There are not many facts available about Donald Barthelme, at least on this side of the Atlantic. He has been hailed as a leading Post-Modernist, but Post-Modernism (to the extent that it has a credo) stresses the unreliability of facts and the supremacy of fictions. He has also been viewed as a pungent satirist. One thing that can be stated is that Barthelme's literary career has mostly been pursued in the pages of the New Yorker. For at least twenty-five years his stories and novels have first appeared under the imprint of America's best-dressed literary magazine.

LRB 7 July 1988 | PDF Download