{"title":"Donald Barthelme","description":"Donald Barthelme (1931-1989) was a longtime contributor to The New Yorker, winner of a National Book Award, a director of PEN and the Authors Guild, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His sixteen books--including Snow White, The Dead Father, and City Life--substantially redefined American short fiction for our time.","products":[{"product_id":"forty-stories-paperback","title":"Forty Stories - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWitty, surreal, and endlessly inventive, \u003ci\u003eForty Stories\u003c\/i\u003e is Barthelme at his finest--dismantling convention, bending language, and turning fiction into pure mischief.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eDonald Barthelme is a master of the unexpected, a writer who bends fiction into strange and exhilarating shapes. In\u003ci\u003e Forty Stories\u003c\/i\u003e, the companion to \u003ci\u003eSixty Stories, \u003c\/i\u003e he delivers a dazzling collection of tales--each one a collision of wit, absurdity, and sharp social insight. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWith a signature postmodern style that blends pastiche, collage, and metafiction, Barthelme reinvents storytelling at every turn. He takes on subjects as varied as Paul Klee, Goethe, Captain Blood, modern courtship, marriage, divorce, and armadillos, but his true fascination lies in language itself--how it twists, contradicts, and reveals the absurdity of contemporary life. Packed with irony, surreal imagery, and deadpan humor, these stories probe authority, relationships, and existential anxieties, all while keeping the reader deliciously off-balance. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAt once playful and profound, fragmented yet deeply resonant, \u003ci\u003eForty Stories\u003c\/i\u003e is a brilliant showcase of Barthelme's ability to subvert expectations and transform the ordinary into something extraordinary. For readers who crave fiction that defies convention, this collection is an invitation to experience storytelling at its most fearless.","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50101946089695,"sku":"9781250420299","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/fPNkXeNW-r9781250420299.webp?v=1781075936"},{"product_id":"sixty-stories-paperback","title":"Sixty Stories - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eSixty Stories\u003c\/i\u003e brings together Barthelme's most famous works and hidden gems--a dazzling, subversive collection where language bends, reality warps, and the absurd reigns supreme.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWith these subversive, razor-sharp stories, Donald Barthelme dismantles the familiar and rearranges it into something dazzlingly strange. \u003ci\u003eSixty Stories\u003c\/i\u003e is a literary fun house where language is bent, meaning is slippery, and the absurd is never far from the truth. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eHere, the ordinary mutates into the uncanny--an enormous balloon hovers over the city, its purpose debated by those below; a classroom lesson spirals into something darker and more profound; two men locked in a Cold War bunker teeter on the edge of madness. Elsewhere, a friend struggles to coax the Phantom of the Opera out of his shadowy refuge, and an entire town is made up of nothing but churches. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBarthelme moves effortlessly between deadpan satire, dream logic, and moments of startling beauty, crafting stories that are as unsettling as they are irresistible. Whether you're encountering his work for the first time or returning for another descent into his linguistic labyrinth, \u003ci\u003eSixty Stories\u003c\/i\u003e is a testament to a writer who saw the world askew--and showed us how thrilling that could be.","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50101947269343,"sku":"9781250420312","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/jN0SaDnFEe9781250420312.webp?v=1781075939"},{"product_id":"paradise-paperback","title":"Paradise - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"No other word for it: a charming book.\" Peter S. Prescott, Newsweek\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis 1986 satire of the midlife crisis follows newly single Simon, who moves into his own apartment and shockingly becomes the sex toy of a harem of lingerie models living down the hall. But Simon is such a worrier that instead of enjoying the ultimate male fantasy, he fears he is only being set up for a fall (no wonder his wife ditched him). Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eParadise is agile, witty and lightened by Barthelme's canny disassociations, and it is one of the blackest things he has written. --Richard Eder\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAlthough Donald Barthelme has written 12 previous books of fiction containing some of the most innovative influential stories of our day reading Paradise is a shock and a revelation. --Elizabeth Jolley\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThere's nothing in art as dazzling and bewildering as a fully achieved style at its apex . . . Though superficially Paradise seems to be a modest little caprice, Barthelme strikes every note . . . and the cascade of consonances he pours out really does seem to offer too much beauty for a conventional 1987 sensibility to see the sense behind it. --Michael Feingold\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50102518710495,"sku":"9781564784032","price":17.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/6Ijj0DZ779781564784032.webp?v=1781083409"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/donald-barthelme.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}