The Name of the World is told from a first-person point-of-view by its narrator, Michael Reed. Reed is a 50-year-old adjunct professor at a Midwestern university. He suffers from a crippling sense of loss and guilt due to the deaths of his wife and 5-year-old daughter in an automobile accident. As the years pass and—to his dismay—he finds he can recall their faces only with great difficulty. Reed’s oppressive grief becomes a chronic obsession.
Reed makes several attempts to break out of his mundane existence in academia—with little success—until he meets the 26-year-old student performance artist and amateur stripper, Flower Cannon. Her indulgence in New-Age jargon and alien-abduction narratives fascinates Reed, and he begins to follow Flower to various venues: a casino, where he is punched in the face by a co-gambler; a Young Goodman Brown-like Mennonite religious service where he denounces God; and finally, an assignation at Flower’s studio. Though they do not engage in sexual intimacy, the encounter serves as an epiphany for Reed, providing him with an avenue to escape from his obsessive necrophilia—and towards an affirmation of life. The story closes with Reed serving as a journalist near Iraq during Operation Desert Storm.
