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Come Back, Dr. Caligari
In 1964, Barthelme collected his early stories in Come Back, Dr. Caligari, for which he received considerable critical acclaim as an innovator of the short story form. His style (fictional and popular figures in absurd situations, e.g., the Batman-inspired "The Joker's Greatest Triumph"), spawned a number of imitators and would help to define the next several decades of short fiction.
184 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
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About the author
Donald Barthelme
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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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January 7, 2025
Absurdity is in abundance all around…
Family life is absurd…
Science is absurd…
Beauty is absurd…
Art is absurd…
Psychiatry is absurd…
Whatever happens is preposterous… You may laugh yourself to tears…
So learn to appreciate absurdity and it will become your special Ode to Joy.
You may not be interested in absurdity but absurdity is interested in you.
Family life is absurd…
Oh Hubert, why did you give me that damn baby? Paul I mean? Didn't you know he was going to grow?
Science is absurd…
Do you want to talk about phenomenological reduction now? Or do you want a muffin?
Beauty is absurd…
I wonder how I might become slightly more pleasing to the eye? Rosemarie asked. Perhaps I should tattoo myself attractively?
Art is absurd…
The piece in hand was to be called Season's Greetings and combined three auto radiators, one from a Chevrolet Tudor, one from a Ford pick-up, one from a 1932 Essex, with part of a former telephone switchboard and other items.
Psychiatry is absurd…
One source of concern in the classic encounter between patient and psychoanalyst is the patient's fear of boring the doctor.
Whatever happens is preposterous… You may laugh yourself to tears…
But weeping is beyond toleration, unnatural, it should be reserved for great occasions, the telegram in the depths of the night, rail disasters, earthquakes, war.
So learn to appreciate absurdity and it will become your special Ode to Joy.
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January 17, 2021
Come Back, Dr. Caligari, collection of fourteen short stories by the king of minimalist postmodern fiction, Dapper Donald Barthelme. Our first-rate American scribbler doesn't hesitate to snatch themes and types, curios and characters from myth, fable, legend, fairy tale, comic books, Pop Art, Op Art and upside down urinals. Go get 'em Dada Don.
Here's a tidbit on a duo of Don's Dr. Caligari ditties:
THE PLAYER PIANO
Setting the Stage, Postmodern Style
Donald's opening line: "Outside his window five-year-old Priscilla Hess, square and squat as a mailbox (red sweater, blue lumpy corduroy pants), looked around poignantly for someone to wipe her overflowing nose." Ugh! Priscilla isn't exactly the photogenic little girl advertisers would use to sell their products. Donald Barthelme wrote this piece in the early sixties, worlds away from 1950s American realism, writers like Richard Yates and James Baldwin.
Family Values, Postmodern Style
"A filet of green Silly Putty disappeared into fat Priscilla Hess and he turned to greet his wife who was crawling through the door on her hands and knees." The ugliness continues - a blob of bodily fluid from kiddo and a wife who is anything but the prototypical Hollywood sweetheart. Holy Donald Barthelme! - she's crawling through the front door of her very own home on her hands and knees. Did Barbara Billingsley ever do that in Leave it to Beaver?
Irony and Playfulness
“The ham died,” she said. “I couldn’t cure it. I tried everything." Oh, DonBarth! Is that a play on words or a groaner? Well, as a writer of the postmodern, you're entitled to toss in cornball corny jokes - but lets not overdo it! Remind me, all you literary types, did Upton Sinclair or John Steinbeck sprinkle their novels with such corn?
Discontinuous Narratives
As with stream-of-consciousness, so Donald deals in what I term stream-of-dialogue - to take a Player Piano example:
“It’s senseless, senseless, senseless,” she said. “I’ve been caulking the medicine chest. What for? I don’t know. You’ve got to give me more money. Ben is bleeding. Bessie wants to be an S.S. man. She’s reading The Rise and Fall. She’s identified with Himmler. Is that her name? Bessie?”
Blur Difference Between High Art and Low Art
“Get up,” he said softly, “get up, dearly beloved. Stand up and sing. Sing Parsifal.”
“I want a Triumph,” she said from the floor. “A TR-4. Everyone in Stamford, every single person, has one but me. If you gave me a TR-4 I’d put our ugly children in it and drive away. To Wellfleet. I’d take all the ugliness out of your life.”
“A green one?”
“A red one,” she said menacingly. “Red with red leather seats.”
From a famous Richard Wagner opera to a famous sports car. Easy peasy for ink slingers of the postmodern.
Minimalism
The Player Piano clocks in at a mere three pages. Some call it microfiction, some call it flash fiction, some call it snapper, some call it blaster but however you call it, it ain't conventional.
Jolt of Finality
DB's brief final paragraph: "He took a good grip on its black varnishedness. He began to trundle it across the room, and, after a slight hesitation, it struck him dead."
Dang. Just when you thought you might get off easy, the story's light and play turns into a tale of life and death.
THE JOKER'S GREATEST TRIUMPH
Holy Batman! Donald Barthelme combines his high literary art with comic book hero and villain. And Daring Donald's dialogue digs deep into literary deconstruction, as per this snippet:
“Oh by the way,” Commissioner Gordon said. “How’s Robin doing at Exeter?”
“It’s not Exeter it’s Andover,” Batman said. “He’s doing very well. Having a little trouble with his French.”
“I had a little trouble with it myself,” the Commissioner said jovially. “Ou est man livre?”
“Ou est ton livre?” Batman said.
Help me, gang. Has James Patterson or Mary Higgins Clark ever featured comic book superstars and then proceeded to poke fun at them?
Go ahead, treat your literary taste buds to the tang of DB's Dr. Caligari. Link to the entire book online: http://dvqlxo2m2q99q.cloudfront.net/0...
American author Donald Barthelme, 1931-1989
May 17, 2015
Donald Barthelme was the high priest of post-modern literary weirdness but he never suffered for it. Five minutes after relocating to New York from Houston he was signed up by The New Yorker and remained its darling boy until he died. He was the outsider on the inside. The rest of those American avant gardists must have ground their teeth and chanted sellout sellout as they burned effigies of him in some abandoned lot on 12th Street, but hell, he couldn’t care, he was busy getting slaughtered with his third wife and his vast circle of friends – hello Andy! dwarling Renata! - and publishing his fourth begarlanded book of short stories.
