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Flying to America: 45 More Stories
A volume of the National Book Award–winning author’s uncollected―and three previously unpublished―short stories “arrives like a wondrous jewel unearthed” ( Literary Journal ). Donald Barthelme is widely recognized as one of the most influential and inventive writers of the 20th century. In this volume of unpublished or previously uncollected stories, he displays his keen eye for the absurd as well as his uniquely engaging, epiphanic, and richly textured style. The stories collected here delve into the themes that most fascinated the perils of the unfulfilled existence; the relationships between politics, art, sex, and life; and the importance of continuing to ask questions even though we are unable to learn the answers. Spanning Barthelme’s career, this posthumous collection includes his first published story, “Pages from the Annual Report,” which appeared in 1959 under a pseudonym, as well as his last, “Tickets,” published in The New Yorker shortly before he died in 1989. From this broad scope, “it is possible . . . to trace the author’s development from an early postmodern baroque . . . to the fragmentary, almost minimalist style of his late-’60s and early-’70s prime” ( Los Angeles Times ).
331 pages, Paperback
First published October 28, 2007
About the author
Donald Barthelme
162 books792 followers
Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts
(1968) apparently collects sometimes surrealistic stories of modern life of American writer Donald Barthelme.
A student at the University of Pennsylvania bore Donald Barthelme. Two years later, in 1933, the family moved to Texas, where father of Barthelme served as a professor of architecture at the University of Houston, where Barthelme later majored in journalism.
In 1951, this still student composed his first articles for the Houston Post. The Army drafted Barthelme, who arrived in Korea on 27 July 1953, the very day, when parties signed the ceasefire, ending the war. He served briefly as the editor of a newspaper of Army before returning to the United States and his job at the Houston Post. Once back, he continued his studies of philosophy at the University of Houston. He continued to take classes until 1957 but never received a degree. He spent much of his free time in “black” jazz clubs of Houston and listened to musical innovators, such as Lionel Hampton and Peck Kelly; this experience influenced him later.
Barthelme, a rebellious son, struggled in his relationship with his demanding father. In later years, they tremendously argued about the kinds of literature that interested Barthelme. His avant-garde father in art and aesthetics in many ways approved not the postmodern and deconstruction schools. The Dead Father and The King , the novels, delineate attitude of Barthelme toward his father as King Arthur and Lancelot, the characters, picture him. From the Roman Catholicism of his especially devout mother, Barthelme independently moved away, but this separation as the distance with his father troubled Barthelme. He ably agreed to strictures of his seemingly much closer mother.
Barthelme went to teach for brief periods at Boston University and at University at Buffalo, and he at the college of the City of New York served as distinguished visiting professor from 1974-1975. He married four times. Helen Barthelme, his second wife, later entitled a biography Donald Barthelme: The Genesis of a Cool Sound , published in 2001. With Birgit Barthelme, his third wife and a Dane, he fathered Anne Barthelme, his first child, a daughter. He married Marion Barthelme near the end and fathered Kate Barthelme, his second daughter. Marion and Donald wed until his death from throat cancer. People respect fiction of Frederick Barthelme and Steven Barthelme, brothers of Donald Barthelme and also teachers at The University of Southern Mississippi.
A student at the University of Pennsylvania bore Donald Barthelme. Two years later, in 1933, the family moved to Texas, where father of Barthelme served as a professor of architecture at the University of Houston, where Barthelme later majored in journalism.
In 1951, this still student composed his first articles for the Houston Post. The Army drafted Barthelme, who arrived in Korea on 27 July 1953, the very day, when parties signed the ceasefire, ending the war. He served briefly as the editor of a newspaper of Army before returning to the United States and his job at the Houston Post. Once back, he continued his studies of philosophy at the University of Houston. He continued to take classes until 1957 but never received a degree. He spent much of his free time in “black” jazz clubs of Houston and listened to musical innovators, such as Lionel Hampton and Peck Kelly; this experience influenced him later.
Barthelme, a rebellious son, struggled in his relationship with his demanding father. In later years, they tremendously argued about the kinds of literature that interested Barthelme. His avant-garde father in art and aesthetics in many ways approved not the postmodern and deconstruction schools. The Dead Father and The King , the novels, delineate attitude of Barthelme toward his father as King Arthur and Lancelot, the characters, picture him. From the Roman Catholicism of his especially devout mother, Barthelme independently moved away, but this separation as the distance with his father troubled Barthelme. He ably agreed to strictures of his seemingly much closer mother.
