What am I missing?
I've had numerous sources recommend Donald Barthelme to me. So I picked up a copy of 40 Stories secondhand and eagerly started reading. I liked the first story, but I didn't care for the next few at all--they didn't make any sense to me. Now I have little interest in continuing on. But he's considered so great that I feel like I should.
So if there are any Barthelme fans out there, help me out. What makes his writing so brilliant? What about his style should I focus on?
posted by Anonymous @ 12:26 PM
2 Comments:
Sorry; I have not read him either. I'll have to see whether I can find anything online. Do his stories have a central thrust or theme? Who is he like?
Don B was very much a part of the New Yorker lit scene in the 60's and early 70's and was, for someone who was primarily a short fiction writer, pretty popular. His pieces are very referential and trendy. Which was great at the time, but now a lot of people don't know what the hell he's writing about.
In many ways, I relate him to Woody Allen and Andy Warhol. Tearing apart and poking fun at popular images, and often injecting them with some sense of philosophy beyond their original intent. His novel Snow White, for example, is as much a commentary on the book Feminine Mystique as it is a commentary on Disney and the original fairy tales. But not many people read FM anymore, so many of the references and terminologies are rendered meaningless.
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