I think his collection Amateurs (1976) is – hmmm – maybe - the best, most brilliant short story collection I ever read. This one is his first. And look – I have a FIRST EDITION PAPERBACK published (as Alibris told me) simultaneously with the hardback which means on 1st April 1964 (wow, 51 years ago, and it’s pristine) which means during the week when The Beatles were No 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 on the American singles charts, something which never happened before or since, so, I’d say, Come Back, Dr Caligari couldn’t be a more 60s book if it was printed on blotting paper soaked in Owsley’s Orange Sunshine, which it isn’t.
JAZZ NOT ROCK
But Don was jazz, not rock. He was Sonny Rollins, not the Velvet Underground. He was bourbon, not acid. So really, he is not my guy. He was in many ways an irritating writer, very self-confident, very know-it-all, really rather smug, and his ideas tended to morph into brainy comedy sketches. In one story a group of friends picket the human condition outside a church, their placards feature slogans :
MAN DIES!
COGITO ERGO NOTHING!
THE BODY IS DISGUST!
NO MORE ART CULTURE LOVE!
Their leader explains : We are opposed to the ruthless way in which the human condition has been imposed on organisms which have done nothing to deserve it and are unable to escape it. Why does it have to be that way? Four years later Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In would compress that idea into a 20 second sketch. Five years later some of the intellectual silliness would be reborn in Monty Python. Did Don ever watch the Pythons? Did the Pythons ever read Don? Or were they – Don in his New Yorker arrogance and the Python crew with their Oxbridge superiority – just singing from slightly different pages of the same songbook? This is a Python sketch but it could so easily have been a Donald Barthelme riff:
FAMOUS DEATHS
And now here are the scores.
St Stephan 29.9
Richard III 29.3
Jean D'arc 29.1
Marat 29.0
A. Lincoln 28.2
G. Khan 28.1
King Edward VII 3.1
Well there you can see the scores now. St Stephen in the lead there with his stoning, then comes King Richard the Third at Bosworth Field, a grand death that, then the very lovely Jean d'Arc, then Marat in his bath - best of friends with Charlotte in the showers afterwards - then A. Lincoln of the U.S of A, a grand little chap that, and number six Genghis Khan, and the back marker King Edward the Seventh. Back to you, Wolfgang.
TECHNIQUES
Two stories are collages of conversations from social gatherings with none of the speakers identified. William Gaddis’s novel JR (1975) does the same thing (for 750 pages). In one of story he spatchcocks in to the mix whole paragraphs lifted from Time magazine (this is pointed out in Tracy Daugherty’s biography). No one seemed to notice at the time. Bob Dylan’s memoir Chronicles (2004) does the same thing but he got a light spanking from the commentariat for plagiarism. One law for the Don and another law for the Bob.
MY FAVOURITE
For I’m the Boy whose Only Joy is Loving You is my favourite here. It turns out to be viciously autobiographical, something you don’t expect from a surreal jokester. It features several cod-Irish spoof conversations, and this one is between Don and his first wife. Got to admit, I love this :
Ah Martha, coom now to bed there’s a darlin’ gul. Hump off, blatherer I’ve no yet read me Mallarme for this evenin’. Ooo Martha dear canna we noo let the dear lad rest this night? When th’ telly’s already shut doon an’ th’ man o’ the hoose ‘as a ‘ard on? Don’t be comin’ round wit yer lewd proposals on a Tuesday night when ye know better. But Martha dear where is yer love for me that we talked about in 19 and 38? Pish Mister Hard On ye’s better be lookin’ after the Disposall what’s got itself plogged up. Ding the Disposall! Martha me gul it’s yer sweet hide I’m after havin’. Get yet hands from out of me Playtex viper, I’m dreadful bored wi’ yer silly old tool.
WIVES
By the time of this collection, Don’s 2nd marriage was withering on the vine and he does have some interesting observations on wives and husbands tucked away amidst the spoofiness:
I believed that because I had obtained a wife who was made up of wife-signs (beauty, charm, softness, perfume, cookery) I had found love. … But I say, looking about me in this incubator of future citizens, that signs are signs, and that some of them are lies. This is the great discovery of my time here.
Okay, I give this collection 4 stars for boldness, effrontery, chutzpah, take-no-prisoners lunacy and great humour. In truth it’s a three star collection – a few are really tiresome – but heck. It’s a 1st April 1964 time machine!
I think his collection Amateurs (1976) is – hmmm – maybe - the best, most brilliant short story collection I ever read. This one is his first. And look – I have a FIRST EDITION PAPERBACK published (as Alibris told me) simultaneously with the hardback which means on 1st April 1964 (wow, 51 years ago, and it’s pristine) which means during the week when The Beatles were No 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 on the American singles charts, something which never happened before or since, so, I’d say, Come Back, Dr Caligari couldn’t be a more 60s book if it was printed on blotting paper soaked in Owsley’s Orange Sunshine, which it isn’t.
JAZZ NOT ROCK
But Don was jazz, not rock. He was Sonny Rollins, not the Velvet Underground. He was bourbon, not acid. So really, he is not my guy. He was in many ways an irritating writer, very self-confident, very know-it-all, really rather smug, and his ideas tended to morph into brainy comedy sketches. In one story a group of friends picket the human condition outside a church, their placards feature slogans :
MAN DIES!
COGITO ERGO NOTHING!
THE BODY IS DISGUST!
NO MORE ART CULTURE LOVE!
Their leader explains : We are opposed to the ruthless way in which the human condition has been imposed on organisms which have done nothing to deserve it and are unable to escape it. Why does it have to be that way? Four years later Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In would compress that idea into a 20 second sketch. Five years later some of the intellectual silliness would be reborn in Monty Python. Did Don ever watch the Pythons? Did the Pythons ever read Don? Or were they – Don in his New Yorker arrogance and the Python crew with their Oxbridge superiority – just singing from slightly different pages of the same songbook? This is a Python sketch but it could so easily have been a Donald Barthelme riff:
FAMOUS DEATHS
And now here are the scores.
