Barthelme, Donald (Vol. 3) - Barthelme, Donald 1931–
Barthelme, Donald 1931–
Barthelme, an American novelist and short story writer, is a brilliant and innovative prose stylist. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 21-22.)
Barthelme has managed to place himself in the center of modern consciousness. Nothing surrealist about him, his dislocations are real, his material quite actual. Radio, television, movies, newspapers, books, magazines, social talk: these supply us with our experience….
Putting end to end and next to next is Barthelme's method, and in Barthelme, blessed method is everything….
Dreck, trash, and stuffing: these are his principal materials. But not altogether. There is war and suffering, love and hope and cruelty. He hopes, he says …, "these souvenirs will merge into something meaningful." But first he renders everything as meaningless as it appears to be in ordinary modern life by abolishing distinctions and putting everything in the present. He constructs...
[The entire page is 1634 words long]
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