Sixty Stories

Rating:
Summary: BETTER THAN A WET LUNCH
Review: Barthelme did it all in a very small space. He made you laugh and cry. He pondered deeply: Kierkegard, Schlegel, Sartre. He twisted the most mundane and concocted the most absurd. He created a world of fiction unmistakable in its weirdness, depth and originality. In Barthelme America has finally found an avant-garde voice for the ages, our own Kafka, Borges, Calvino. Time will show: Barthelme is one of our few great and lasting writers.

Rating:
Summary: Barthelme is one of a kind.
Review: Donald Barthelme is probably the inimitable writer of the twentieth century and this collection is the best way to introduce yourself to his works. Included are selections from eight volumes he published between the years of 1964 and 1979 as well as a number of previously uncollected stories. What stikes one most about this collection is the sustained brilliance over the course of all 60 inclusions. While not every story is a classic and not every story hits the bullseye one has to admire the ambition packed and effort with which each is attempted, especially when one considers that few exist in a framework of more than six or seven pages. The stories in this collection that do work, and they are in the far majority, are startling in their ability to catch the reader off guard and deliver their short, compact punch. "Game", "A City of Churches" and "The School" are among these highlights, beautiful in their ability to transmit their message with such clarity and intensity, yet with such ease, virtuosity and good humor.

All that said, I feel I should qualify this review by saying that Barthelme is rarely easy reading. His narratives are so remarkably compact and so tightly wound that reading one straight through is something quite akin to venturing through an underwater cave, not coming up for air until the very end. It can be a difficuly experience, requiring intense concentration but the payoff is very worth the effort.

Rating:
Summary: A perfect collection of wonderfully absurd literature
Review: Donald Barthelme was truly a master of the short story. I had to read this book for a project in AP english, and I was very impressed. "Me and Miss Mandible" is worth the price and many of the other works such as " A Manual for Sons" and "Daumier" are just as good. I highly recommend this book for anyone who ponders while they read and try to apply what is read into their lives. Truly a thinking man's author.

Rating:
Summary: Donald Barthelme - 60 Stories
Review: In his review of "American Beauty," the New Yorker movie critic David Denby writes, "I can think of no other American movie that sets us tensions with smarty pants social satire and resolves them with a burst of metaphysics." The same can be said for many of the stories in this collection. The first three fourth's of "The School," for example, is narrated with the deadpan cool that predominated in popular eighties minimalism. It is textbook black humor. But "The School" ends with a poetic riff on cultural relativism, exposing everything that came before in the story, and giving us a glimpse of the narrator's frailties. And then with the final two lines, Barthelme throws in an oddball joke, making the story even more uncertain. It's like on The Simpsons, when you get their craziest, surreal joke right before a commercial break. A Barthelme story simultaneously invites interpretation and outguesses the reader.

Another great thing about both Barthelme's stories and "American Beauty" is that when a narrative stradles that border between reality and parody, the characters get away with making the most straightforward thematic statements. In "The Seargent," a story about a middle aged man who somehow finds himself stuck in the army again, the narrator keeps repeating, "This is all a mistake. I'm not supposed to be here," etc. "Of course I deserve this." If the protagonist of a realistic, mid-life crisis story made these statements it would be interpreted as too obvious. Suspension of disbelief might be violated. When the situation is absurd, however, the characters can be beautifully direct. Artificial people bemoaning the fact that they are bound within an artificial form can be very poignant to us real people bound by necessity. Our situations are curiously congruent.

This is my favorite book. It reminds me a lot of when I was a kid and I had a favorite toy. It is informed by the French noveau roman novel, though less dark, where the experience of reading is given primacy over the experience of the characters. If I had simply bought the book and read the stories in order then put it back on the shelf, I wouldn't have gotten anywhere near the enjoyment that I did out of it. This book is in my library and I go to the shelf and peruse through it whenever I need a break from studying. It has so much play and creativity. Barthelme has said that collage is the dominant twentieth century art form. Pieces of writing that resemble advertising copy or quips from a political documentary, are juxtaposed with philosophical discursiveness. And the humor, fortunately, keeps it from getting overly pretentious, though some might find it pretentious at first. I've talked to a number of readers who think Barthelme is just faddish, conceited and intentionally obscure. If you find that's the case, I encourage you to give it time. Especially if you're a fan of contemporary short stories. If not for any other reason, it'll give you a new perspective on Lorrie Moore and Raymond Carver, among others. If I had to choose favorites, I'd say "Kierkegaard Unfair to Schlegel" and "Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning," but all the stories in this book are worth it.