St Stephan 29.9
Richard III 29.3
Jean D'arc 29.1
Marat 29.0
A. Lincoln 28.2
G. Khan 28.1
King Edward VII 3.1
Well there you can see the scores now. St Stephen in the lead there with his stoning, then comes King Richard the Third at Bosworth Field, a grand death that, then the very lovely Jean d'Arc, then Marat in his bath - best of friends with Charlotte in the showers afterwards - then A. Lincoln of the U.S of A, a grand little chap that, and number six Genghis Khan, and the back marker King Edward the Seventh. Back to you, Wolfgang.
TECHNIQUES
Two stories are collages of conversations from social gatherings with none of the speakers identified. William Gaddis’s novel JR (1975) does the same thing (for 750 pages). In one of story he spatchcocks in to the mix whole paragraphs lifted from Time magazine (this is pointed out in Tracy Daugherty’s biography). No one seemed to notice at the time. Bob Dylan’s memoir Chronicles (2004) does the same thing but he got a light spanking from the commentariat for plagiarism. One law for the Don and another law for the Bob.
MY FAVOURITE
For I’m the Boy whose Only Joy is Loving You is my favourite here. It turns out to be viciously autobiographical, something you don’t expect from a surreal jokester. It features several cod-Irish spoof conversations, and this one is between Don and his first wife. Got to admit, I love this :
Ah Martha, coom now to bed there’s a darlin’ gul. Hump off, blatherer I’ve no yet read me Mallarme for this evenin’. Ooo Martha dear canna we noo let the dear lad rest this night? When th’ telly’s already shut doon an’ th’ man o’ the hoose ‘as a ‘ard on? Don’t be comin’ round wit yer lewd proposals on a Tuesday night when ye know better. But Martha dear where is yer love for me that we talked about in 19 and 38? Pish Mister Hard On ye’s better be lookin’ after the Disposall what’s got itself plogged up. Ding the Disposall! Martha me gul it’s yer sweet hide I’m after havin’. Get yet hands from out of me Playtex viper, I’m dreadful bored wi’ yer silly old tool.
WIVES
By the time of this collection, Don’s 2nd marriage was withering on the vine and he does have some interesting observations on wives and husbands tucked away amidst the spoofiness:
I believed that because I had obtained a wife who was made up of wife-signs (beauty, charm, softness, perfume, cookery) I had found love. … But I say, looking about me in this incubator of future citizens, that signs are signs, and that some of them are lies. This is the great discovery of my time here.
Okay, I give this collection 4 stars for boldness, effrontery, chutzpah, take-no-prisoners lunacy and great humour. In truth it’s a three star collection – a few are really tiresome – but heck. It’s a 1st April 1964 time machine!
August 29, 2016
This is Barthelme's first collection of short fiction and in the opening story the author pens this: "The aim of literature is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart." And that's just the half of it, because when Don is finished with this strange object it will be shorn, painted blue, dressed in gold lamé and made to sing the theme song to Love Boat everytime someone brings commemorative stamps into the shed.
November 23, 2008
The good stuff is great, the other stuff is impenetrable. Complicating this is the fact that the great stuff and the impenetrable stuff often coexist within the same story, or even the same paragraph. It's kind of a package deal, with Barthelme. Fortunately most all of the stuff (both good/great and other/impenetrable) is funny, so even the impenetrable stuff will often make you laugh (and the great stuff will stun you into laughless silence due to your awe at Barthelme's weird brilliance). Also heartening: the second half of the book is pretty much all great stuff. This was D.B.'s first collection and you can totally see how it was a bomb dropped on the people of 1965—if it still feels outré and insane after decades of postmodernism have numbed our sensitivities, imagine what it was like back then. Anyway. I don't know what the hell half these stories are about, but it doesn't much matter. This is out of print but if you can track it down it's a good starting point for Barthelme neophytes. I will leave you with some choice dialogue from "Up, Aloft in the Air":
————————————————————————
"Even in Texas," Buck whispered, "where things are very exciting, there is nothing like the old face of Constantine Cavity. Are you true?"
"Oh I wish things were other."
"You do?"
"There are such a lot of fine people in the world I wish I was one of them!"
"You are, you are!"
"Not essentially. Not inwardly."
"You're very authentic I think."
"That's all right in Cleveland, where authenticity is the thing, but here..."
"Kiss me please."
"Again?"
————————————————————————
"Even in Texas," Buck whispered, "where things are very exciting, there is nothing like the old face of Constantine Cavity. Are you true?"
"Oh I wish things were other."
"You do?"
"There are such a lot of fine people in the world I wish I was one of them!"
"You are, you are!"
"Not essentially. Not inwardly."
"You're very authentic I think."
"That's all right in Cleveland, where authenticity is the thing, but here..."
"Kiss me please."
"Again?"
March 22, 2010
If you are wondering about absurdism and postmodernism and are tired of looking dumb at dinner parties, I recommend reading this book. You are going to learn all about the cat-piano and about Batman's friend Fredric who comes over on most Tuesday nights. This knowledge will change you, even if the change is just being itchy.
July 20, 2018
"I was wrong, Peterson thought, the world is absurd. The absurdity is punishing me for not believing in it. I affirm the absurdity. On the other hand, absurdity is itself absurd."
Funny and philosophical and satirical and weird and, above all, absurd in many a sense, Barthelme's first short story collection Come Back, Dr. Caligari is a cryptic and comic set of radically experimental pieces that vary in style and substance and yet are always distinctly Barthelme. Even more so than in the other collections of Barthelme's that I have thus far read, there is a heavy emphasis on, as I've already mentioned, the absurd, particularly in the story "A Shower of Gold", which was Barthelme's very first published story and closes off this collection. The quote I started this very review off w/is from that story, and I need not explain how said quote expresses the theme of absurdity in relation to the story.
