Not unlike his literary forebearers Donald Barthelme and Robert Coover, Damian Dressick brings us a crackling series of dispatches fresh from the postmodernist front.

This daring gathering of brief, innovative stories tantalizes the intellect nearly as much as it illuminates the human heart.

Drawing from his quiver of flash fictions, prose poems, lists, pie charts and micros, Dressick's narratives are fully engaged with the wild disorder that everyday feels more and more like the sine qua non of our fractured now.

Meet meth-addicted grizzly bears, a coal mining Jesus, grieving alcoholic parents, and murderous villagers whose only speech is culinary in this fleeting edge tour de force....Fables of the Deconstruction.

PRAISE FOR FABLES OF THE DECONSTRUCTION

"This collection of sixty-three stories is as rich and varied as a patisserie, as nasty and brutish as a Japanese architect in the mid-sixties, as delicate as the swift-moving scents in the coastal air at midnight. To call these stories short-shorts or "flash fiction" is to do them a disservice. While some are indeed short, and many are pleasantly flashy, every one hits home with the weight of boxer's punch, every one is more beautiful, and more fun, than the last. This is a first rate performance by an artist to be reckoned with."

—Frederick Barthelme, author of There Must Be Some Mistake

“Like Donald Barthelme, Damian Dressick finds himself on the leading edge of the junk phenomena. The thingness of things falls apart delightfully right before our dilated eyes. Fun for the whole goddamn nuclear family.”

—Michael Martone, author of Michael Martone

“Fables of the Deconstruction is funny, sad, dreamy, and brutal. The stories here veer off in strange directions, happily disobedient to the conventions that plague so much of our current grindingly cautious literature. This is a credit to Damian Dressick, an excitable and exciting new writer who will probably be a big deal someday and, in fact, if you check your heart, already is."

—Steve Almond, author of Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life

“Damian Dressick writes with gusto and sly humor, and Fables of the Deconstruction introduces a bold and robust new voice of impressive range. A heady debut.”

—Garielle Lutz, author of Worsted

“Damian Dressick’s Fables of the Deconstruction expertly explores the question: why not? Wandering through Dressick’s terrain, you can leave your own (real) life behind for a while. Sit back and enjoy. This little book will make you both happy and sad—with footnotes.”

—Sherrie Flick author of I Call This Flirting and Reconsidering Happiness.

“In Fables of the Deconstruction, a long-awaited debut collection, Damian Dressick enchants with a smorgasbord of tragic, strange, beautiful, and darkly funny stories. The author's range and variety of tone set this stunning debut collection apart from any other single-author collection of recent memory. Each piece works like a straight shot of espresso for the spirit, simultaneously sobering and mysterious. Dressick's tales are profound, heartbreaking and addictively fun to read.”

—Meg Pokrass author of, The Dog Looks Happy Upside Down and Co-Editor of Best Microfiction

Damian Dressick is the author of the novel 40 Patchtown. His creative work has appeared in more than fifty literary journals and anthologies, including W.W. Norton’s New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction, Post Road, New Orleans Review, Cutbank, failbetter.com, Hobart, Smokelong Quarterly, and New World Writing. A Blue Mountain Residency Fellow, he is the winner of the Harriette Arnow Award and the Jesse Stuart Prize. He co-hosts WANA: LIVE, a virtual reading series that brings some of the best in Appalachian writing to the world. He teaches at Clarion University of Pennsylvania. For more, check out www.damiandressick.com

ISBN: 9781944866860