Barthelme went to teach for brief periods at Boston University and at University at Buffalo, and he at the college of the City of New York served as distinguished visiting professor from 1974-1975. He married four times. Helen Barthelme, his second wife, later entitled a biography Donald Barthelme: The Genesis of a Cool Sound , published in 2001. With Birgit Barthelme, his third wife and a Dane, he fathered Anne Barthelme, his first child, a daughter. He married Marion Barthelme near the end and fathered Kate Barthelme, his second daughter. Marion and Donald wed until his death from throat cancer. People respect fiction of Frederick Barthelme and Steven Barthelme, brothers of Donald Barthelme and also teachers at The University of Southern Mississippi.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
April 15, 2022
“𝐼 𝓅𝓊𝓇𝓈𝓊𝑒 𝒫𝑜𝓈𝓈𝒾𝒷𝒾𝓁𝒾𝓉𝓎. 𝒯𝒽𝒶𝓉’𝓈 𝓈𝑜𝓂𝑒𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓃𝑔.
𝒯𝒽𝑒𝓇𝑒 𝒾𝓈 𝓃𝑜 𝓂𝑜𝓂𝑒𝓃𝓉 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝑒𝓍𝒸𝑒𝑒𝒹𝓈 𝒾𝓃 𝒷𝑒𝒶𝓊𝓉𝓎 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝓂𝑜𝓂𝑒𝓃𝓉 𝓌𝒽𝑒𝓃 𝑜𝓃𝑒 𝓁𝑜𝑜𝓀𝓈 𝒶𝓉 𝒶 𝓌𝑜𝓂𝒶𝓃 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒻𝒾𝓃𝒹𝓈 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝓈𝒽𝑒 𝒾𝓈 𝓁𝑜𝑜𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒶𝓉 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝒾𝓃 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓈𝒶𝓂𝑒 𝓌𝒶𝓎 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝒶𝓇𝑒 𝓁𝑜𝑜𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒶𝓉 𝒽𝑒𝓇. 𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝓂𝑜𝓂𝑒𝓃𝓉 𝒾𝓃 𝓌𝒽𝒾𝒸𝒽 𝓈𝒽𝑒 𝒷𝑒𝓈𝓉𝑜𝓌𝓈 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝓁𝑜𝑜𝓀 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝓈𝒶𝓎𝓈, ‘𝒫𝓇𝑜𝒸𝑒𝑒𝒹 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝓎𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝑒𝓋𝒾𝓁 𝓅𝓁𝒶𝓃, 𝓈𝓊𝓂𝒷𝒾𝓉𝒸𝒽.’ 𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝒾𝓃𝒾𝓉𝒾𝒶𝓁 𝓈𝓂𝒶𝓈𝒽 𝑜𝓃 𝑔𝓁𝒶𝓃𝒸𝑒. 𝒯𝒽𝑒𝓃, 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒹𝓇𝒶𝓌𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓃𝑒𝒶𝓇. 𝒯𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝓉𝒶𝓀𝑒𝓈 𝒶 𝓁𝑜𝓃𝑔 𝓉𝒾𝓂𝑒, 𝒾𝓉 𝓈𝑒𝑒𝓂𝓈 𝓁𝒾𝓀𝑒 𝓂𝑜𝓃𝓉𝒽𝓈, 𝒶𝓁𝓉𝒽𝑜𝓊𝑔𝒽 𝑜𝓃𝓁𝓎 𝓂𝒾𝓃𝓊𝓉𝑒𝓈 𝓅𝒶𝓈𝓈 𝒾𝓃 𝒻𝒶𝒸𝓉. 𝐿𝒶𝓃𝑔𝓊𝑜𝓇 𝒾𝓈 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓌𝑜𝓇𝒹 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝒹𝑒𝓈𝒸𝓇𝒾𝒷𝑒𝓈 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝓅𝒶𝓇𝓉 𝑜𝒻 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓅𝓇𝑜𝒸𝑒𝓈𝓈. 𝒴𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝓅𝑒𝓇𝓈𝑜𝓃𝒶 𝒻𝓁𝑜𝒶𝓉𝓈 𝓉𝑜𝓌𝒶𝓇𝒹 𝒽𝑒𝓇 𝓅𝑒𝓇𝓈𝑜𝓃𝒶, 𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓇 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒮𝑒𝒶 𝑜𝒻 𝐻𝑒𝓈𝒾𝓉𝒶𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃. 𝑀𝒶𝓃𝓎 𝓌𝑒𝑒𝓀𝓈 𝓅𝒶𝓈𝓈 𝒷𝑒𝒻𝑜𝓇𝑒 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓎 𝓂𝑒𝑒𝓉, 𝒷𝓊𝓉 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓌𝑒𝑒𝓀𝓈 𝒶𝓇𝑒 𝒹𝒶𝓎𝓈, 𝑜𝓇 𝓈𝑒𝒸𝑜𝓃𝒹𝓈. 𝒮𝓉𝒾𝓁𝓁, 𝑒𝓋𝑒𝓇𝓎𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒾𝓈 𝒹𝑒𝒸𝒾𝒹𝑒𝒹. 𝒴𝑜𝓊 𝒽𝒶𝓋𝑒 𝓈𝓁𝑒𝓅𝓉 𝓉𝑜𝑔𝑒𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓇 𝒾𝓃 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝑔𝓁𝒶𝓃𝒸𝑒.”