The stories themselves are weird and wild as one might expect from such a writer as Barthelme. They're also brilliant, although this collection, a bit more so than a lot of his other ones, can become tedious from time to time (although, of course, it can also be extremely entertaining and worthy of the term "page turner", the entertainment value of practically every paragraph varies similarly to how the styles and experiments of each story vary), which is a slither of the reason why it took me so unexpectedly and annoyingly long to finish reading this rather slim book (other reasons also just include general bussyness and my general interest in various things that aren't the activity of "reading this book"); however, it is still, of course, a highly worthy read. Some of the real highlights here include "The Joker's Greatest Triumph", a parodic subversion of the typical Batman comic (in written form) that has a frustratingly ambiguous ending and spends an amusing amount of time focused on what exact drinks the characters are getting themselves than a lot of the action, and when the action does occur it is written in an obviously cheesy and tongue-in-cheek smile, "The Big Broadcast of 1938", a darkly comic and deeply depressing portrait of a man who bought his own radio station in exchange for his home, and the absurd heartbreak and humour Barthelme can milk from such a sad and strange little concept, and "For I'm the Boy Whose Only Joy is Loving You", which I didn't like at all when I first read it, but on a second read became a favourite of mine (it's definitely the most difficult-to-read-and-digest-and-"understand"-on-a-basic-goddamn-level-if-you-get-what-I'm-sayin' of the Donald Barthelme short stories I have so far read (at least in my opinion, of course), but I really appreciate the style and humour having now embraced its experimental insanity). Of course, every story on here is worth reading at least once if you like Barthelme's style.
Funny and philosophical and satirical and weird and, above all, absurd in many a sense, Barthelme's first short story collection Come Back, Dr. Caligari is a cryptic and comic set of radically experimental pieces that vary in style and substance and yet are always distinctly Barthelme. Even more so than in the other collections of Barthelme's that I have thus far read, there is a heavy emphasis on, as I've already mentioned, the absurd, particularly in the story "A Shower of Gold", which was Barthelme's very first published story and closes off this collection. The quote I started this very review off w/is from that story, and I need not explain how said quote expresses the theme of absurdity in relation to the story.
The stories themselves are weird and wild as one might expect from such a writer as Barthelme. They're also brilliant, although this collection, a bit more so than a lot of his other ones, can become tedious from time to time (although, of course, it can also be extremely entertaining and worthy of the term "page turner", the entertainment value of practically every paragraph varies similarly to how the styles and experiments of each story vary), which is a slither of the reason why it took me so unexpectedly and annoyingly long to finish reading this rather slim book (other reasons also just include general bussyness and my general interest in various things that aren't the activity of "reading this book"); however, it is still, of course, a highly worthy read. Some of the real highlights here include "The Joker's Greatest Triumph", a parodic subversion of the typical Batman comic (in written form) that has a frustratingly ambiguous ending and spends an amusing amount of time focused on what exact drinks the characters are getting themselves than a lot of the action, and when the action does occur it is written in an obviously cheesy and tongue-in-cheek smile, "The Big Broadcast of 1938", a darkly comic and deeply depressing portrait of a man who bought his own radio station in exchange for his home, and the absurd heartbreak and humour Barthelme can milk from such a sad and strange little concept, and "For I'm the Boy Whose Only Joy is Loving You", which I didn't like at all when I first read it, but on a second read became a favourite of mine (it's definitely the most difficult-to-read-and-digest-and-"understand"-on-a-basic-goddamn-level-if-you-get-what-I'm-sayin' of the Donald Barthelme short stories I have so far read (at least in my opinion, of course), but I really appreciate the style and humour having now embraced its experimental insanity). Of course, every story on here is worth reading at least once if you like Barthelme's style.
February 19, 2021
3.5 stars. An original, mostly absurdist collection of fourteen short stories. The writing style is unique and at times, excellent. A very uneven collection of stories published in the years 1960 to 1964.
October 21, 2010
Four stars might be a bit of an exaggeration given the unevenness of the gathered stories tenuously bound to the printed pages of this unorthodox book, but Barthelme's bravado has made a believer out of me. Weary readers take solace in this fact: this collection will grow on you. Literature is most potent when it alters the temporal reality of the reader. Consider this collection of short stories to be an invitation - a provocation, really - toward a universe quite unlike the one around you, and closer to the one within you.
December 2, 2025
Making my way through Barthelme’s short story collections chronologically. I had read plenty of these individual stories before, but taking them together as a single, organized body of work changes my view a bit.
This being Barthelme’s first collection, there are some stories a bit less engaging than his later stuff, but even the weakest among the lot are incredibly self-assured and written in that voice that feels somehow alien and warm all at once. It’s been a while since I read Barthelme’s short fiction and I’ve only come to appreciate it more now that I’ve run across plenty of imitators, none of whom ever seem to get it right. “How can you be alienated without first having been connected?” he writes in the final story here; many of his disciples spend so much time capturing the alienation that they forget about the connection, the weird logic that keeps the absurdity tethered to reality just enough to allow it a rare, enchanted emotional effect. I was almost worried coming back to some of these stories after more than a decade, that they would have lost some of their singularity, their magic. I should have known better: Barthelme remains the wizard I once knew.
Favorites in this volume: “Hiding Man”, “The Joker’s Greatest Triumph”, “Me and Miss Mandible”, and of course “A Shower of Gold”, which made me stop reading Sixty Stories in confused frustration all those years ago, only to get under my skin and force me to return to the book months later, at which point I became a convert and lost interest in most other short story writers on the planet.
This being Barthelme’s first collection, there are some stories a bit less engaging than his later stuff, but even the weakest among the lot are incredibly self-assured and written in that voice that feels somehow alien and warm all at once. It’s been a while since I read Barthelme’s short fiction and I’ve only come to appreciate it more now that I’ve run across plenty of imitators, none of whom ever seem to get it right. “How can you be alienated without first having been connected?” he writes in the final story here; many of his disciples spend so much time capturing the alienation that they forget about the connection, the weird logic that keeps the absurdity tethered to reality just enough to allow it a rare, enchanted emotional effect. I was almost worried coming back to some of these stories after more than a decade, that they would have lost some of their singularity, their magic. I should have known better: Barthelme remains the wizard I once knew.
Favorites in this volume: “Hiding Man”, “The Joker’s Greatest Triumph”, “Me and Miss Mandible”, and of course “A Shower of Gold”, which made me stop reading Sixty Stories in confused frustration all those years ago, only to get under my skin and force me to return to the book months later, at which point I became a convert and lost interest in most other short story writers on the planet.
July 3, 2022
This writer is just not for me.
