Donald Barthelme has accomplished the work that the New Journalists are not competent to do. In a single story he is able to include more of the taste of the times than there is in the collected works of Wolfe, Breslin, Talese & Co. The difference lies in Barthelme’s ability to compress, almost to transistorize the world, and then make his miniatures real again by virtue of his talent for language.
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Earl Shorris, “Donald Barthelme’s Illustrated Wordy-Gurdy”, Harper’s, January 1973, p. 92.Donald Barthelme
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"The Balloon" is a Donald Barthelme story. ... In a 1996 Salon interview, David [Foster Wallace] told Laura Miller it was "the first story I ever read that made me want to be a writer."
Donald Barthelme
“How come you write the way you do?” an apprentice writer in my Johns Hopkins workshop once disingenuously asked Donald Barthelme, who was visiting. Without missing a beat, Donald replied, “Because Samuel Beckett was already writing the way he does.”
Asked another, likewise disingenuosly, “How can we become better writers than we are?”
“For starters," DB advised, “read through the whole history of philosophy, from the pre-Socratics up through last semester. That might help.”
“But Coach Barth has already advised us to read all of literature, from Gilgamesh up through last semester....”
“That, too,” Donald affirmed, and turned on that shrewd Amish-farmer-from-West-Eleventh-Street twinkle of his. “You’re probably wasting time on things like eating and sleeping. Cease that, and read all of philosophy and all of literature. Also art. Plus politics and a few other things. The history of everything.”Donald Barthelme
In The New York Times Book Review, John Romano recalled “the excitement caused among readers” at the appearance of Don’s first stories in the 1960s. “There just weren’t then, as there aren’t now, very many stories published that you wanted to call your friends up and read aloud from; and Barthelme gave us more than a few.”
Donald Barthelme
Barthelme isn’t easy, and he frequently fails, but he’s written some of the best stories of the last twenty years.
Donald Barthelme
My work is independent of my will. My best works are created when driven by an inner strength. This has nothing to do with my will. It is that immediate spontaneity of my intense way of living that makes the difference between my work and a lot of other artists who make art works with their mind.
Bram van Velde
Barthelme, Donald
Barthes, Roland
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