Flying to America: 45 More Stories

For both devotees and those new to Barthelme's playful irreverence, erudition, and unmatched imagination, this unprecedented survey offers up a rare and wonderful treat. One of the most influential and inventive writers of the twentieth century, Donald Barthelme wrote novels, short stories, parodies [...]
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For both devotees and those new to Barthelme's playful irreverence, erudition, and unmatched imagination, this unprecedented survey offers up a rare and wonderful treat. One of the most influential and inventive writers of the twentieth century, Donald Barthelme wrote novels, short stories, parodies, plays, satires, fables, and essays that captured the good, the bad, but most of all the strange of America. With Barthelme, strange may come both in the tale and in the form--it may surface in a riotous crowd tamed by saxophones, or in a story accompanied by stage directions--but however it appears, Barthelme has tooled the absurd so that is rings true. As observed by Thomas Pynchon (who coined the term Barthelmismo) Barthelme's work conveys something of "the clarity and sweep, the intensity of emotion, the transcendent weirdness of the primary experience." Flying to America, first published in 2007, presents all of Barthelme's previously unpublished and uncollected short fiction. For both devotees and those new to Barthelme's playful irreverence, erudition, and unmatched imagination, this unprecedented survey offers up a rare and wonderful treat. Selected Praise "In the fifteen years since we began the project of putting together all of Donald Barthelme's unpublished and uncollected work, we've published his satires, parodies, fables, illustrated stories, plays, essays, reviews, occasional pieces, and interviews. But the crown of the project was always understood to be the publication of Barthelme's unpublished and uncollected stories. The stories, after all, established his genius and influence, and radically transformed what twentieth century American literature could be. Saddening as it is to have to accept that after these there will be no more stories, there is still reason to celebrate. All of Donald Barthelme's work is now available in book form, and the importance of this achievements can now be fully appreciated." --Kim Herzinger, from the preface "The energy, wit, variety, beauty and high seriousness of Donald Barthelme's stories deserve all the readers and all the praise they can attract." --Wall Street Journal