The King (Magill Book Reviews)
At a glance:
- Author: Donald Barthelme
- First Published: 1990
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Alternate history
- Subjects: 1940’s, World War II, Kings, queens, or royalty, Legends, Fratricide, parricide, or filicide, Nazism or Nazis, Great Britain, Knights or knighthood
- Locales: England, Great Britain
Donald Barthelme (1931-1989) was one of a handful of postwar American writers to create a genuinely original style, as distinctive as Franz Kafka’s, and like Kafka’s too in that, once invented, it seemed to have been called into being by a realm of experience which it alone could name. Barthelme’s short stories--his trademark pieces--are parodies with other elements mixed in, surreal collages. These effects generally do not work when extended over the length of a novel, a maxim confirmed by Barthelme’s own three novels prior to THE KING. That is why most parodies are quite...
[The entire page is 527 words long]
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