October 30, 2020
третій том повного зібрання його новел. порівняно зі збірками 60 і 40 - тут ще менше шедеврів і часто виникає відчуття якоїсь незграбності: ось є у Бартелмі гарна ідея (пожежник зранку прокидається, а у нього немає лівої руки), а що з нею робити, він не знаю... прикре відчуття, неначе хтось силкується пожартувати, але виходить у нього все одно невесело. із того, що тут варто прочитати:
Edward and Pia
Bone Bubbles
The Big Broadcast of 1938
Hiding Man
Pages from the Annual Report
A Picture History of the War
To London and Rome
Florence Green Is 81
Edward and Pia
Bone Bubbles
The Big Broadcast of 1938
Hiding Man
Pages from the Annual Report
A Picture History of the War
To London and Rome
Florence Green Is 81
October 7, 2025
A City of Churches by Donald Barthelme
We could be talking about Bucharest…my home town and a place which has (too) many churches. The officials of the church, instead of spending money on new, expensive buildings, should do more and give money to the poor. Before I start grumbling about the high priests here, I must go back to this excellent story.
At the center of the story is not a priest, Jesus Christ Superstar or the like, but a young woman, with little to do with any church. True, the other main character is a kind of a bigot, species of which this town of churches has plenty.
The particularity of this city is that these many churches are grouped together. We have Presbyterian, Unitarian, Pentecostal, protestant… you name it, and they have it.
People put religion not just at the center of their communal life, but it seems to me that religion is in any and every part of their existence.
That may be fine- a while ago, I would scorn such an attitude, but I have been reading positive psychology, which revealed to me that we need spirituality and those are religious tend to be happier than the rest of us.
The young woman is supposed to work in a would-be car rental office and needs to rent a place. Here the troubles start and end, with a lot of humor for s short story. Inhabitants of this town of churches can live in…bell towers, there is a plentitude. Our heroine wants to have a place on her own, but the interlocutor disagrees:
“- Why alone?
- Because I want to
- But here people share; they have a place with family, friends…
- I want a place on my own…”
The argument continues and the woman says I have thoughts, dreams of sexual nature.
That and the fact that no one will rent a car in a hundred years in this city of churches, pretty much added to my joy and pleasure of reading this splendid story.
We could be talking about Bucharest…my home town and a place which has (too) many churches. The officials of the church, instead of spending money on new, expensive buildings, should do more and give money to the poor. Before I start grumbling about the high priests here, I must go back to this excellent story.
At the center of the story is not a priest, Jesus Christ Superstar or the like, but a young woman, with little to do with any church. True, the other main character is a kind of a bigot, species of which this town of churches has plenty.
The particularity of this city is that these many churches are grouped together. We have Presbyterian, Unitarian, Pentecostal, protestant… you name it, and they have it.
People put religion not just at the center of their communal life, but it seems to me that religion is in any and every part of their existence.
That may be fine- a while ago, I would scorn such an attitude, but I have been reading positive psychology, which revealed to me that we need spirituality and those are religious tend to be happier than the rest of us.
The young woman is supposed to work in a would-be car rental office and needs to rent a place. Here the troubles start and end, with a lot of humor for s short story. Inhabitants of this town of churches can live in…bell towers, there is a plentitude. Our heroine wants to have a place on her own, but the interlocutor disagrees:
“- Why alone?
