Symphonie Fantastique

"Symphonie Fantastique" is a collection of four short novels--"At Last the Distinguished Thing," Steiglitz's Folly, "The Mozart Machine," and "Intrusive Voices--and a fifth movement consisting of two short stories and an essay "Wagnerian Elements in Thomas Mann's Joseph Tetralogy." Each of the four novels deals with a haunted individual. First, readers will encounter an elderly writer who begins to doubt the validity of his work as his world begins to come apart at the seams during WW1. Next, they will witness the persisting influence of a domineering, overprotective, long-dead father and Civil War buff upon his agoraphobic son who remains glued to his television during the first Gulf War, feeling that the enemy has secretly targeted not only him but everyone else watching at a distance. Third, the reader will meet a young man, who after experiencing the irresistible force of Frau Minne and being transfixed and smitten at the first sight of the beloved, suffers from physical and psychological scars occasioned by her departure and subsequent reduction to the status of ghost in his life. Finally, the reader will encounter a nursing home aide and would-be bank robber and his great-grandfather, a patient at the home, an individual who has shattered into slivers and fragments and who is haunted by an omnium-gatherum of alters, nightly revenants, spectral visitors or the illusions thereof.

About the Author

Mark Seinfelt is the author of several books. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the Pennsylvania State University, where he received the Henry Sams Memorial Award for his thesis and where he studied under critically acclaimed author and Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award winner Paul West and novelist and screenwriter Robert C.S. Downs. He also holds a Master of Fine Arts in writing from Washington University in St. Louis, where he worked with the noted fiction writer, philosopher, and essayist William H. Gass, who served as chairman of his dissertation committee. Seinfelt's fiction and non-fiction has been featured in numerous publications. Currently he resides in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania.

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