Donald Barthelme - Wikipedia Donald Barthelme From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search American writer, editor, and professor This article is about the author, Donald Barthelme Jr.. For his father, the architect, see Donald Barthelme (architect). Donald Barthelme Born (1931-04-07)April 7, 1931 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Died July 23, 1989(1989-07-23) (aged 58) Houston, Texas, US Occupation Writer, professor Period 1931–1989 Genre Short story Literary movement Postmodern literature Donald Barthelme (April 7, 1931 – July 23, 1989) was an American short story writer and novelist known for his playful, postmodernist style of short fiction. Barthelme also worked as a newspaper reporter for the Houston Post, was managing editor of Location magazine, director of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston (1961–1962), co-founder of Fiction (with Mark Mirsky and the assistance of Max and Marianne Frisch), and a professor at various universities. He also was one of the original founders of the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. Contents 1 Life 1.1 Personal life 2 Career 3 Style and legacy 4 Influences 5 Selected works 5.1 Story collections 5.2 Non-fiction 5.3 Novels 5.4 Other 6 Awards 7 References 8 Further reading 9 External links Life[edit] Donald Barthelme was born in Philadelphia in 1931. His father and mother were fellow students at the University of Pennsylvania. The family moved to Texas two years later and Barthelme's father became a professor of architecture at the University of Houston, where Barthelme would later study journalism. Barthelme won a Scholastic Writing Award in Short Story in 1949, while a student at Lamar High School in Houston. In 1951, as a student, he wrote his first articles for the Houston Post. Two years later, Barthelme was drafted into the U.S. Army, arriving in Korea on July 27, 1953, the day of the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement, which ended the Korean War. Assigned to the 2nd Infantry Division, he served briefly as the editor of an Army newspaper and the Public Information Office of the Eighth Army before returning to the United States and his job at the Houston Post. Once back, he continued his studies at the University of Houston studying philosophy. Although he continued to take classes until 1957, he never received a degree. He spent much of his free time in Houston's black jazz clubs, listening to musical innovators such as Lionel Hampton and Peck Kelly, an experience that influenced his later writing.[1] Barthelme's relationship with his father was a struggle between a rebellious son and a demanding father. In later years they would have tremendous arguments about the kinds of literature in which Barthelme was interested and which he wrote. While in many ways his father was avant-garde in art and aesthetics, he did not approve of the postmodern and deconstruction schools. Barthelme went on to teach for brief periods at Boston University, University at Buffalo, and the City College of New York, where he served as Distinguished Visiting Professor from 1974 to 1975. His brothers Frederick (born 1943) and Steven (born 1947) are also respected fiction writers. Personal life[edit] He married four times. His second wife, Helen Moore Barthelme, later wrote a biography entitled Donald Barthelme: The Genesis of a Cool Sound, published in 2001. With his third wife Birgit, a Dane, he had his first child, a daughter named Anne, and near the end of his life, he married Marion (Marion Knox/Barthelme d 2011), with whom he had his second daughter, Katharine. Marion and Donald remained married until his death, in 1989, from throat cancer.[2] Career[edit] In 1961 Barthelme became director of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; he published his first short story the same year. His New Yorker publication, "L'Lapse", a parody of Michelangelo Antonioni's film L'Eclisse (The Eclipse), followed in 1963. The magazine would go on to publish much of Barthelme's early output, including such now-famous stories as "Me and Miss Mandible," the tale of a 35-year-old sent to elementary school by either a clerical error, failing at his job as an insurance adjuster, and failing in his marriage. Written in October 1960, it was the first of his stories to be published.[3] "A Shower of Gold," another early short story, portrays a sculptor who agrees to appear on the existentialist game show Who Am I?. 