- Because I want to
- But here people share; they have a place with family, friends…
- I want a place on my own…”
The argument continues and the woman says I have thoughts, dreams of sexual nature.
That and the fact that no one will rent a car in a hundred years in this city of churches, pretty much added to my joy and pleasure of reading this splendid story.
Read
October 22, 2020Donald Barthelme set the tone for countless short stories to follow, alternatingly dreamlike and piecemeal on one side, deliberately bland and ironic on the other, almost vaporwave in its effect. Unfortunately, most of those weirdo experiments have been sidestepped in the mainstream of discourse. Flying to America isn't Barthelme's best collection but it remains, like the best of his work, a flipbook of the imagination.
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January 22, 2009Read the STOP SMILING review of Flying to America:
The resurrection of Donald Barthelme is a long time coming, but ends here on an anti-climactic note, with the odds and ends of a fitful career, an addendum to his work rather than its apotheosis.
Barthelme, whose mastery of a certain type of short story — oftentimes they were not stories at all, but conversations, set pieces, harangues, language games — led Thomas Pynchon to coin the phrase “Barthelmismo,” never quite disappeared, but his legacy fell into slight disrepair. In his own lifetime, which ended prematurely in 1989, Barthelme epitomized a strain of Seventies experimentalism now being reappraised after enduring a good few decades of desultory genre tags, “metafiction” being the most common. Barthelme’s writing does indeed exalt in appropriation, subversion of narrative conventions, collage, the conflation of bureaucratic and provincial idioms. The man himself fit the bill, too: A Texan who relocated to New York’s West Village, he published the bulk of his stories in The New Yorker, sold very few copies of his own volumes, drank Scotch prodigiously, donned cowboy boots, wore a feral beard, fraternized with the abstract expressionists, married four times, and trafficked in aphorisms. You might have found him wandering the streets with his neighbor Grace Paley muttering, “Fragments are the only forms I trust.”
Read the complete STOP SMILING review...
The resurrection of Donald Barthelme is a long time coming, but ends here on an anti-climactic note, with the odds and ends of a fitful career, an addendum to his work rather than its apotheosis.
Barthelme, whose mastery of a certain type of short story — oftentimes they were not stories at all, but conversations, set pieces, harangues, language games — led Thomas Pynchon to coin the phrase “Barthelmismo,” never quite disappeared, but his legacy fell into slight disrepair. In his own lifetime, which ended prematurely in 1989, Barthelme epitomized a strain of Seventies experimentalism now being reappraised after enduring a good few decades of desultory genre tags, “metafiction” being the most common. Barthelme’s writing does indeed exalt in appropriation, subversion of narrative conventions, collage, the conflation of bureaucratic and provincial idioms. The man himself fit the bill, too: A Texan who relocated to New York’s West Village, he published the bulk of his stories in The New Yorker, sold very few copies of his own volumes, drank Scotch prodigiously, donned cowboy boots, wore a feral beard, fraternized with the abstract expressionists, married four times, and trafficked in aphorisms. You might have found him wandering the streets with his neighbor Grace Paley muttering, “Fragments are the only forms I trust.”
Read the complete STOP SMILING review...
June 24, 2021
sadly diminishing returns but still some gleaming gems. don might have been the most inconsistent of the great pomos, even from sentence to sentence sometimes he can swing from banal to brilliant, and there's at least the certainty of knowing that as he works in small slices there'll be something new along soon
June 18, 2023
(2.25 Stars)
I don't know if my taste has changed or if this book's stories just weren't as good as 40 Stories, Snow White, or 60 Stories. But I honestly just slugged through this without enthusiasm. I didn't hate it or even dislike it, it just didn't grab me like his other works have done.
I don't know if my taste has changed or if this book's stories just weren't as good as 40 Stories, Snow White, or 60 Stories. But I honestly just slugged through this without enthusiasm. I didn't hate it or even dislike it, it just didn't grab me like his other works have done.
December 23, 2024
Missing some of the ecstatic highs of Barthelme’s 60 Stories and 40 Stories, which is understandable as this is an odds-and-ends collection of unpublished stories (including an early draft of Paradise). But reading him is always a joy, and we’re lucky these stories weren’t lost to time.
April 20, 2019
Wow! short stories with a difference!for full review please visit http://thebooksmithblog.wordpress.com
April 28, 2025
Some high highs and some lows but mostly even keel, a great writer and want to ready more of the stories, but collected with this many it begins to be... one not haw haw haw haw.