January 20, 2014
Este libro tiene las historias con más elementos combinados entre sí, más trozos de situaciones independientes en un mismo relato, más irónico y más incongruente que he leído de Donald Barthelme. Se podría decir que una obra un tanto compleja. En su mayoría son así las historias, aunque no todas.
Al hablar de él siempre se le menciona como «Un postmodernista que utilizaba las técnicas del collage y la parodia para escribir», dejando de lado lo que(¡creo tenía la intención!) también le interesaba a Barthelme a la hora de escribir un texto: la creatividad de la historia como tal(lo primero que me atrajó y puse atención de su narrativa). Con tramas deslumbrantes y situaciones tan variadas le dota de originalidad a cada uno de sus relatos. Hay una diversidad increíble y extravagancia en su pluma(en este libro más): logrando así una narrativa única con ese estilo de escritura particular e inconfundible.
Cuando se habla de originalidad y estilo se dice que «No hay nada original, ya todo está dicho. Lo que puedes cambiar es la forma de decirlo». Y yo al leer cada relato de Barthelme digo «¡No es cierto!», me resisto a creer esa idea. Al menos nada dicho como Donald. Porque, en serio, dice cosas que nunca me habría imaginado.
La verdad, no sé si entienda del todo lo que dice Donald Barthelme(aunque cada vez creo entenderle más, que al inicio cuando me dejaba llevar por lo imaginativo de la cuestión) pero se me hace muy agradable. Ya sea la ligereza del escrito pero con un poderoso efecto en las palabras, así como el humor parodiador y exquisitamente absurdo, con frases como sacadas de una película o programa de televisión, a veces hasta los diálogos llegan a ser desternillantes produciendo una carcajada. Igual el ambiente en que te hace sentir; tipo historieta-novela gráfica. Parece como si antes de empezar se hubiera repasado un buen tiraje de cómics. Claro que...
Por lo que he leído sobre su escritura y significado, ¡lamentablemente!(A la vez interesante) es sarcástico por completo, él no quería decir eso. Es la oculta y sútil crítica social que tiene. Él se burla de la sociedad, —¡qué manera de burlarse tan creativa!—. De los hábitos y el respeto excesivo que tiene la gente a la cultura popular, representando a veces un modo de vida. Aún así, leyendo solo centrándose en la imaginación que despliega su narrativa es muy disfrutable.
En fin, las historias que más me han gustado de este volumen son: "Porque yo soy el muchacho cuya única alegría es amarte", "Márgenes", "La manifestación", "Una lluvia de oro". Mención especial merece "Hacia Londres y Roma", con una distribución del texto de una forma innovadora.
Al hablar de él siempre se le menciona como «Un postmodernista que utilizaba las técnicas del collage y la parodia para escribir», dejando de lado lo que(¡creo tenía la intención!) también le interesaba a Barthelme a la hora de escribir un texto: la creatividad de la historia como tal(lo primero que me atrajó y puse atención de su narrativa). Con tramas deslumbrantes y situaciones tan variadas le dota de originalidad a cada uno de sus relatos. Hay una diversidad increíble y extravagancia en su pluma(en este libro más): logrando así una narrativa única con ese estilo de escritura particular e inconfundible.
Cuando se habla de originalidad y estilo se dice que «No hay nada original, ya todo está dicho. Lo que puedes cambiar es la forma de decirlo». Y yo al leer cada relato de Barthelme digo «¡No es cierto!», me resisto a creer esa idea. Al menos nada dicho como Donald. Porque, en serio, dice cosas que nunca me habría imaginado.
La verdad, no sé si entienda del todo lo que dice Donald Barthelme(aunque cada vez creo entenderle más, que al inicio cuando me dejaba llevar por lo imaginativo de la cuestión) pero se me hace muy agradable. Ya sea la ligereza del escrito pero con un poderoso efecto en las palabras, así como el humor parodiador y exquisitamente absurdo, con frases como sacadas de una película o programa de televisión, a veces hasta los diálogos llegan a ser desternillantes produciendo una carcajada. Igual el ambiente en que te hace sentir; tipo historieta-novela gráfica. Parece como si antes de empezar se hubiera repasado un buen tiraje de cómics. Claro que...
Por lo que he leído sobre su escritura y significado, ¡lamentablemente!(A la vez interesante) es sarcástico por completo, él no quería decir eso. Es la oculta y sútil crítica social que tiene. Él se burla de la sociedad, —¡qué manera de burlarse tan creativa!—. De los hábitos y el respeto excesivo que tiene la gente a la cultura popular, representando a veces un modo de vida. Aún así, leyendo solo centrándose en la imaginación que despliega su narrativa es muy disfrutable.
En fin, las historias que más me han gustado de este volumen son: "Porque yo soy el muchacho cuya única alegría es amarte", "Márgenes", "La manifestación", "Una lluvia de oro". Mención especial merece "Hacia Londres y Roma", con una distribución del texto de una forma innovadora.
February 23, 2024
A collection of short stories. The author is described as the “innovator of the short story form”. The stories were written in the 1960s and the portrayal of women is of the time period but I still did not like it. All the stories were very different which I did like. I did not have a favorite short story.
January 7, 2023
*from Collected Stories, Library of America
December 2, 2017
Miss Arbor said. "Mr. Peterson, are you absurd?" Her enormous lips were smeared with a glowing white cream. "I beg your pardon?" "I mean," Miss Arbor said earnestly, "do you encounter your own existence as gratuitous? Do you feel de trap? Is there nausea?" "I have an enlarged liver," Peterson offered. "That's excellent!" Miss Arbor exclaimed. "That's a very good beginning! Who Am I? tries, Mr. Peterson, to discover what people really are. People today, we feel, are hidden away inside themselves, alienated, desperate, living in anguish, despair and bad faith. Why have we been thrown here, and abandoned? That's the question we try to answer, Mr. Peterson. Man stands alone in a featureless, anonymous landscape, in fear and trembling and sickness unto death. God is dead. Nothingness everywhere. Dread. Estrangement. Finitude. Who Am I? approaches these problems in a root radical way."
Now what can I say about a collection of short stories in which:
I liked 4 stories A LOT. WHOLE LOTTA LOT LOT.
