[2] Francine Prose defended him—as did university professor/writers Tobias Wolff, Hayden Carruth, and Agha Shahid Ali.
In much of his work, Dobyns uses the ridiculous and the absurd as vehicles to introduce more profound meditations on life, love, and art.
In the comic novel The Wrestler's Cruel Study (1993), the protagonist roams through a modern cityscape governed by fairy-tale rituals, searching for his missing fiancée.
He is alternately aided or hindered by a Friedrich Nietzsche-quoting manager and his Hegelian nemesis, to find that his wrestling matches are choreographed by a shadowy organization that enacts their various Gnostic theological debates through the pageantry and panoply of the ring.
Jenny Hilborne wrote in New York Journal of Books that The Burn Palace (2013) "is an intriguing fictional mystery set in the town of Brewster, Rhode Island, and includes elements of the supernatural, satanism, and other alternate religions, including neo-pagans, Wicca, and witchcraft...mysterious and engaging .