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. Barthelme continued his success in the short story form with Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts (1968). One widely anthologized story from this collection, "The Balloon," appears to reflect on Barthelme's intentions as an artist. The narrator inflates a giant, irregular balloon over most of Manhattan, causing widely divergent reactions in the populace. Children play across its top, enjoying it literally on a surface level; adults attempt to read meaning into it but are baffled by its ever-changing shape; the authorities attempt to destroy it but fail. In the final paragraph, the reader learns that the narrator has inflated the balloon for purely personal reasons, and he sees no intrinsic meaning in the balloon itself,[page needed] a metaphor for the amorphous, uncertain nature of Barthelme's fiction.[citation needed] Other notable stories from this collection include "The Indian Uprising," a mad collage of a Comanche attack on a modern city, and "Robert Kennedy Saved From Drowning," a series of vignettes showing the difficulties of truly knowing a public figure. The latter story appeared in print only two months before the real Kennedy's 1968 assassination. Barthelme would go on to write over a hundred more short stories, first collected in City Life (1970), Sadness (1972), Amateurs (1976), Great Days (1979), and Overnight to Many Distant Cities (1983). Many of these stories were later reprinted and slightly revised for the collections Sixty Stories (1981), Forty Stories (1987), and posthumously, Flying to America (2007). Though primarily known for these stories, Barthelme also produced four novels: Snow White (1967), The Dead Father (1975), Paradise (1986), and The King (1990, posthumous). Barthelme also wrote the non-fiction book Guilty Pleasures (1974). His other writings have been posthumously gathered into two collections, The Teachings of Don B.: Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme (1992) and Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews (1997). With his daughter, he wrote the children's book The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine, which received the 1972 National Book Award in category Children's Books.[4] He was also a director of PEN, the Author's Guild, and a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Style and legacy[edit] Barthelme's fiction was hailed by some for being profoundly disciplined and derided by others as being meaningless, academic postmodernism.[5] Barthelme's thoughts and work were largely the result of 20th-century angst[6] as he read extensively, for example in Pascal, Husserl, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Ionesco, Beckett, Sartre, and Camus. Barthelme's stories typically avoid traditional plot structures, relying instead on a steady accumulation of seemingly unrelated detail. By subverting the reader's expectations through constant non-sequiturs, Barthelme creates a hopelessly fragmented verbal collage reminiscent of such modernist works as T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land and James Joyce's Ulysses, whose linguistic experiments he often challenged. However, Barthelme's fundamental skepticism and irony distanced him from the modernists' belief in the power of art to reconstruct society, leading most critics to class him as a postmodernist writer. Literary critics have noted that Barthelme, like Stéphane Mallarmé, whom he admired, plays with the meanings of words, relying on poetic intuition to spark new connections of ideas buried in the expressions and conventional responses. The critic George Wicks called Barthelme "the leading American practitioner of surrealism today...whose fiction continues the investigations of consciousness and experiments in expression that began with Dada and surrealism a half-century ago." Another critic, Jacob Appel, described him as "the most influential unread author in United States history."[7] Barthelme has been described in many other ways, such as in an article in Harper's where Josephine Henden classified him as an angry sado-masochist. The great bulk of his work was published in The New Yorker. In 1964, he began to publish short stories collections beginning with Come Back, Dr. Caligari in 1964, followed by Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts (1968) and City Life (1970). Time magazine named City Life one of the best books of the year and described the collection as written with "Kafka's purity of language and some of Beckett's grim humor." His formal originality can be seen in his fresh handling of the parodic dramatic monologue in "The School" or a list of one hundred numbered sentences and fragments in "The Glass Mountain." Joyce Carol Oates commented on this sense of fragmentation in "Whose Side Are You On?," a 1972 New York Times Book Review essay. She writes, "This from a writer of arguable genius whose works reflect what he himself must