Donald Barthelme: A Study of the Short Fiction

by Barbara L. Roe

Roe, Barbara L.

Genres: Reference, Criticism

158 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1992

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

We collected all the existing photographs of Donald Barthelme and put them into chronological order. Then we commissioned artists to extrapolate from them and produce impressions of how he would have appeared in the womb, as a one day old baby, and as a 100 year old man. On her own initiative one artist submitted an impression of Donald Barthelme as a female. This has also been included. See Appendix A.

We shrunk ourselves down to the size of a full stop and were injected into the text of Barthelme’s story “Florence Green is 81”. Our report on this is in Appendix B.

We commissioned the printing of 500 copies of the Bible using the New International translation. In our version the words "Holy Spirit" were replaced with "Donald Barthelme". We infiltrated copies of these Bibles into various hotel rooms in the London, Hamburg and Vancouver areas and observed the results. Our report is in Appendix C.

We hacked the phones and computers of the 15 leading Barthelme experts and analysed their tastes in pornography. Please see Appendix D.

We read Donald Barthelme’s entire published works separately and compared notes. We rated each story for humour, sexual content, evidence of mental illness and vocabulary. Our reports may be found in Appendix E.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Roe groups Barthelme's fiction by categories and formal techniques employed. It got me to re-read every story mentioned to follow her close readings. Roe, like me, is very interested in Barthelme's processes in composition and his work to constantly push himself to attempt new things without ever being sloppy. Placing stories together in this way makes him seem less scattershot and shows a progression toward more interesting failures. A really good primer for his work, but I wish Roe had gone into more depth in some places, but maybe you can't do much but show an intention and some examples of its execution with stories like "Bone Bubbles."