by Julia Stoops
The story follows historical events, but I sometimes embellished the weather to underscore the mood of a scene.
Thanks to the generous help from several experts mentioned in the acknowledgments, I hope the scenes of hacking, wiretapping, and the tricked-out Oldsmobile Toronado bear at least a passing resemblance to how these things might actually go down.
—Julia Stoops, January 2018
A Short Note from the Illustrator
I’m here because of Jen.
I drove to Portland in 1995. Its downtown art school had accepted my portfolio and I hoped the city would be small enough for me (hometown: 8.5k humans) to negotiate with a toddler. On Southeast Clinton I found a tiny cafe where I could check email, watch my child nap in her car seat, and, surrounded by people sitting at terminals and chatting IRL with the same geeks they were simultaneously in chat rooms with, feel less alone.
Jen stepped right out of the Habit Cafe, just a few blocks from the HQ of Omnia Mundi.
On the other hand, Omnia Mundi itself will, in my head, always resemble North Portland’s Chicken House, a neighborly palace once the home of deep heartblood like Moe Bowstern and Marisa Anderson and Ben Haile and the Amalgamated Everlasting Union Chorus Local 824. Julia and I redrew the house plan for OMHQ in my Parts per Million sketchbooks (1 and 2) again and again. The sun comes in a different window and it’s Fetzer, not Dwayne, distilling veggie diesel in the shed, but the smell remains the same.
Julia was my Art and Ideas professor that first year in Portland. As a studio artist, she showed how we could visualize our understanding of the world through interlocking ellipses and vortices and plenty of color. Two decades later when she asked if I would read her novel I assumed it would be something equally woven and complex. It was, but what caught me was Jen; Jen was funny, familiar. And there was the frustrated self-knowledge that Portland was not super-diverse, super-radical like Oakland, but we had to, and could, make do, and learn. My scalp burned with all the people I suddenly needed Julia to share the novel with, talk to, harass.
And I was caught by that same question that must have haunted Julia: “How do I take this time and place I knew and loved and remake it with people I’ve never met before?” Except I had the advantage of Julia herself making all the introductions.
—Gabriel Liston, January 2018
Book Group Questions
1. Who is your favorite character, and why? How does that character grow from the opening of the novel to the epilogue?
2. Of all the characters, major and minor, who do you think gets what they really want by the end?
3. Why do you think Nelson’s chapters are in third person, whereas the Jen’s and Fetzer’s are in first person? How does this influence your understanding of the characters?
4. The author wrote about a particular time in the history of the United States. In what ways does the telling reflect how you remember that time, and in what ways does it differ?
5. Would you characterize this novel as more character driven, or more plot driven?
6. Why do you think Parts per Million is told from three points of view? What effect does this have on your understanding of the story as it unfolds?
7. Nelson is a rational optimist, whereas Deirdre is a pessimistic fatalist. Do you think their relationship could have survived long-term?
8. Imagery is repeated throughout, such as Deirdre nearly tipping the table over during her first breakfast with the crew, then actually tipping the table over during her last evening with them. Can you think of other examples of images that are used more than once?
9. Identify some similes and metaphors used in Nelson’s scenes. Is he really such a rationalist after all?
10. Jen is the youngest activist of the trio, and the one who pushes back the most when Deirdre joins the household. How does her social inter-action with the other characters, and with #rezist, change?
Learn more about Parts per Million at partspermillion.net. Discover more details and characters sketches about Nelson, Jen, Fetzer, and Deirdre at the Omnia Mundi website, omniamundi.org. Forest Avenue Press publishes literary fiction on a joyride from its Portland, Oregon, headquarters.