 Bedlam
These stories, set in a wide variety of real and unreal locales, arouse
more faraway yearnings. All sooner or later come round to the subject
of love, but none finds it anywhere we might ordinarily have expected.
Confusion lurks in the living room and in whatever's on TV, bedlam
in the bedroom and in the utter boredom that comes after death.
Worse still, every point of view is nagged by glimpses of every
other. Each, however, is touched—some might even say made sane—by
the same resilient lyricism and a hint of better music playing
not too far off after all.
"The stories in Bedlam—both the realistic ones and the fantastic
ones—add up to an impressive first collection. Domini's voice is
engagin, insistent, earnest, curious, unsentimental but compassionate."
—John Barth
"John Domini's tales are fantastical forays into a literary land populated
by such comic-philosophic devils and angels as those found in Stanley
Elkin, Donald Barthelme, and Max Apple. They warble with incantations,
lamentations, orations; they sparkle with craftsmanship."
—Richard Price
"John Domini's short stories are characterized by energy, originality,
and daring. The energy is, to quote a line from his own work, 'a
musical triumph that [is] almost violent.' Indeed, violence lurks
just outside the door or in the next room; but it is never allowed
to disrupt the subtlety of the fiction."
—Stephen Minot
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