Forty Stories (Penguin Classics)
by Donald Barthelme
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Book Summary Information
Author: Donald BarthelmeIntroduction: Dave Eggers
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-01-25
ISBN: 0142437816
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Book Reviews of Forty Stories (Penguin Classics)
Book Review: Tree Fruits
Summary: 5 Stars
Just over ten years ago a deeply righteous hombre with a handle to match--Omnipot, tray bong, non?--wrote right here on Amazon a nifty little five-star review of Mister Barthelme's Forty Stories. So here's the thing: the dude's opening paragraph mirrors so exactly what I myself wanted to say about my own recent encounter with the approximately fantastic Donald Barthelme that I'm going to go ahead and reprint the whole thing and hope Mister Pot doesn't sue me:
"I laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed and couple three times was even a little sad and one two times was made pensive with head on hand till I laughed and laughed and laughed and finished the story and read it again and laughed and laughed and laughed..."
That was me to a total tee too, right down to the last laugh. Seriously, that's the whole nine yards in a single nutshell right there, O-Dog, you sum up in extra fine what a confounded pleasure it is to be shot full of magic bullets by this particular Don. Kudos to yudos in any case, Omnipot, I literally could not have put it better myself. All I can add I guess is even if the rest of you punters out there only end up reading a couple of these sublime flash fictions try to make sure the ones you choose include The Genius, Sinbad, especially Sinbad, Chablis, Construction, Lightning, RIF, and Letters to the Editore--mini masterpieces each one, massy minor triumphs in comic brevity. This dude Donald indubitably knew wherefore his Sam and knew wherefore what's more his Flann too the cheeky old devil and these wide open channels condense here to sometimes thrillingly familiar effect. In The Explanation, for instance, a zippy little page-turner composed entirely of questions and answers and illustrated to boot with a big black square, Donny Boy even manages to miraculously conflate his two rightly revered Irish forebears into one hysterical question: "Is the bicycle dead?" Brilliant. Just in case I'll mention the stupendous Sinbad one more time coz this lethally funny word weapon had me in the crosshairs from the opening salvo. One last thing: skip the utterly charmless introduction by super sap Dave Eggers, it adds precisely nothing to the otherwise wacky and wonderful proceedings and seems animated mostly by a grotesque self-consciousness laced with the lamest light touch this side of Dave Barry. Oof sez I. Remember in The Simpsons when a bespectacled Radioactive Man was about to be engulfed in a giant wave of green toxic sludge and he yells out, "My eyes! The goggles do nothing!"? Well Eggers here is the goggles. Or should that be are the goggles? Who cares, yank and flitter this witless dweeb's feeble farking flapdoodle and go directly to the straight dope by Don B. This wickedly funny wordy gurdy man is the prose equivalent of The King Biscuit Flower Hour and his shorty shorts are perfect jets of the purest japery--like the great Omnipot sez, read 'em and laugh and laugh and laugh...
Summary of Forty Stories (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.Like the title says, here are 40 short works culled from across Barthelme's career. Along with the similarly titled 60 Stories, this book provides one of the best samplings currently in print of Barthelme's unrivaled humor, his melancholy, the poetry of his line, and his considerable intellect. It includes pieces such as the famous "Sentence," (a single, several-page-long, unfinished sentence), "The Flight of Pigeons From the Palace," one of the writer's illustrated stories, and "Overnight To Many Distant Cities."
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