Painted Desert

by Frederick Barthelme

In a sequel to The Brothers, Del Tribute, a junior college professor, and his girlfriend pry themselves from their television and computer screens and take to the road, achieving an epiphany in the Arizona desert. 10,000 first printing.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Road Trip

256 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1995

About the author

Barthelme's works are known for their focus on the landscape of the New South. Along with his reputation as a minimalist, together with writers Raymond Carver, Ann Beattie, Amy Hempel, and Mary Robison, Barthelme's work has also been described by terms such as "dirty realism" and "K-mart realism."He published his first short story in The New Yorker,and has claimed that a rotisserie chicken helped him understand that he needed to write about ordinary people.He has moved away from the postmodern stylings of his older brother, Donald Barthelme, though his brother's influence can be seen in his earliest works, Rangoon and War and War.
Barthelme was thirty-three year editor and visionary of Mississippi Review, known for recognizing and publishing once new talents such as Larry Brown, Curtis Sittenfeld, and Amy Hempel early in their careers.

Reviews

[Seán · Rating 2 out of 5]

Remember when the nation's greatest worry was the Clenis?

It's rare that writing this good is put to such a useless purpose. Barthelme wallows in the meaninglessness of early internet newsgroups, brand name snack foods, and CNN death loops/scandals du jour. Floundering about like the most boring road movie ever made, it seems Barthelme set out to merely capture a taste of the ennui of the early to mid 90s. Well, ah gee, when you succeed in that kind of game you're also just kind of punishing the reader.

[Mickey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A long, meandering road trip in the early '90s is the setting for a broad range of views, theories, and discussion topics. The story provides a captivating snapshot of what America looked like in the "good old days" when we were hooked on television instead of our phones. Sharp contrasts between lifestyles and generations, as well as rural towns and the 'burbs, makes the slow, gorgeous writing worth reading--and thinking about.

[ica]

j’adore the kooky quacky take on TV-addled Americana in the nineties, pop culture addiction transmogrifying into a penchant for violence, a need for escalating stimulation exacted upon one’s kin; was totally rapt at the beginning as they drive around watching the OJ chase via handheld TV in the backseat … the surreal truth-is-stranger-than-fiction tone which takes over everything, from the semiludicrous premise to the dialogue where people persistently misunderstand each other, to the dramatic yet anticlimactic killing at the end, which becomes inevitable when people glued to spectacular simulacra of city living confuse fantasy with reality; it’s very clear how rick barthelme shares a literary inheritance with mary robison, with their spiky characters whose loving allegiances go much deeper than they might seem from the antagonistic way they talk to each other, but there’s also something of patricia lockwood’s nobody is talking about this here, in the detached, ironized dysfunctional overwhelm of the internet that makes up so much of this story’s motion up until maybe 3/4 of the way through, which gets suddenly punctured by the transcendence of living in the real world; and even of dennis cooper’s the sluts, with the extended written monologues on niche corners of the early internet from strangers collaboratively fantasizing about the possible manifestations of human cruelty. all the southwest ufo hunting is also delightful, and the daddy-daughter double-duo is … fine, don’t feel very strongly about that. in general i love that the trajectory is one of hyper-determined, slightly manic people dead-set on entering the fray in LA but getting so enraptured with the American Southwest that they no longer need to locate themselves inside TV scenes to feel purposefully embedded in society, but i think by the time i caught onto that movement of the plot i started to feel a little tired of the constant changing landmarks; i felt somewhat distracted gliding through all their sightseeing once i knew they weren’t going to make it all the way to LA, and the penny-mike romance wasn’t really enough to keep me from blowing through the last hundred pages, though the one night that del and mike share a room and mike asks if having an affair is worth it is quite nice. anyway this book is so fabulously unique in spirit and i’ll never hate a novel that loves a road trip this much, but loootttta fat could have been trimmed in the back half and i would have been a happier reader :)

[hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

pleasantly surprising

[Booker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had never read Rick Barthelme until a year or two ago. He is one of the few authors who I felt compelled to write after reading Waveland. This book, however, is even more amazing. It really is a shame that more people probably haven't read him or more importantly, won't go back and read a book like this and think about it in its historical context. Rather than being dated by all of its references to OJ and Bill Clinton, it serves as quite the testimony to America's mindset before 9/11, Katrina, and social networking. When you have the On The Road type trip which moves the characters from a fatalistic world view to experiencing the majesty of the American landscape, this makes for a truly wonderful read. It may have cracked my top 10.

[Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barthelme launches two characters from his acclaimed novel "The Brothers" on a wild and haunting road trip into the interactive heart of contemporary American culture. Net novitiate Jen and her channel-surfing boyfriend, Del, decide they need step out of cyberspace and take a look at the real world--from an online encounter with a psychopath to an epiphany in the Arizona desert. --Book Description, publication Date: March 1, 1997

[Michael D Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a sequel to "The Brothers." It's a better book.