World Famous Comics: Sixty Stories (Penguin Classics)
Sixty Stories (Penguin Classics)
By: Donald Barthelme Publisher: Penguin Classics Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Penguin Classics Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 480 Publication Date: September 30, 2003 Release Date: September 30, 2003
Product Description: With these audacious and murderously witty stories, Donald Barthelme threw the preoccupations of our time into the literary equivalent of a Cuisinart and served up a gorgeous salad of American culture, high and low. Here are the urban upheavals reimagined as frontier myth; travelogues through countries that might have been created by Kafka; cryptic dialogues that bore down to the bedrock of our longings, dreams, and angsts. Like all of Barthelme's work, the sixty stories collected in this volume are triumphs of language and perception, at once unsettling and irresistible.
Amazon.com Review: 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.
Ugh To start this essay and review I need to tell you what Donald Barthelme was- a fantasist; and a really bad one, at that. I will explain this in the bulk of this piece.
But first, I need to briefly tell you the many things he was not, despite the many claims to the contrary by disciples, sycophants, and bad critics.
1) He was not an absurdist. To be an absurdist writer one must actually be contrasting the language and situations presented within your work with norms presented outside the work. In short, there must be reference points within the work, as well as the work actually having a meaning outside its own presented cosmos.
2) He was not a metafictionist. To be a metafictionist the writer must be using the artifice of art within the work itself for the purpose of exploring the boundaries of art, not merely as a self-reflexive piece of vanity.
3) He was not a post-structuralist. To be post-structural a writer must deny objectivity and embrace an ambigual fog. Self-reflexivity posits the self as objectively real. Vanity negates ambiguity.
4) He was not a postmodernist. To be a postmodernist one or all three of the above conditions must be met. Since Barthelme's work was hermetic, self-reflexive, and therefore non-subjective- albeit not empirically objective, he was not postmodern.
To top off those four things that Donald Barthelme, as a writer, was not I can also state that he was not a minimalist- for his work often tosses loads of pop cultural and other references at the reader, expecting said reader to decode them; he was not an existentialist- for his work was simply gimmick-ridden; he was not a nihilist- for he put too much effort into promoting his work and theories to be called such.
No, as stated, Donald Barthelme was a fantasist- and by that I mean just that, not the oft-termed surrealist, which has almost been shorn of any real meaning, due to its overuse and misuse. In a sense his stories are late 20th Century fairy tales. Except that that area has already been covered by Isaac Bashevis Singer, and better. He is not a humorist, nor a magical realist, for his work simply isn't funny the way a Kurt Vonnegut's is, nor does he even have the `magical' touch of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez. And while technically not a PoMo writer one can see in his rather pallid works the wellspring from which the dreck of a Dave Eggers, Rick Moody, and David Foster Wallace flows. In short, most Barthelmeans realize that the only way for the pieces to work at all is to precondition readers' expectations. This is why virtually every defense of his works tells you what it is about, rather than how he went about it. Because, failing that pink elephant's implantation, most good readers will be scratching their heads. But, if one's only expectations of a writer are a good read, well, you're sunk. Ah, for the days when a fantasist would have a really good idea and execute it from beginning to end, and actually show that he could craft a compelling sentence. Let's see, I've told you much of what he's not- did I mention he's not particularly philosophical, emotional, nor inventive?
How about fraud? Well, that's too harsh, right? Maybe he is to serious literature what Weird Al Yankovic is to pop music. No, even that's too praising, for Weird Al was occasionally clever. Reading a Barthelme collection only heightens how absolutely bereft of cleverness he was. Did I say repetitive? Derivative? I think I covered that with the Kenneth Patchen mention. Influential? Well, David Foster Wallace has made some beaucoup bucks- but is that anything to be proud of?
In closing, let me close with a quote from the man himself, from his 1989 New York Times obituary: `Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, rather because it wishes to be art. However much the writer might long to straightforward, these virtues are no longer available to him. He discovers that in being simple, honest, straightforward, nothing much happens.' Now, really read the Freudian implications of that statement and you will understand that this was actually Barthelme's closeted mea culpa for not having a clue as to how to write well and wanting his readers to ignore that fact. Like I said, he was a fantasist; and a really bad one, at that.
A Collection of the Highest Order I picked up 60 Stories after experiencing Barthelme's City Life. I don't have a lot to add to what the fine Amazon reviewers have already said. Just that I found myself strangely moved and completely entertained by Barthelme's style and detached characters. Towards the end of the collection, I started reading the stories out loud to my girlfriend and she was equally enthralled by the Barthleme's shorts. Both of us loved City of Churches. The dark, cryptic ending had me laughing out loud at the order of things (as a side note, I was reading this on the bus, listening to my Ipod on shuffle. as i came to the ending, Marilyn Manson's The Beautiful People came on ... great twist to the ending). Original, hilarious dialogue. Intelligent, creative tales. History, philosophy, commentary. Laughs, tears, and everything in between. An absurd, but touching presentation of human emotion and emotionlessness. I don't know. I just felt better after reading 60 Stories. There are more possibilities now, less restrictions, more Leaps and fewer hurdles, more Kierkegaard and less Hegel. My only question is this: Why did I have to wait 26 years to stumble across Senor Barthelme? Where was he in my Creative Writing courses or English courses in college? Outside of courses on absurdist lit, experimental lit, or short stories, I'm not sure where an institution would park Mr. Barthelme. Maybe I can make a suggestion: American Lit.
Jump on it!
Me and Mrs. Mandible We recently read "Me and Mrs. Mandible" in our online reader's forum and the response was very favorable. Barthelme's metafiction can be interpreted so many ways it is great fiction for discussion groups. If you'd like to read the posts or join in the ongoing discussion visit [...].
Brilliant but not for Everyone Judgments about Barthelme remind me of how subjective criticism of literature is. Is he a genius or a fraud? One thing is for certain: if you do not have a taste for the absurd you are probably not going to like Barthelme. His stories are filled with absurdist/surrealist elements. But for me, what separates him from other "experimental" writers is his ability to elicit emotion from the reader. For example, when I first read the ending of "The Balloon", I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. And I couldn't say exactly why. Same with "The School." But there is something about his writing that works on the precognitive level. Unlike some reviewers, I don't find anything chilly or removed about his writing. There seems to be a genuine sympathy for his characters, even when placed in the most ludicrous of circumstances. So I line up on the genius side. And by the way, he's flat out the funniest writer I know of. 60 Stories is a good place to start if you're interested but if you like it, also check out 40 Stories, which features simpler writing.
Difficult but rewarding After I'd read about half of these stories, and in many cases, read them again, I suddenly realized what the trick was to enjoying them- losing my expectations. For Barthelme, the form is as important, if not more important, than the message, and each of these stories is an experiment in form and meaning (and not always both at the same time). Once I stopped looking for deeper meaning, and trying to figure out what he was trying to say, I realized that, often times, he's not saying anything, he's merely experimenting with language. "Aria", for example, or "Glass Mountain", are absurd for the sake of being absurd, while "A City of Churches" is more obviously social commentary. "The School" is darkly funny, and "Me And Miss Mandible" is a well-crafted, entertaining short story, full of absurdity and humanity, and one of the best in the book.
Also, you can't help but notice the huge influence that Barthelme's work has had on many writers living today, especially those who enjoy playing with language and stretching the bounds of fiction (read ANY of Steve Martin's short stories and you'll see what I mean).
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