feel, in book after book, that his brain is all fragments...just like everything else." Perhaps, the most discrete reference to this fragment comes from "See the Moon?" from Unspeakable Practices. The narrator states and repeats the phrase, "Fragments are the only forms I trust." It is important, however, to not conflate the quote's sentiment with Barthelme's personal philosophy, as he expressed irritation over the "fragments" quote being attributed so frequently to him rather than his narrator. Another Barthelme device was breaking up a tale with illustrations culled from mostly popular 19th-century publications, collaged, and appended with ironic captions. Barthelme called his cutting up and pasting together pictures "a secret vice gone public." One of the pieces in the collection Guilty Pleasures, "The Expedition," featured a full-page illustration of a collision between ships, with the caption "Not our fault!" Barthelme's legacy as an educator lives on at the University of Houston, where he was one of the founders of the prestigious Creative Writing Program. At the University of Houston, Barthelme became known as a sensitive, creative, and encouraging mentor to young creative writing students even as he continued his own writings. Thomas Cobb, one of his students, published his doctoral dissertation Crazy Heart in 1987 partly basing the main character on Barthelme.[8] Influences[edit] In a 1971–72 Interview with Jerome Klinkowitz (now collected in Not-Knowing), Barthelme provides a list of favorite writers, both influential figures from the past and contemporary writers he admired. Throughout other interviews in the same collection, Barthelme reiterates a number of the same names and also mentions several others, occasionally expanding on why these writers were important for him. In a 1975 Interview for Pacifica Radio, Barthelme stresses that, for him, Beckett is foremost among his literary predecessors saying, "I'm enormously impressed by Beckett. I'm just overwhelmed by Beckett, as Beckett was, I speculate, by Joyce".[9] What follows is a partial list gleaned from the interviews. François Rabelais Arthur Rimbaud Heinrich von Kleist Franz Kafka Gertrude Stein Flann O'Brien Samuel Beckett William H. Gass Rafael Sabatini S. J. Perelman Ann Beattie Walker Percy Gabriel García Márquez John Barth Thomas Pynchon Kenneth Koch John Ashbery Grace Paley Machado de Assis Barthelme was also quite interested in and influenced by a number of contemporary artists. Selected works[edit] See also: Donald Barthelme bibliography Story collections[edit] Come Back, Dr. Caligari – Little, Brown, 1964 Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts – Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968 City Life – Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970 Sadness – Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1972 Amateurs – Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976 Great Days – Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979 Overnight to Many Distant Cities – Putnam, 1983 Sam's Bar (with illustrations by Seymour Chwast) – Doubleday, 1987 Sixty Stories – Putnam, 1981 Forty Stories – Putnam, 1987 Flying to America: 45 More Stories – Shoemaker & Hoard, 2007 Non-fiction[edit] Guilty Pleasures (non-fiction) – Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974 Novels[edit] Snow White – Atheneum Books, 1967 The Dead Father – Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975 The Emerald - Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980 Paradise – Putnam, 1986 The King – Harper, 1990 Other[edit] A Manual for Sons (excerpted from The Dead Father, with an afterword by Rick Moody) The Teachings of Don B.: Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme, edited by Kim Herzinger – Turtle Bay Books, 1992 Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme, edited by Kim Herzinger – Random House, 1997 The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine, or the Hithering Thithering Djinn (children's book), Farrar, Straus, 1971 Awards[edit] Guggenheim Fellowship, 1966 Time Magazine Best Books of the Year list, 1971, for City Life National Book Award, Children's Books, 1972, for The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine or the Hithering Thithering Djinn[4] Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, 1972 Jesse H Jones Award from Texas Institute of Letters, 1976, for The Dead Father Nominated for National Book Critics Circle Award, PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, all for Sixty Stories, all in 1982 Rea Award for the Short Story, 1988 References[edit] ^ Appel, Jacob (Winter 2009–2010). "Rev. of Hiding Man, by Tracy Daugherty". Rain Taxi. 14. Archived from the original on January 18, 2010. ^ Paley, Grace (July 31, 1989). "Laughter in the American dark an appreciation". The Guardian. London UK. See also Weatherby, W. J. (July 26, 1989). "Collages of New York : an obituary". The Guardian. London UK. ^ p. 90 Barthelme, Helen Moore Donald Barthelme: The Genesis of a Cool Sound Texas A&M University Press, 1 May 2001 ^ a b "National Book Awards – 1972". