Listening to Mozart

Symphonic in scope and structure, this debut collection of stories, aligned carefully into novel form, is a cerebral treat, daunting yet exhilarating, and copped the 1995 John Simmons Short Fiction Award. Flutist James Wallace tells his own story, jumping in and out of a 40-year chronology with only occasional repetitions and a narrative lacuna or two. James is a man of the '60s and '70s: peripatetic, influenced by marijuana and Indian music, sexually free. Over the years, he moves through decaying urban studios and communes into the Marine band, to avoid Vietnam, and on to locked psychiatric wards; he settles in Nashville but often visits his small-town Missouri home, while flickering in and out of a relationship with the elusive artist Anna. Each of the 12 chapters is unique in tempo and stands on its own, powerfully-but none so much as ``Raag Yaman,'' where James's recollections of Indian flutist Pannalal Ghosh set against the sounds of his mother's ICU prove unforgettable. The brilliance of this work lies primarily in the narrator's sensitivity: easily bruised by the absurdity of life, he carries the musician's special knowledge that things exist only in the moment; for him, sound is the only way to recover ``life and what is left of it in the mind.''(Oct.)