"I WANT TO KNOW who 1 am before 1 sink back into the inanimate," the central character in "The Obituary Writer," one of the stories in Douglas Glover`s new collection, tells his mystified lover as he rises early every morning to type his night`s dreams. Glover`s subject is the ephemeral nature of self, which is often in danger of disintegration here, either majestically and ostentatiously as in "The Travesty of Sleep" and "Man in a Box," or with gentle irony, as in "Why I Decide to Kill Myself and Other Jokes!` As one character declares, "Irony (is the) only suitable mode of comment on our universal disaster," but no matter how tragic or horrific situations become, these stories are peppered with humour. "I am feeling a little on edge," remarks another character, who might better be described as having gone completely berserk. The dark centre of this collection is "The Travesty of Sleep," which the unnamed narrator speaks of as "a sort of daydream, that is to say, the mind dancing!` Visiting a shrine at Chimayo, New Mexico, during Holy Week, he reads one of the many messages left there by supplicants, who ask the baby Jesus for help. It has been written by the sister of one of the inmates of the prison -at nearby Santa Fe where a riot is taking place. The narrator`s fascination with this message, and with the writer`s brother, starts him on an agonized quest of self-discovery. This is not an easy story to follow - the closer and more careful the reading, the more the text deteriorates into a confusion of signs and symbols, and the more characters appear to transmute into each other. Images (some of which recur in other stories) well up from the subconscious. They are mysterious and powerful: hands encased in black velvet gloves; swollen, bandaged feet that leave bloody toeprints; a tiny spear that strikes at random, causing death; a man whose head has been cut off and set between his legs, his penis in his mouth - images that, in the end, lead the narrator in a circle back to the beginning, his questions answered only by other questions. In the end, Glover says, the only reality is human suffering. At the other emotional pole is "Story Carved in Stone," which won the 1990 National Magazine Award for fiction. It is remarkable for the lightness of Glover`s touch in dealing with relationships between men and women, in an age when women are "restless" and go out seeking adventure while their men wait wistfully for their` return, supporting each other with sisterly empathy and tenderness in the meantime. This is Glover at his most charming, as he sets gender convention on its ear. There is an admirable breadth of imagination here; settings range back as far as the 17th century without any wavering of Glover`s sure touch, and each character and situation is examined with an intelligence that borders on brilliance. The truths revealed cannot be doubted. Since his collection Dog Attempts to Drown Man in Saskatoon, Glover`s already competent prose has grown in lucidity and translucence. My only quarrel is with his titles, which frequently give no clue to the nature of the stories and sometimes even mislead, suggesting a kind of off-the-wall sophomoric humour where there is instead the deepest seriousness and the most penetrating insight.