast—is perhaps mirrored by the infinitely small, the subatomic. This is Julia and Reed, looking in different directions but then trying to tie things together with strings, just as scientists are trying to find the Theory of Everything—and it might be strings.
Q: What do you feel is the major theme of the book?
BAM: It’s all about dancing, I think. A romance. Spinning, whirling, dancing are central images: the spinning of the liquid uranium compound through the gaseous-diffusion process; the whirling of flocks of birds, centrifuges, minds and moods; the dancing of Reed’s parents to the Artie Shaw big-band song “Dancing in the Dark.” And what music are Julia and Reed listening to as they dance? Why, the cosmic hum, no doubt—the vibrating strings at the bottom of it all.
I think of the title, An Atomic Romance, as a celebration of the life force in the face of indeterminacy and chaos. That’s dancing in the dark. It’s one of the most exciting phrases I know.
Reed’s favorite poem is the familiar Coleridge poem “Kubla Khan.” I could hear words from that poem—“ceaseless turmoil seething,” “dancing rocks,” mighty fountain,” and “tumult”—echoing in the atomic fuel processing system, the Cascade. It was exhilarating to me to think of that central tension between the destructive power of the tyrant and the creative power of the artist. It seems so prophetic and apt. Maybe it’s about dancing in the dark.
Questions for Discussion
Why are Julia and Reed attracted to each other? What accounts for their “romance”? Do you sympathize with Julia or Reed in the breakup? Do you think Reed is being reasonable?
Consider the role of science in the novel and in the romance. Why are Reed and Julia so interested in such uncommon topics as quarks and the genome project and black holes? What questions ultimately lie beneath Reed and Julia’s flirtation with quantum theory and string theory?
Why does Reed keep working at such a dangerous job? Can you explain his loyalty? How does his attitude toward his work evolve? How serious are the dangers of radioactive contamination? How does he deal—or not deal—with his potentially lethal exposures to plutonium? How serious is the problem of nuclear waste for the world?
Reed dreams about a woman killing herself in the wildlife refuge, a “private screening of a horror film” (10) in his mind. How do you interpret the meaning of this dream, and why is Reed haunted by it? How does Reed’s dream connect to all the other dreaming in the novel? Consider also the epigraph, and Reed’s favorite poem, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” a poem that arose from a dream. Why do you think there are so many dreams in this novel?
The novel begins as if Reed is watching a movie when he rides into the wildlife refuge. How does this point of view—and the passive way we watch movies—arise from Reed’s character and situation? Can you find other references in the novel to the ways in which movies influence our way of seeing?
There are numerous insects in this book, including the oversized praying mantis. Why are these insects flying around in this story? Look for other clusters of images, such as birds, clouds, colors, and discuss why they might be significant.
How does Reed feel about his mother? What is her role in our understanding of the atomic legacy passed down to Reed? Why does she like to pretend?
Reed has a special fascination with images from the Hubble telescope. Trace the sequence of Reed’s sessions at the computer with his astronomical pictures. Why does he move from the stars to the planets? What are the transuranics?
Why does Reed think his buddy Burl is wise or even “holy”? What does Burl mean by serving as Reed’s “Prayer Warrior”?
Julia is a person who’s out for a sec
ond chance, a mother who starts a career after her daughters are grown. How realistic are her ambitions? Does Julia know herself? Can Reed share and support her ambitions?
What is the role of the mysterious Celtic Warrior Reed encounters in the wildlife refuge?
After Julia leaves for Chicago, Reed finds himself in a series of situations that carry him along until he can make a decision. What do these scenes—the ride with Burl into the country, the farewell trip to the wildlife refuge, the meeting with his Internet pen pal, and the church pageant with Burl—contribute to Reed’s state of mind and the progress of his romance with Julia?
Does the novel have a happy ending?
BOBBIE ANN MASON is the author of In Country, Clear Springs, and Shiloh & Other Stories. She is the winner of the PEN/ Hemingway Award, two Southern Book awards, and numerous other prizes, including the O. Henry and the Pushcart. She was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the American Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. She is writer-in-residence at the University of Kentucky.
Also by Bobbie Ann Mason
FICTION
Shiloh & Other Stories
In Country
Spence + Lila
Love Life
Feather Crowns
Midnight Magic
Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail
Nancy Culpepper
NONFICTION
Nabokov’s Garden
The Girl Sleuth
Clear Springs
Elvis Presley
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are
products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
2006 Random House Trade Paperback Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Bobbie Ann Mason
Reading group guide copyright © 2006 by Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks
of Random House, Inc.
READER’S CIRCLE and colophon are trademarks of
Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Mason, Bobbie Ann.
An atomic romance: a novel / Bobbie Ann Mason.
p. cm.
1. Nuclear fuel plants—Environmental aspects—Fiction.
2. Plutonium—Environmental aspects—Fiction. 3. Nuclear fuel
plants—Employees—Fiction. 4. Radioactive wastes—Fiction.
5. Women biologists—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3563.A7877A88 2005
813’.54—dc22 2004061458
www.thereaderscircle.com
www.randomhouse.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-43063-2
v3.0
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