The stories collected in Dreaming Mother into Existence seek to pay homage to the art of the short story, being suggestive, textured, varied. While the august and elegant novel carries complexity to substantial length, the short story may choose to provide succinct attention to theme, sudden turns of plot and startling epiphany. Nor is meaning neglected. In this volume, such stories as Once I saw the Calypso Star and The Overlooked Man note the random in life. The Pumpkin Eater, The Story of My Creativity, and “…It’s All in your Mind” describe resistance to this existential fate. Chocolate Cake and Aunt Beatrice seek to illume life-affirming transcendence.
ISBN: 978-1-933994-758
386 pages
$17.95
Available for purchase at fine bookstores, and online at TBMbooks.com
In his second book, Vagaries of Fate, Robert Michael Congemi continues to express his sense of contemporary life as existential absurdity, as well as to present individual attempts to deal with such a condition. This collection of short stories gives new emphasis to two themes associated with his conviction—the role that human beings at times negatively play in adding to absurdity, and to the moderating, even redeeming quality of appreciating or creating a micro-moment of meaning.
ISBN: 978-1-935534-303
404 pages, $18.95