I liked a couple more QUITE A BIT.
I was UNINTERESTED in some.
A couple of them made me feel SO BORED.
I have no idea what 2 stories where about. Like, NOT A CLUE.
I really DISLIKED a couple more.
I think the situation could be improved, if I could connect with the humor in the stories. Many readers point out that it is funny, but I could not find the funny. Which is strange because I find other po-mo and absurdist writers very funny. I laugh out loud with Pynchon, Wallace, smile internally with Beckett and goofy laugh with Ionesco. But not Barthleme. Strange.
Despite the fact that I had a really hard time with some stories, I feel like it was worth reading this book and I have the ABSURD urge to read more Barthelme.
That night a tall foreign-looking man with a switchblade big as a butcherknife open in his hand walked into the loft without knocking and said "Good evening, Mr. Peterson, I am the cat-piano player, is there anything you'd particularly like to hear?" "Cat-piano?"
[...]
"Let me explain," the tall foreign-looking man said graciously. "The keyboard consists of eight cats -- the octave -- encased in the body of the instrument in such a way that only their heads and forepaws protrude. The player presses upon the appropriate paws, and the appropriate cats respond -- with a kind of shriek. There is also provision made for pulling their tails. A tail-puller, or perhaps I should say tail player" (he smiled a disingenuous smile) "is stationed at the rear of the instrument, where the tails are. At the correct moment the tail-puller pulls the correct tail. The tail-note is of course quite different from the paw-note and produces sounds in the upper registers. Have you ever seen such an instrument, Mr. Peterson?" "No, and I don't believe it exists," Peterson said heroically.
August 26, 2024
A book of postmodern absurdity in short, manageable doses….
"Come Back, Dr. Caligari" is a collection of 14 short stories published in 1964. These stories are considered postmodern and absurd. Some of the stories are quite random and imaginative to the point of being nonsensical. The point is that often times “there is no point”.
Two of the short stories stood out for me. “Me and Miss Mandible” is about a sixth-grade elementary school teacher Miss Mandible who is in love with one of her 11-year-old students. The problem is that the 11-year old is actually a 35-year ex-Army soldier who had been married previously. No one in the classroom seems to notice the narrator's age nor that he is too big for the desk. The story ends with Miss Mandible being “ruined but fulfilled” after a quick tryst with her student in the cloakroom.
Another short story, “The Joker’s Greatest Triumph”, is a Batman parody. Bruce Wayne’s friend Fredric is visiting him one night when the bat signal goes off. At City Hall, Commissioner Gordon goes into great detail as to what route they should take due to road construction. We learn that Robin is still in college and having difficulty with his French lessons. There is plenty of alcohol and cigarettes consumed as Batman and Fredric go off to fight the Joker.
This book feels a bit like watching a pop art exhibition. “You may not be interested in absurdity, but absurdity is interested in you”.
This book is on Boxall’s “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die” list.
"Come Back, Dr. Caligari" is a collection of 14 short stories published in 1964. These stories are considered postmodern and absurd. Some of the stories are quite random and imaginative to the point of being nonsensical. The point is that often times “there is no point”.
Two of the short stories stood out for me. “Me and Miss Mandible” is about a sixth-grade elementary school teacher Miss Mandible who is in love with one of her 11-year-old students. The problem is that the 11-year old is actually a 35-year ex-Army soldier who had been married previously. No one in the classroom seems to notice the narrator's age nor that he is too big for the desk. The story ends with Miss Mandible being “ruined but fulfilled” after a quick tryst with her student in the cloakroom.
Another short story, “The Joker’s Greatest Triumph”, is a Batman parody. Bruce Wayne’s friend Fredric is visiting him one night when the bat signal goes off. At City Hall, Commissioner Gordon goes into great detail as to what route they should take due to road construction. We learn that Robin is still in college and having difficulty with his French lessons. There is plenty of alcohol and cigarettes consumed as Batman and Fredric go off to fight the Joker.
This book feels a bit like watching a pop art exhibition. “You may not be interested in absurdity, but absurdity is interested in you”.
This book is on Boxall’s “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die” list.
November 26, 2020
Narrazione dell'assurdo?
Tra assurdo e surreale, i racconti di questo libro potrebbero essere imparentati alle piéces di autori teatrali come Ionesco o Beckett. Inutile cercarvi un filo logico; non vi è altro che la giustapposizione di situazioni, parole e vicende che non hanno nulla a che fare le une con le altre, e l’assurdo nasce proprio da questo fatto. Che poi, se uno riesce a sganciarsi dalla necessità di una sequenza narrativa coerente, o di descrizioni compiute e organizzate, e lasciare che il proprio cervello si faccia condurre in una sorta di corto circuito, in fondo non è neanche poi così male (io non ci riesco, questo genere di narrazione mi crea un disagio quasi fisico). Ma mi sento in dovere di dare un avvertimento ai professori e alle professoresse anobiane in ascolto: guardatevi bene dal mettere un libro come questo nelle mani dei vostri allievi adolescenti, dicendo “questa è Letteratura”. Il me che una volta aveva quindici anni sta ancora a chiedersi che senso ha che uno si addormenti uomo e si svegli scarafaggio, senza nemmeno il pretesto, chessò, di una mutazione genetica, della maledizione di uno stregone vudù o qualcosa del genere. Se ai tempi del liceo qualcuno mi avesse obbligato a leggere un libro come questo dicendomi “questa è Letteratura”, ora considererei la Letteratura una tragedia tranquillamente evitabile, e le cose più letterarie che leggerei sarebbero i bugiardini dei prodotti farmaceutici.
Tra assurdo e surreale, i racconti di questo libro potrebbero essere imparentati alle piéces di autori teatrali come Ionesco o Beckett. Inutile cercarvi un filo logico; non vi è altro che la giustapposizione di situazioni, parole e vicende che non hanno nulla a che fare le une con le altre, e l’assurdo nasce proprio da questo fatto. Che poi, se uno riesce a sganciarsi dalla necessità di una sequenza narrativa coerente, o di descrizioni compiute e organizzate, e lasciare che il proprio cervello si faccia condurre in una sorta di corto circuito, in fondo non è neanche poi così male (io non ci riesco, questo genere di narrazione mi crea un disagio quasi fisico). Ma mi sento in dovere di dare un avvertimento ai professori e alle professoresse anobiane in ascolto: guardatevi bene dal mettere un libro come questo nelle mani dei vostri allievi adolescenti, dicendo “questa è Letteratura”. Il me che una volta aveva quindici anni sta ancora a chiedersi che senso ha che uno si addormenti uomo e si svegli scarafaggio, senza nemmeno il pretesto, chessò, di una mutazione genetica, della maledizione di uno stregone vudù o qualcosa del genere. Se ai tempi del liceo qualcuno mi avesse obbligato a leggere un libro come questo dicendomi “questa è Letteratura”, ora considererei la Letteratura una tragedia tranquillamente evitabile, e le cose più letterarie che leggerei sarebbero i bugiardini dei prodotti farmaceutici.
December 4, 2012
Has someone else already written this exact review? If so, I apologize.
" . . . at long last, for better or for worse, the Absurd has in these pages been equated with the Goofy. Hardly one of the 14 stories ends without a wry twist proclaiming that even its metaphysical protest has been all in fun." - The New York Times. This is a blurb from the back of my edition.
Whoever wrote that ought to have been asked to stop reviewing literature and start reviewing tires or blenders.
" . . . at long last, for better or for worse, the Absurd has in these pages been equated with the Goofy. Hardly one of the 14 stories ends without a wry twist proclaiming that even its metaphysical protest has been all in fun." - The New York Times. This is a blurb from the back of my edition.
Whoever wrote that ought to have been asked to stop reviewing literature and start reviewing tires or blenders.
November 30, 2007
I'd always seen the cover around, with the beard and glasses but never read it untill college. The Batman story. Some of it is kind of annoyingly "cute" but most are incredibly well-constructed. They fool you into one kind of mood then switch to something else towards the end. 'Snow White' is another good one he did, also any of his other short story collections.
March 17, 2013
A series of short stories, some again very good and some seem so far out of left field, do wonder if this is due to my age. I'm 40 today, maybe you have to have been around in the 60's to understand some of what Barthelme seems to be writing about, or maybe I haven't done enough drugs.
August 3, 2023
Comunque vada, comunque Dada. Menzione speciale per il gattopianista.
October 3, 2023
Post-modern trash. Me And Miss Mandible is the only reason this collection gets two stars instead of one.
June 14, 2025
Oh look, it's really pretentious and douchey postmodernist literature. Mercifully, it's a bunch of short stories and some of them were okay. Why did this man write self-insert Batman fanfic though
April 11, 2022
...few of us, alas, can be great sinners.
On principle I want to give Come Back, Dr. Caligari five stars. I always want to give a book five stars when it feels completely unlike anything else I've read. (Though I can think of a few writers who might be Donald Barthelme's spiritual descendants.) The style is minimal, fast-paced, absurdist and nonsensical. When it works it really works. But it doesn't always work.
It's difficult to describe Barthelme's work. As you can tell from the title of the collection, he's interested in sourcing and combining and repurposing pop culture for his own ends. Books, music, comic books, and movies are sprinkled throughout the stories with wanton abandon, like a dream begging Freudian interpretation. This guy is what we might call, in modern terminology, a post-modern writer.
Is it literary? That's hard to say, but it's occasionally frustrating, which is about as good a definition for "literary" as I can come up with. Barthelme's stories have a way of being about so many things at once, piling on details and memories and revelations and observations and analyses and character quirks and mundane dialogue and soliloquies until everything dissolves into a mountain of mush. Step back to get a better look at the whole thing and you might just find yourself slipping over the edge of a cliff. That's a bad description, because it applies as easily to a work of incomprehensible genius as to a work of incomprehensible mediocrity. I can't decide into which category Come Back, Dr. Caligari belongs. Maybe neither.
My favorite story is "The Joker's Greatest Triumph", which is as inscrutable as the rest of them. Bruce Wayne is visited by a friend named Frederic, who accompanies him in the Batmobile when the Commissioner activates the Bat Signal. It reads with the breathless, repetitive, illogical excitability and wooden dialogue of a preteen writing self-insert fan fiction. A prime example is when Robin, who's supposed to be off at college, swoops in out of nowhere to save the day:
“Hello Robin!” Fredric called. “I thought you were at Andover!”
“I was but I got a sudden feeling Batman needed me so I flew here in the Batplane,” Robin said. “How’ve you been?”
The Joker manages to unmask Batman before escaping. Batman's reaction: "Well, it's a problem."
What does it mean? What is the point? I have no idea. But I suspect there is something deeper going on. Maybe it's a criticism of the facile and consequence-free storytelling of comic books and the shallow nature of pop culture icons. Maybe I'm reaching. I enjoyed reading it at any rate.
"The Big Broadcast of 1938" is a quintessential example of the almost stream-of-consciousness writing style mentioned earlier, where there is no solid plot but simply a gradual amassing of trifles. In this story a DJ alternates between broadcasting the most intimate details of a past relationship over the air in an attempt to relocate a lost live, and consorting with a girl of "indeterminate age" sleeping in the foyer on the other side of the glass from his recording studio. As to whether either of these characters' troubles amount to anything, I can't say, but there's a voyeuristic satisfaction in peeking into their weird and improbable lives, even if it may all be pointless. Maybe everything made up and called "fiction" ought to be treated as equally improbable and pointless, from novels that win the Pulitzer to cheap, sensationalized genre thrillers. But there I go philosophizing again.
"Me and Miss Mandible" gives us a glimpse of what Billy Madison might have looked like as an arthouse film rather than an Adam Sandler comedy.
My least favorite story is "The Viennese Opera Ball", which is no more experimental than the rest but does feel ultimately like a shapeless mass of lists communicated in dense, chunky paragraphs:
"Widely used for motors, power tools, lighting, TV, etc. Generator output: 3500 watts, 115/230 volt, 60 cy., AC, continuous duty. Max. 230 V capacitor motor, loaded on starting -- ½ hp; unloaded on starting -- 2 hp. Control box mounts starting switch, duplex 115 V receptacle for standard or 3-conductor grounding plugs, tandem 230 V grounding receptacles, and wing nut battery terminals."