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-02-27. (With acceptance speech by Barthelme.) ^ Folta, Alexander Donald Barthelme als Postmoderner Erzähler: Poetologie, Literatur und Gesellschaft P. Lang, 1991 ^ Folta ^ Appel, Jacob. Hiding Man Archived January 18, 2010, at the Wayback Machine, Rain Taxi, Winter 2010 ^ The novel was made into the successful 2009 film Crazy Heart. Rourke, Bryan (November 22, 2009). "Foster author's 'Crazy Heart' gets reprint now that movie is on the way". projo.com. The Providence Journal Co. Retrieved September 22, 2010. The Reading Life: Jeff Bridges and 'Crazy Heart': Channeling Donald Barthelme?" The New York Times. January 29, 2010. Retrieved on September 29, 2010. ^ Interview with Ruas and Sherman, 1975. Not-Knowing:: The Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme. Edited by Kim Herzinger. Counterpoint, 1997. pg.226. Further reading[edit] Daugherty, Tracy, Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme, New York : St. Martin's Press, February 2009. ISBN 978-0-312-37868-4 External links[edit] Wikiquote has quotations related to: Donald Barthelme Donald Barthelme by Jessamyn West (librarian) —with some reprints Donald Barthelme at The Scriptorium, The Modern Word "About the Pointlessness of Patricide: A Lacanian Reading of Donald Barthelme's The Dead Father", Santiago Juan-Navarro, Estudos Anglo-Americanos, 1990–1991 Audio interview of Donald Barthelme by Stephen Banker, circa 1978 Barthelme interviewed & reading his work (Charles Ruas Archives) J.D. O'Hara (Summer 1981). "Donald Barthelme, The Art of Fiction No. 66". The Paris Review. Donald Barthelme at Library of Congress Authorities, with 39 catalog records Authority control BIBSYS: 90102337 BNE: XX1723605 BNF: cb118904239 (data) CiNii: DA00909844 GND: 118657402 ISNI: 0000 0001 2125 0947 LCCN: n50023795 LNB: 000080735 NDL: 00432442 NKC: jn20000400074 NLA: 35014589 NLK: KAC200503654 NSK: 000252467 NTA: 069423210 PLWABN: 9810582078005606 RERO: 02-A002972918 SELIBR: 176860 SUDOC: 026707705 ULAN: 500098540 VIAF: 27060547 WorldCat Identities: lccn-n50023795 Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Donald_Barthelme&oldid=997562432" Categories: 1931 births 1989 deaths 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American male writers Houston Post people Journalists from Houston Postmodern writers National Book Award for Young People's Literature winners University at Buffalo alumni University of Houston alumni University of Houston faculty American male novelists Deaths from throat cancer American male short story writers 20th-century American short story writers PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction winners Novelists from Texas 20th-century American non-fiction writers American male non-fiction writers Hidden categories: Webarchive template wayback links Articles with short description Short description matches Wikidata Use mdy dates from June 2013 Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from December 2010 All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements from October 2010 Wikipedia articles with BIBSYS identifiers Wikipedia articles with BNE identifiers Wikipedia articles with BNF identifiers Wikipedia articles with CINII identifiers Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers Wikipedia articles with ISNI identifiers Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers Wikipedia articles with LNB identifiers Wikipedia articles with NDL identifiers Wikipedia articles with NKC identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLA identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLK identifiers Wikipedia articles with NSK identifiers Wikipedia articles with NTA identifiers Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers Wikipedia articles with RERO identifiers Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers Wikipedia articles with ULAN identifiers Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikiquote Languages تۆرکجه Català Čeština Deutsch Español فارسی Français Հայերեն Italiano עברית Latviešu مازِرونی 日本語 Polski Português Română Русский Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски Suomi Svenska Türkçe Українська 中文 Edit links This page was last edited on 1 January 2021, at 03:54 (UTC). 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