Jim’s review of The Teachings of Don B.: Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme > Likes and Comments

I appreciate your thoughtful critique and I still find myself compelled to read Barthelme; he has somewhat suddenly popped up on my reading radar and I'm unfamiliar with his work.

Thanks; and of course you're right: he has to be read.

Hi Jim,

Enjoyed your insights here, as always. I posted over 20 Donald Barthelme reviews here on Goodreads but I'm always eager to learn more. Thus, I'll seek out George Saunders's essay on Barthelme in his The Brain-Dead Megaphone.

Thanks. Let me know when you read that one.

Just did listen to the audio book (George Saunders is the narrator) of his essay on The School by Donald Barthelme.

I enjoyed his analysis very much, particularly outlining step by step how DB continually kicked his story up on a higher level. Likewise, how the story evolves into a love story and the ending remains ambiguous.

I wrote my own review a few years ago. I picked up on a couple of other dimensions of the story. My review sparked some lively comments. Any thoughts you'd care to share? Link to my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Good one, Jim. I don't get the urge to go back to Barthelme, either. Maybe his subject matter is the reason--Elkin, Theroux, and Sorrentino feel more lasting and vivid, not to mention Gass.

Speaking of things being dated: I may be one of the few who finds some of Gass's work difficult to revisit. I had to stop reading "The Tunnel," despite its hyper-awareness of Nazism, on account of its dulled awareness of African-Americans. Normally I am not bothered by different periods' and cultures' awarenesses of race, but when racism is also a theme, it's difficult.

Speaking of race, as a dedicated reviewer myself, this DB collection features one of my favorite stories, the one about the "Japanese Book Review." So apt when Don wrote this back in the 1970s (the time when the Japanese started to take huge market share in products like autos and electronics) but reading such a piece now is so, so dated.

Yes, I find myself almost uniformly "tolerant" (that is, empathetic, capable of putting myself in the writer's place) when it comes to representations of race, ethnicity, identity, and so forth. But when the book itself has as one of its principal themes a reflection on prejudice, blind spots become debilitating.

Glad to hear someone else feels this way about Barthelme. I admire his craft but he very quickly becomes intolerable to me. To me he seems like clever Sunday Supplement writing, like a frivolous diversion over morning drinks by the pool. So yeah, right on

Thanks. Then again I'm allergic to Sunday Supplement writing -- and for that matter, to the entire Ireland / UK / Australian tendency to pun in newspaper headlines. One of the reasons Wallace is still worth reading is his awareness of this and attempt to address it in "The Pale King."

I share your allergy. I didn’t know the punning in headlines thing didn’t extend to the US. I haven’t read The Pale King but for fragments; don’t know if I ever will either, but I’ll stick with a fragment from time to time.