April 10, 2013
Probaby my least favorite collection of Barthelme, but there were a dozen or so stories out of the 45 that made it enjoyable. Felt the most scattershot and uneven of the three collections I've read (the other two being, Sixty Stories and Forty Stories). Many of the stories in the other two volumes also appeared in previous volumes, which took more editorial care over their selection. One gets a window on just how important editorial organizing and selection can be when covering a short story writer in this excellent article: Disassembling Donald Barthelme: Flying to America's Unfortunate Disorganization.
My favorite story from this one was "Reference".
My favorite story from this one was "Reference".
March 10, 2012
It is strange that it is this particular collection of short stories, the final grab bag of what was left uncollected and unpublished after previous collections, is the only volume of Donald Barthelme's short stories my library has, and that it has two of them. However, this banal oddity pales in comparison to the volume itself, by turns delightful, odd, and indigestible, like a bag of strange candies from a far foreign country. Three stars is as good as I can reasonably give for a book that I didn't finish and don't intend to finish. However, I can say that "Flying to America" and "Paradise before the Egg" were both memorable as delightful pulls from the candy bag.
April 27, 2008
Only a few previously uncollected stories in here--the bulk of this come from various short story collections, but some of the stories that were published elsewhere and hadn't previously found their way into a book are wonderful. But any act of completion of almost any artist’s work is going to feel a little underwhelming, I fear.
June 9, 2008
This book is so good we had it stolen out of the rental car! OK, they probably thought they were scoring a laptop since it was inside a laptop bag, but really this is better loot and luckily much easier to replace. I thought the title story was the least grabbing but the rest did not fail to delight.
November 18, 2008
Most of the rest of Barthelme. Reading it just made me want a fancy series of reprints of all the original collections with the stories in their original chronological order. Instead you've got to scramble between four volumes (and good luck ever re-assembling Overnight to Many Distant Cities). But that's not this book's fault -- I'm just cranky.
December 30, 2009
Although it contains a few excellent stories, this final collection isn't representative of Donald Barthelme's best work. In fact, many of the pieces in here read like excellent Barthelme parodies (which is, of course, how it goes for any author who produces a large body of work). Far from essential, but a worthwhile selection for more devoted fans.
June 22, 2008
“Just as the white snow on the ground is loved and applauded by everyone, but would be derided if it pretended to be vanilla ice cream, so the human persona can stand only so much artificial enhancement, for instance by lies.”
February 1, 2009
bleah i love you donald but i can't handle this much of your stuff in one sitting
this would be a good book to read in small pieces, like, leave it on the kitchen table and read it at breakfast on saturdays only
if you just power through it it gets very boring after page 100 or so
this would be a good book to read in small pieces, like, leave it on the kitchen table and read it at breakfast on saturdays only
if you just power through it it gets very boring after page 100 or so
October 28, 2011
Flying to America is another enjoyable romp through Barthelme country, and I may even enjoy it more than 60 Stories. Powerhouse shorts like The Police Band, Brave as Vincent Van Gogh, and Paradise Before the Egg are up there with the finest of the author's work.
October 30, 2012
So clever. To bad Barthelme seems to care more about pointing out how clever he is than constructing a solid story...
[2 stars, because I couldn't finish it. Felt too much like Joyce or Wilde level pretension.]
[2 stars, because I couldn't finish it. Felt too much like Joyce or Wilde level pretension.]
July 17, 2008
formative lip overkill felon wit hofbrau pencil thin minty
fresh as a daisy rifle rangefinder in lunch line of fire
fresh as a daisy rifle rangefinder in lunch line of fire
February 6, 2011
Some incredible stuff in here. Also pretty obvious why the other hundred stories were collected before these.
November 23, 2012
Not as consistently excellent as Forty Stories or Sixty Stories, but a few solid stories here for those who have tackled the other collections and need more Barthelme.
January 3, 2018
Barthelme's absurdist tendencies are on full display here, with a sly wit and an eye for the ridiculous.
November 20, 2007
Laughing out loud on the train to this one.
Want to Read
May 13, 2008Apparently the master of postmodern short fiction.
November 17, 2008
A couple paragraphs in this jumped out at me as some of the most poetic things i've ever read
July 16, 2013
Some were ok, some were just Barthelme.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews