Sixty Stories
Donald Barthelme · 1981
Barthelme was the central figure of American postmodernist short fiction. These collage-like stories mix high culture, advertising, fairy tales, and bureaucratic language. Still formally dazzling, and funnier than most comedy writing.
The case against
Three Barthelme stories are a delight; sixty in a row expose the seams of the collage trick. Irony seals out feeling almost everywhere, a number of pieces are sixties in-jokes that now need footnotes, and the voice never changes, so the stories blur. Ration it from the nightstand; reading straight through is the wrong dose.
Short Stories · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
