Locally interesting, but nothing is sticking with me.Sexist, in that women appear almost exclusively as objects of sexual interest (and men never do). I like "locomotive-substitutes no bigger than ball-point pens".

Ideally, there exists a nexus where the cultural critique of postmodernism, the mysticism of magical realism, and the automatism of surrealism converge. Barthelme’s writing forms in their center. Though well educated and ripe with wit, Barthelme’s pen can summon a child’s naïveté and imaginary emancipation and make it look easy. Reasons why many find themselves bored with a Tao Lin, for example, whose novella “Eee Eee Eee” I am fond of but find artistically and emotionally nullified by its dedic...

I got this little paperback--looks exactly like the thumbnail--many years ago when I was traveling by train around Europe, it was small and highly portable and great for rattling you out of the tedious parts of travel as it occasionally turns your mind inside out and makes you guffaw at the audacity of the experiments. After a long shelf hiatus I pulled it out again this week to show it to my writing students as an example of the short story's limitlessness--look! This story is 100 numbered sent...

Godbless godless Donald Barthelme and his mind bending, form shattering short fiction. This collection from DB's early career shows the brilliance that the author will continue to mine and hone over his amazing writing career. Stories like "Brain Damage" and "Bone Bubbles" make me want to read them over and over like a daily devotional.

Donald Barthelme is one of the most inventive, surrealist, post-modernist writers out there, and that's saying something. Whether you actually enjoy his work or not is another matter entirely. Personally, I found 'City Life' quite touch and go. I wanted to love it, but more often than not I was steered toward the opposite. First published in 1970, this collection of short stories is very much a product of its time, but I didn't feel that it stood up to the test of time as a result. The works are...

From 'Bone Bubbles': "...double dekko balcony of a government building series of closeups of the food gold thread long thin room pamper recent connection steroid perverse cults which have all but replaced Christianity ten filthiest cases men and women with strong convictions lottery breakdown fat arenas..."Uh HUH.There are ways to be formally experimental without hitting readers with the short story equivalent of a coconut creme pie. Barthelme has written much better stories than the ones collec...

I love surrealism! And City Life is fucked up. Brain Damage.I would never say that this is pure id, because that's not possible unless/until somebody is in a straightjacket and all potential subversion has been contained by some sinister institution. But that's kind of the point, I guess . . . everything here is so impulse-ive, but impulses that are in relation/reaction to shared cultural receptors/suppressors. i.e. context.

i've read a few titles from barthelme...now this...a collection of stories...late 60s, 1970...w/illustrations...and there's this blurb from the ny times book review on the back...says the illustrations make this "even more accessible." follow the yellow brick road?views of my father weepingbegins:"an aristocrat was riding down the street in his carriage. he ran over my father.*after the ceremony i walked back to the city. i was trying to think of the reason my father had died. then i remembered:...

City Life is like a broken funhouse mirror: every minuscule shard reflects a fragment of an absurdist utopia…In the larger stores silence (damping materials) is sold in paper sacks like cement… Silence is also available in the form of white noise.It is great when everything can be merchandised… And of course an aesthetic value of art is immeasurable…Formed by a number of techniques, the art is then run through heavy steel rollers. Flip-flop switches control its further development. Sheet art is

his greatest collection. Tracy Daugherty thinks so and who am I to think otherwise?!

Oh, man, did I love this. In some invisible and indirect way, he's influenced my writing deeply.

I was at a party in Manhattan once, it was 1985. This woman I slightly knew turned to me and said “I have something you’ll be interested in, wait one moment.” So I waited. I was cool. I wasn’t freaking out. She brought back a thing about the size of a large Toby jug and thrust it into my hands. It was Donald Barthelme. Yes, the Donald Barthelme. Not a Toby jug caricature, the actual original author of all those arch short stories. Tell you the truth, I was nonplussed, like if she had thrust a si...

The original price of this Bantam paperback edition is printed on the spine about an inch from the top, $1.25.Some subsequent used bookstore priced it at "$1-.35"; the white rectangular sticker with that superfluous hyphen remains on the front. Later, a thrift store, one that labeled items with a generic pink adhesive square with "Thrift Store" printed at the top, priced it at a handwritten "99". This I picked off in an effort to make it look less bedraggled. I myself paid nothing.This looks to

Reading this, Barthelme's third collection, is similar to listening to the Animal Collective. Specifically, their most recent album, "Merriweather Post Pavilion." Why, you ask? Because it is lush, layered, and very strange--stranger than Barthelme's past work, but most definitely the strongest collection of his I've read (and I'm reading them in chronological form). Like "Merriweather," there are moments of deep feeling within prose that comes bursting off the page.In "Bone Bubbles", he plunges

Some of these stories would make more sense if you were dropped on your head, maybe as a baby but definitely as an adult. However, I must have taken the plunge against the concrete at some point because there are certain moments that shine through. I enjoyed taking a stroll through the Tolstoy Museum - I also appreciated seeing angels affirm chaos after the death of God. There is something here for everyone - assuming that everyone has enough patience to dump the contents onto the floor and see

(3.3/5.0) Fun and fascinating, but totally of its time. Some of the things Barthelme does here seem pretty obvious, playful and fun, but not exactly profound.

'In the larger stores silence is sold in paper bags like cement.' 'At the Tolstoy museum we sat and wept.''Defeats are, at times, good for your character, teaching you that it is not by success alone that one surmounts life, but that setbacks too, contribute to the that roughening of the personality that, by providing a textured surface to place against that of life, enables you to leave slight traces, or smudges, on the face of human history.' 'Some people feel you should tell the truth, but th...

Barthelme is brilliant: damn Gass and DFW for leading me to his work! I'll have to read it all someday. This collection wasn't as satisfying as Overnight To Many Distant Cities, but it's full of mundane things that shimmer, poetic passages and postmodern flair (illustrations, a Joycean exercise, a cut-up piece, one wild font and two Q&A-style stories). I look forward to reading Barthelme's full-length novels in the future. Below is a lengthy passage from "The Explanation" that captures the darts...

The new frontier of Postmodern Paraguay requires a fearless explorer to not only sport a safari hat, beard, custom-fit jacket and fashionable scarf but also be well-versed in the latest postmodern writings of Jean-François Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, David Foster Wallace and, of course, Donald Barthelme. Those Spanish speaking natives damn well better be ready. Nifty collection of short surreal postmodern blasters by the master of the genre. I will focus on my favorite as per below:Paraguay This B...

Just incredibly imaginative and humorous, surreal short stories.