Barthelme, Donald (Vol. 115) - Lance Olsen (essay date November 1986)
Lance Olsen (essay date November 1986)
SOURCE: "Linguistic Pratfalls in Barthelme," in South Atlantic Review, Vol. 51, No. 4, November, 1986, pp. 69-77.
[In the following essay, Olsen illustrates how Barthelme transforms elements of physical comedy into linguistic humor in his works.]
Why does language subvert me, subvert my seniority, my medals, my oldness, whenever it gets a chance? What does language have against me—me that has been good to it, respecting its little peculiarities and nicilosities, for sixty years.
Donald Barthelme (Unspeakable Practices)
A critical commonplace: absurdity, parody, irony, burlesque, farce, satire, and so on abound at the stratum of events in Donald Barthelme's projects. In "The Joker's Greatest Triumph," a spoof on our superchic cartoonish consumer society, for instance, Batman is stunned and finally unmasked while his friend—or...
[The entire page is 3546 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
