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City Life
Hardcover, 168 pages
Published
January 28th 1970
by Farrar Straus Giroux
(first published 1970)
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Barthelme is brilliant: damn Gass and DFW for leading me to his work! I'll have to read it all someday. This collection wasn't as satisfying as Overnight To Many Distant Cities, but it's full of mundane things that shimmer, poetic passages and postmodern flair (illustrations, a Joycean exercise, a cut-up piece, one wild font and two Q&A-style stories). I look forward to reading Barthelme's full-length novels in the future. Below is a lengthy passage from "The Explanation" that captures the d...more
i've read a few titles from barthelme...now this...a collection of stories...late 60s, 1970...w/illustrations...and there's this blurb from the ny times book review on the back...says the illustrations make this "even more accessible." follow the yellow brick road?
views of my father weeping
begins:
"an aristocrat was riding down the street in his carriage. he ran over my father.
*
after the ceremony i walked back to the city. i was trying to think of the reason my father had died. then i remembered:...more
views of my father weeping
begins:
"an aristocrat was riding down the street in his carriage. he ran over my father.
*
after the ceremony i walked back to the city. i was trying to think of the reason my father had died. then i remembered:...more
I got this little paperback--looks exactly like the thumbnail--many years ago when I was traveling by train around Europe, it was small and highly portable and great for rattling you out of the tedious parts of travel as it occasionally turns your mind inside out and makes you guffaw at the audacity of the experiments.
After a long shelf hiatus I pulled it out again this week to show it to my writing students as an example of the short story's limitlessness--look! This story is 100 numbered sent...more
After a long shelf hiatus I pulled it out again this week to show it to my writing students as an example of the short story's limitlessness--look! This story is 100 numbered sent...more
Reading this, Barthelme's third collection, is similar to listening to the Animal Collective. Specifically, their most recent album, "Merriweather Post Pavilion." Why, you ask? Because it is lush, layered, and very strange--stranger than Barthelme's past work, but most definitely the strongest collection of his I've read (and I'm reading them in chronological form). Like "Merriweather," there are moments of deep feeling within prose that comes bursting off the page.
In "Bone Bubbles", he plunges...more
In "Bone Bubbles", he plunges...more
Many more abstract moments, or poetic, or, honestly, perplexing, but amusing! moments than that collection "Amateurs," which is the other collection I've read. One day I'm going to look back on this and say "yes, Eric, you DID read those two books. You read two other books, novels, by the man as well. Why do you insist on listing? What value does it add to your life, making the association 'read him, funny man' when you see the name Barthelme or catch the cover of one of his books in your periph...more
I love surrealism! And City Life is fucked up. Brain Damage.
I would never say that this is pure id, because that's not possible unless/until somebody is in a straightjacket and all potential subversion has been contained by some sinister institution. But that's kind of the point, I guess . . . everything here is so impulse-ive, but impulses that are in relation/reaction to shared cultural receptors/suppressors. i.e. context.
I would never say that this is pure id, because that's not possible unless/until somebody is in a straightjacket and all potential subversion has been contained by some sinister institution. But that's kind of the point, I guess . . . everything here is so impulse-ive, but impulses that are in relation/reaction to shared cultural receptors/suppressors. i.e. context.
Aug 25, 2010
Yesterday's Muse Bookstore
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
american-literature
Though this book is not for everyone, I have to describe it as a collection of unusually inspired writing. Barthelme's unique style and approach are a refreshing break from run-of-the-mill fiction, and this collection of short pieces (which I would recommend reading as related works) are packed densely with meaning -- one can easily wring more significance from them with each rereading (especially the free-form piece Bubble Bones).
some real high points and a lot of barthelme points of confusion that's hard to wade through. liked it better than what i read in sadness, but a lot of other stuff i need to read by him before forming an opinion. read parts of daugherty's biography, enough to sadden me over b's rise and fall.
This is one of the most ridiculously good books I have ever read. Some parts I didn't understand but it doesn't seem to matter. The words and stories danced around in my brain and made it sing! A fantastic feeling.
I really like Barthelme's style of story telling. The first time I read one of his stories I didn't get up off the floor of the bookstore until I was done.
Easier for me to get into overall than his other collection I've read (Flying to America), though a lot fewer stories in this one, that might have helped.
When Barthelme stretches himself longer, as he does in the title story, his fragmentary glimpses of narrative becomes poetic in itself.
I'm loving it. I read some stories over and over again. I read them as poems and they unfold a wealth of meanings. is like a magic toy. cool!!! cool!!! it's magic like a magic glass of ideas.
Way fucking cool. Everyone's read "Sentence," but the other gems here defs need more exposure.
"Until the hot meat of romance is cooled by the dull gravy of common sense once more."
Four stars for Glass Mountain, Phantom..., Sentence, Brain Damage. Father Weeping. Fewer for others. Boy was I surprised I liked any of this. Had always confused Barthelme with Derrida et al. for some reason. Hilarious in the way that Celine can be, only not as bitter.
Am collecting notions of how to pronounce author's last name.
Four stars for Glass Mountain, Phantom..., Sentence, Brain Damage. Father Weeping. Fewer for others. Boy was I surprised I liked any of this. Had always confused Barthelme with Derrida et al. for some reason. Hilarious in the way that Celine can be, only not as bitter.
Am collecting notions of how to pronounce author's last name.
introduced a new modern (or post modern?) style to the short story.
From 'Bone Bubbles': "...double dekko balcony of a government building series of closeups of the food gold thread long thin room pamper recent connection steroid perverse cults which have all but replaced Christianity ten filthiest cases men and women with strong convictions lottery breakdown fat arenas..."
Uh HUH.
There are ways to be formally experimental without hitting readers with the short story equivalent of a coconut creme pie. Barthelme has written much better stories than the ones collec...more
Uh HUH.
There are ways to be formally experimental without hitting readers with the short story equivalent of a coconut creme pie. Barthelme has written much better stories than the ones collec...more
Master of wit, parody, and POV.
I had high hopes for this, as I really enjoyed the Barthelme stories I've heard read on the New Yorker fiction podcast. While the first and last stories were OK, most of it felt like being experimented on. I'll probably check out some of his more recent work, but I won't come back to this one.
I think this may have been a Jessamyn West recommendation. Experimental short stories written in the late 60s. The first one was heavy and boring but the next one about the falling dog, I read to myself out loud and it was fun. Some of the stories were interesting, but most just kind of weird - enumerations, odd drawings, one single sentence. (July 14, 2005)
Fun. Fun. Fun. Barthelme captures the potential of short story as malleable and liberating. Even at his most inaccessible he remains accessible. Layers? Sure. But as it is, as fragments of city life, where the "city" is cellophane metaphor for the "muck" entirety. Great, hilarious, enthralling.
Quick read. I liked many of the stories, but some were a little too "experimental" for me.
Quick read. I liked many of the stories, but some were a little too "experimental" for me.
Surreal, silly, experimental, confusing, but also entertaining. Certainly original.
Oct 01, 2007
Kaitlin
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
short-story-anthologies
I am currently devouring this.
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Donald Barthelme was born to two students at the University of Pennsylvania. The family moved to Texas two years later, where Barthelme's father would become a professor of architecture at the University of Houston, where Barthelme would later major in journalism. In 1951, still a student, he wrote his first articles for the Houston Post. Barthelme was drafted into the Korean War in 1953, arriving...more
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“This muck heaves and palpitates. It is multi-directional and has a mayor.”
—
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