Rating:
Summary: Donald Barthelme - 60 Stories
Review: In his review of "American Beauty," the New Yorker movie critic David Denby writes, "I can think of no other American movie that sets us tensions with smarty pants social satire and resolves them with a burst of metaphysics." The same can be said for many of the stories in this collection. The first three fourth's of "The School," for example, is narrated with the deadpan cool that predominated in popular eighties minimalism. It is textbook black humor. But "The School" ends with a poetic riff on cultural relativism, exposing everything that came before in the story, and giving us a glimpse of the narrator's frailties. And then with the final two lines, Barthelme throws in an oddball joke, making the story even more uncertain. It's like on The Simpsons, when you get their craziest, surreal joke right before a commercial break. A Barthelme story simultaneously invites interpretation and outguesses the reader.

Another great thing about both Barthelme's stories and "American Beauty" is that when a narrative stradles that border between reality and parody, the characters get away with making the most straightforward thematic statements. In "The Seargent," a story about a middle aged man who somehow finds himself stuck in the army again, the narrator keeps repeating, "This is all a mistake. I'm not supposed to be here," etc. "Of course I deserve this." If the protagonist of a realistic, mid-life crisis story made these statements it would be interpreted as too obvious. Suspension of disbelief might be violated. When the situation is absurd, however, the characters can be beautifully direct. Artificial people bemoaning the fact that they are bound within an artificial form can be very poignant to us real people bound by necessity. Our situations are curiously congruent.

This is my favorite book. It reminds me a lot of when I was a kid and I had a favorite toy. It is informed by the French noveau roman novel, though less dark, where the experience of reading is given primacy over the experience of the characters. If I had simply bought the book and read the stories in order then put it back on the shelf, I wouldn't have gotten anywhere near the enjoyment that I did out of it. This book is in my library and I go to the shelf and peruse through it whenever I need a break from studying. It has so much play and creativity. Barthelme has said that collage is the dominant twentieth century art form. Pieces of writing that resemble advertising copy or quips from a political documentary, are juxtaposed with philosophical discursiveness. And the humor, fortunately, keeps it from getting overly pretentious, though some might find it pretentious at first. I've talked to a number of readers who think Barthelme is just faddish, conceited and intentionally obscure. If you find that's the case, I encourage you to give it time. Especially if you're a fan of contemporary short stories. If not for any other reason, it'll give you a new perspective on Lorrie Moore and Raymond Carver, among others. If I had to choose favorites, I'd say "Kierkegaard Unfair to Schlegel" and "Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning," but all the stories in this book are worth it.

Rating:
Summary: The Balloon Man
Review: In one of the most typical, poignant, funny, and resounding stories in this collection, Barthelme introduces us to the Balloon Man. For now, it doesn't matter who or what he is, but suffice it to say that he, the Balloon Man, reckons the Balloon of Perhaps is his best balloon. Reading this collection, it's hard not to be struck by the idea that Barthelme's gift lies in, amongst other things, being able to write stories at once featherlight, attractive, and capable of imagining and exploring "perhaps's" no other writer could.

Rating:
Summary: The Emperor Has No Clothes On
Review: There has been a resurgence of interest in Barthelme's work so I thought I'd go back and re-read him. After all, I'm older and presumably wiser: now I should be able to appreciate him, something I didn't really do when I first read him.

Uh, actually, I'm still not impressed.

Barthelme is to literature what Spike Jones is to music. He's a novelty act, a sideshow.

Not to say that he's untalented or lacking in intelligence. Far from it. But there's too much of the clever graduate student in love with the tap-tap-tap of his typewriter. Because of his committment to absurdity at all costs, he wouldn't do anything as un-cool as develop a character or create a situation that really involves the reader. Everything is seen from a great distance and the viewpoint is always ironic and detatched.

It may be that bringing so many of his stories into one volume really does him a dis-service. Maybe if I'd come upon just one of them in a magazine or an anthology, it would have been impressive. But as presented here he just calls on the same old bag of tricks over and over and over.

I guess I'm just too much of a traditionalist. I consider "Cat in the Rain" by Ernest Hemingway and "The Far and the Near" by Thomas Wolfe to be the two greatest short stories of the century. So I'd advise readers to go back to these two masters to see how short fiction ought to be written.

Rating:
Summary: "And I saw the figure 5 writ in gold"
Review: This is my favorite book to date. The way Barthelme can be both so articulate and non-sensical at the same time shows him to be a master of the human psyche. He notices subtleties that most people encounter but seldom regard as anything relevant, the result evokes a response that leaves one saying to his/herself "why have I not thought of such matters," or "that's so absurd-- the man is a genius". Ever since reading "Critique de la Vie Quotidienne" in a copy of Sadness (picked up off hand at a used book store) I knew that Barthelme was something special. Shame on the people that criticize him for not including the "traditional elements" of fiction!