That's why I give this 4 stars instead of 5.
On principle I want to give Come Back, Dr. Caligari five stars. I always want to give a book five stars when it feels completely unlike anything else I've read. (Though I can think of a few writers who might be Donald Barthelme's spiritual descendants.) The style is minimal, fast-paced, absurdist and nonsensical. When it works it really works. But it doesn't always work.
It's difficult to describe Barthelme's work. As you can tell from the title of the collection, he's interested in sourcing and combining and repurposing pop culture for his own ends. Books, music, comic books, and movies are sprinkled throughout the stories with wanton abandon, like a dream begging Freudian interpretation. This guy is what we might call, in modern terminology, a post-modern writer.
Is it literary? That's hard to say, but it's occasionally frustrating, which is about as good a definition for "literary" as I can come up with. Barthelme's stories have a way of being about so many things at once, piling on details and memories and revelations and observations and analyses and character quirks and mundane dialogue and soliloquies until everything dissolves into a mountain of mush. Step back to get a better look at the whole thing and you might just find yourself slipping over the edge of a cliff. That's a bad description, because it applies as easily to a work of incomprehensible genius as to a work of incomprehensible mediocrity. I can't decide into which category Come Back, Dr. Caligari belongs. Maybe neither.
My favorite story is "The Joker's Greatest Triumph", which is as inscrutable as the rest of them. Bruce Wayne is visited by a friend named Frederic, who accompanies him in the Batmobile when the Commissioner activates the Bat Signal. It reads with the breathless, repetitive, illogical excitability and wooden dialogue of a preteen writing self-insert fan fiction. A prime example is when Robin, who's supposed to be off at college, swoops in out of nowhere to save the day:
“Hello Robin!” Fredric called. “I thought you were at Andover!”
“I was but I got a sudden feeling Batman needed me so I flew here in the Batplane,” Robin said. “How’ve you been?”
The Joker manages to unmask Batman before escaping. Batman's reaction: "Well, it's a problem."
What does it mean? What is the point? I have no idea. But I suspect there is something deeper going on. Maybe it's a criticism of the facile and consequence-free storytelling of comic books and the shallow nature of pop culture icons. Maybe I'm reaching. I enjoyed reading it at any rate.
"The Big Broadcast of 1938" is a quintessential example of the almost stream-of-consciousness writing style mentioned earlier, where there is no solid plot but simply a gradual amassing of trifles. In this story a DJ alternates between broadcasting the most intimate details of a past relationship over the air in an attempt to relocate a lost live, and consorting with a girl of "indeterminate age" sleeping in the foyer on the other side of the glass from his recording studio. As to whether either of these characters' troubles amount to anything, I can't say, but there's a voyeuristic satisfaction in peeking into their weird and improbable lives, even if it may all be pointless. Maybe everything made up and called "fiction" ought to be treated as equally improbable and pointless, from novels that win the Pulitzer to cheap, sensationalized genre thrillers. But there I go philosophizing again.
"Me and Miss Mandible" gives us a glimpse of what Billy Madison might have looked like as an arthouse film rather than an Adam Sandler comedy.
My least favorite story is "The Viennese Opera Ball", which is no more experimental than the rest but does feel ultimately like a shapeless mass of lists communicated in dense, chunky paragraphs:
"Widely used for motors, power tools, lighting, TV, etc. Generator output: 3500 watts, 115/230 volt, 60 cy., AC, continuous duty. Max. 230 V capacitor motor, loaded on starting -- ½ hp; unloaded on starting -- 2 hp. Control box mounts starting switch, duplex 115 V receptacle for standard or 3-conductor grounding plugs, tandem 230 V grounding receptacles, and wing nut battery terminals."
That's why I give this 4 stars instead of 5.
October 24, 2022
The first collection I have read from Barthelme, which I always figured influenced probably many of my favorite writers. It seems he was way ahead of his time, but then, since I, as a reader, am so far AFTER Barthelme's time, and a ton of his writing uses specific pop cultural references, a ton of his writing goes right over my head. Also, I can't tell if Barthelme invented absurdist writing or if he was just plain insane. Also, I don't know if it was the times, but his writing now seems hugely sexist whenever a female walks onto the page. meh. My favorites in this collection: Hiding Man and Me & Miss Mandible. Interestingly, this is a rare short story collection that made it onto the '1001 books you must read before you die' list.
**Book #128 I have read from the '1001 books you must read before you die' list
**Book #128 I have read from the '1001 books you must read before you die' list
August 16, 2022
This isn’t a 2-star per se. I like Donald Barthelme’s fiction – why I bought this collection – but most of these I simply struggled to appreciate the various experimentations in form, let alone follow along, and needed to record that in the rating. Hell, what do I know about surrealist literary trends in the 60s? Very little. A few stories within I can recommend: “Will You Tell Me?”, “The Big Broadcast of 1938”, and “Me and Miss Mandible”
December 19, 2024
I see Barthelme as a display of the "human condition," as many claim should be the focus of most literary works, through dialect. The voice of a narrator is deliberately forged to express their character: their background, their values, their faults. From a linguistic perspective and even a general literary perspective these short stories were very interesting.
October 29, 2017
#1001books #621left
Another that I did not understand. A star for interesting ideas (a short story about Batman? Yes, please) and another for pretty good writing--lots of different styles. Unsure what he was going for here, though.
Another that I did not understand. A star for interesting ideas (a short story about Batman? Yes, please) and another for pretty good writing--lots of different styles. Unsure what he was going for here, though.
June 28, 2018
come back, Donald B, it (was) is one of the greatest collections in US literature. avant-garde, metafiction, complicated jokes, catchy phrases, multiplicity of styles and no landscapes at all (as DB wanted from his students).
February 23, 2023
Mi primer Barthelme, difícil de conseguir. Muy misterioso y surrealista. Tal vez muy temprano pero ya se van vislumbrando sus formas. Habrá que seguir leyéndolo. Tiene el carné de Conducción Temeraria con sus frases y saltos.
'¿En el barco?'
'Yo y la señorita Mandible'
'Una lluvia de oro'
'¿En el barco?'
'Yo y la señorita Mandible'
'Una lluvia de oro'
Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews