The Brooklyn Rail

I reviewed John Domini twice, read a couple of other books, and got to know him as a colleague, fellow traveler, and friend. As a champion of the way that writers write about other writers, I believe that John’s essay “Rings, Planets, Poles, Inferno, Paradise: A Poetics for W.G. Sebald,” from The Sea-God’s Herb, is as fine a piece of “creative criticism” as I’ve ever encountered. And Movieola! is what every short story collection ought to aspire to be, but often is not. John’s influence on me goes beyond the books, however. It’s clearly the case that John’s work was not as celebrated as it should have been—such cases far outnumber their opposite, and yet those careers weirdly linger—and while I’m sure that this weighed on John, it never affected the rate of his production or the quality of his product. John had an undying faith in the literary effort, and this included his own robust literary citizenship, a trait too often abandoned by careers successful and otherwise. John’s work challenges the mind, and his life, now ended, tasks us all to rise to the occasion of his complete example.