A collection of eleven astonishing short stories focus on a group of people facing unusual situations or turning-points in their lives and the diverse consequences and alternatives of their futures

Overnight to Many Distant Cities (Contemporary American Fiction)

Literature & Fiction

BARTHELME, Donald

United States

Penguin??Books

The half-dead, half-alive, part-mechanical, all-powerful Dead Father, inexhaustible source of the city's life, law, and order, is dragged by nineteen fervent volunteers, across a surreal landscape toward an anticipated revitalization

The Dead Father (Contemporary American Fiction)

Literary

"No other word for it: a charming book."â€”Peter S. Prescott, NewsweekSimon, a middle-aged architect separated from his wife, is given the chance to live out a stereotypical male fantasy: freed from the travails of married life, he ends up living with three nubile lingerie models who use him as a sexual object. Set in the 1980s, there's a further tension between Simon's desire to exploit this stereotypical fantasy and his (as well as the author's) desire to treat the women as human beings, despite the women's claims that Simon can't distinguish between their personalities. Employing a variety of forms, Barthelme gracefully plays with this setup, creating a story that's not just funnyâ€”although it's definitely thatâ€”but actually quite melancholy, as Simon knows that the women's departure is inevitable, that this "paradise" will come to an end, and that he'll be left with only an empty house, booze, and regrets about chances not taken.

Paradise (Contemporary American Fiction)

The author's talent for creating the unexpected, and for rewriting the rules of the English language, has made him one of the most innovative and respected writers of the 20th century. This is another dazzling display of his unrivaled ability to surprise, to stimulate, and to explore.

Forty Stories (Contemporary American Fiction)

The King

As World War II rages, King Arthur wages war with the Nazis, Ezra Pound broadcasts anti-Semitic radio messages, and, back home, Launcelot and Guinevere practice adultery on each other

This excellent collection of Donald Barthelme's literary output during the 1960s and 1970s covers the period when the writer came to prominence--producing the stories, satires, parodies, and other formal experiments that altered fiction as we know it--and wrote many of the most beautiful sentences in the English language. Due to the unfortunate discontinuance of many of Barthelme's titles, 60 Stories now stands as one of the broadest overviews of his work, containing selections from eight previously published books, as well as a number of other short works that had been otherwise uncollected.

Sixty Stories

With these audacious and murderously witty stories, Donald Barthelme threw the preoccupations of our time into the literary equivalent of a Cuisinart and served up a gorgeous salad of American culture, high and low. Here are the urban upheavals reimagined as frontier myth; travelogues through countries that might have been created by Kafka; cryptic dialogues that bore down to the bedrock of our longings, dreams, and angsts. Like all of Barthelme's work, the sixty stories collected in this volume are triumphs of language and perception, at once unsettling and irresistible. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Sixty Stories (Penguin Classics)

Humor & Satire

Penguin Classics

William H. Gass has written of Donald Barthelme that "he has permanently enlarged our perception of the possibilities open to short fiction." In Forty Stories, the companion volume to Sixty Stories, we encounter a dazzling array of subjects: Paul Klee, Goethe, Captain Blood, modern courtship, marriage and divorce, armadillos, and other unique Barthelmean flights of fancy. These pithy, brilliantly acerbic pieces tangle with the ludicrous, pose questions that remain unresolved, and challenge familiar bits of language heretofore unexamined. Forty Stories demonstrates Barthelme's unrivaled ability to surprise, to stimulate, and to explore. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Forty Stories

Penguin Publishing Group

CITY LIFE.

Jonathan Cape (1971)

Come Back, Dr. Caligari - Donald Barthelme / Little Brown &amp; Co. Publishers

Come Back, Dr. Caligari

Little,Brown & Co

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Books by BARTHELME, Donald