Barthelme, Donald (Vol. 6) - Barthelme, Donald 1931–
Barthelme, Donald 1931–
Barthelme, an American short story writer and novelist, is best known as a long time contributor to The New Yorker. He is a moralist, as one critic has written, insofar as "all his fiction expresses, in satirical terms, his despair at [the world's] madness and wickedness." Barthelme has said that "the only forms I trust are fragments" and indeed his masterful short narratives succeed precisely because they elude conclusive interpretation. Originally called "Kafka-esque," Barthelme's recent fiction seems to derive more directly from Dostoevsky, springing, as another critic wrote, "from a genuine doubt that any solution does in fact exist to the mysteries and miseries of the human condition." (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 21-22.)
Fiction [some years ago] had the power to be outrageous, to create marvels or passion. Barthelme's characters used to hope that the sheer force of imagination could change the...
[The entire page is 3124 words long]
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