This excellent collection of Donald Barthelme's literary output during the 1960s and 1970s covers the period when the writer came to prominence--producing the stories, satires, parodies, and other formal experiments that altered fiction as we know it--and wrote many of the most beautiful sentences in the English language. Due to the unfortunate discontinuance of many of Barthelme's titles, 60 Stories now stands as one of the broadest overviews of his work, containing selections from eight previously published books, as well as a number of other short works that had been otherwise uncollected.
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"Barthelme can focus our feeling into a bright point that can raise a blister. These 60 stories show him inventing at a fever pitch." --The Washington Post
"Donald Barthelme may have influenced the short story in his time as much as Hemingway and O' Hara did in theirs." --The New York Times
"The delight he offers to readers is beyond question, his originality is unmatched." --Los Angeles Times
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
"Donald Barthelme may have influenced the short story in his time as much as Hemingway and O' Hara did in theirs." --The New York Times
"The delight he offers to readers is beyond question, his originality is unmatched." --Los Angeles Times
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
About the Author
Donald Barthelme (1931-1989) published twelve books, including two novels and a prize-winning children's book. He was a regular contributor to the New Yorker and taught creative writing at the University of Houston. In his career, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Book Award, and a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, among others.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Lets admit it at the outset, not everyone is going to love this or even want to read this book. Barthelme was greatly influenced by Samuel Beckett, and possibly if you don't like his work you won't like these stories, also some people just seem to have an aversion to short stories. Where the likes of T.S. Eliot and James Joyce took literature Barthelme carried on adding a more ironical touch and originality, making him a true great post-modernist.
Turning the short story on its head and being very inventive with language all the stories collected here offer something different. Very creative, with lots of irony and black humour you may be surprised at how many times you find yourself laughing out loud. Apart from his style of writing and wonderful wordplay, Barthelme shows that the short story can be darkly entertaining, rather like that great, Saki.
This book is well worth a read, but I suspect it will always be something that people who like a more erudite use of language will want to peruse and enjoy, rather than the vast majority of readers.
Turning the short story on its head and being very inventive with language all the stories collected here offer something different. Very creative, with lots of irony and black humour you may be surprised at how many times you find yourself laughing out loud. Apart from his style of writing and wonderful wordplay, Barthelme shows that the short story can be darkly entertaining, rather like that great, Saki.
This book is well worth a read, but I suspect it will always be something that people who like a more erudite use of language will want to peruse and enjoy, rather than the vast majority of readers.
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful
By nikkus
Format:Paperback
What is wrong with us? Why does this book languish unloved on Amazon, with no customer reviews? Why are we so suspicious of short stories?
I haven't got time right now to write the considered and persuasive review that Barthelme's books deserve, but nor can i pass on by without at least saying hey! Buy this book! and the companion volume, '40 Stories'. Barthelme was a genius. There is more intelligence, humanity, wit, linguistic dexterity, mischief, invention, bravura, and downright thumping good reading in any single one of these stories than in the entire careers of many writers.
I haven't got time right now to write the considered and persuasive review that Barthelme's books deserve, but nor can i pass on by without at least saying hey! Buy this book! and the companion volume, '40 Stories'. Barthelme was a genius. There is more intelligence, humanity, wit, linguistic dexterity, mischief, invention, bravura, and downright thumping good reading in any single one of these stories than in the entire careers of many writers.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful
By Sporus
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Donald Barthelme was of course actually a consortium of 13 American academics. The books were produced using postal correspondence, and would in all honesty be rather 'dry and dusty' (full of rare words, tergiversatious narratives, and a cussed determination to make each next sentence unpredictable) - if you didn't know about the curiously named Bela Bluebeard. She was the Appalachian woman who first discovered the 'con' being perpetrated on the reading public (because, it is said, she slept with one of the academics' wives). Bela audaciously pretended to be both a man, AND the 'real' Barthelme - and then, when the embarrassed academics came clean, not only refused to concede that they were telling the truth, but went on to write a novel ('Snow White') that was every bit the equal of the academics' work. Even more interesting than all of this is that while none of the above is remotely true - it still might be. Barthelme's stories use urban American furniture, but they are essentially a 'Literary Achievement'. They invite comparison with pantheon-class writers. He can be witty in a phrase, but repetitiously tedious (or, as he might say, 'battologically boring') in a page. The result is impressively clever but substantially unmemorable. It's like that Tibetan saying used by the Dali Lama (no, really!) : 'The man of great intelligence is like a burning field: the fire passes quickly away'. Eclectic, indulgent, absurdist and decidedly not plot driven: reading a book of 60 such short stories is akin to eating a bowl of peas with a set of tweezers - you think you are NEVER going to reach the end. Barthelme himself once said, "Fragments are the only forms I..." but, thenagain, it would be contradicting him to complete the whole quote.
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