Donald Barthelme: Essential Books for a Literary Education
Born April 7, 1931 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, Donald Barthelme was an influential American writer known for short stories, satires, and novels. His stories are interesting because they often border on the absurd and bizarre. He Attended the University of Houston, and worked as a journalist, managing editor, professor, and visiting professor.
According to St. James Guide to Fantasy Writers, “In the many collections–where fantasies mixed with mimetic pieces (mimetic, that is, by Barthelme's loose standards; even his most straightforward fiction seemed to conceal trapdoors to other worlds)–certain motifs and concerns were recombined and incremented. Music, art, divorce, fathers, cities, money, secret societies, communication breakdowns, women, artifacts of pop culture–all went into the unique Barthelme soup.
And while Barthelme was an innovator and experimenter with forms (his pictorial collage stories are perhaps his most famous contribution) he never lost sight of the power of sheer narration. Events in his stories are always clearly presented, and drama, even suspense, abounds. The mystery never inheres in what is happening, but why.”
As is the case with most writers, Donald Barthelme’s influence and popularity grew after his death. He was friends with other writers – Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, William Gaddis, Robert Coover, John Hawkes, William Gass, Kurt Vonnegut, Walter Abish, and Susan Sontag – and some of their works are included on the reading list below. His reading list is somewhat diverse, but not as diverse as some of the other reading lists we have presented here, and it is not solely for writers or aspiring writers.
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Donald Barthelme’s Syllabus Highlights 81 Books Essential for a Literary Education
- At Swim-Two-Birds (Irish Literature Series), Flann O’Brien
- The Third Policeman, Flann O’Brien
- Collected Stories of Issac Babel, Isaac Babel
- Labyrinths (New Directions Paperbook), Jorge Luis Borges
- Other Inquisitions, 1937-1952 (Texas Pan American Series), Jorge Luis Borges
- One Hundred Years of Solitude (P.S.), Garcia Marquez
- Correction: A Novel (Vintage International), Thomas Bernhard
- Nog, Rudy Wurlitzer
- Gimpel the Fool: And Other Stories, Isaac B. Singer
- The Assistant: A Novel, Bernard Malamud
- The Magic Barrel: Stories, Bernard Malamud
- Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
- Samuel Beckett (The Grove Centenary Editions of Samuel Beckett Boxed Set: Contains Novels I and II of Samuel Beckett, The Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett, and The Poems, Short Fiction and Critcism of Samuel Beckett)
- Hunger, Knut Hamsun
- I'm Not Stiller, Max Frisch
- Man in the Holocene (Harvest Book), Max Frisch
- Seven Gothic Tales, Isak Dinesen
- Gogol's Wife and Other Stories, Tommaso Landolfi
- V. (Perennial Classics), Thomas Pynchon
- The Lime Twig: Novel (New Directions Paperbook), John Hawkes
- The Blood Oranges: A Novel (New Directions Paperbook), John Hawkes
- The Little Disturbances of Man (Contemporary American Fiction), Grace Paley
- I, Etcetera: Stories, Susan Sontag
- Tell Me a Riddle, Tillie Olsen
- The Hero with a Thousand Faces (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell), Joseph Campbell
- In the Heart of the Heart of the Country: And Other Stories (NYRB Classics), William Gass
- Fiction and the Figures of Life, William Gass
- The World Within the Word: Essays (Scholarly Series), William Gass
- Advertisements for Myself, Norman Mailer
- A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
- Journey to the End of the Night, Louis-Ferdinand Céline
- The Box Man: A Novel, Kobo Abe
- Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
- A Sorrow Beyond Dreams: A Life Story, Peter Handke
- Kaspar and Other Plays, Peter Handke
- Nadja, Andre Breton
- Chimera, John Barth
- Lost in the Funhouse (The Anchor Literary Library), John Barth
- The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
- The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor, Peter Taylor
- The Pure and the Impure, Colette
- Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?: Stories, Raymond Carver
- The Stories of John Cheever, John Cheever
- I Would Have Saved Them If I Could 1ST Edition, Leonard Michaels
- The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, Eudora Welty
- The Oranging of America, Max Apple
- Mumbo Jumbo, Ishmael Reed
- The Complete Stories, Flannery O’Connor
- Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
- The Death of Artemio Cruz: A Novel (FSG Classics), Carlos Fuentes
- The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera
- The Rhetoric of Fiction, Wayne C Booth
- Tragic Magic: A Novel, Wesley Brown
- Mythologies: The Complete Edition, in a New Translation, Roland Barthes
- The Pleasure of the Text, Roland Barthes
- Falling in Place, Ann Beattie
- For a New Novel: Essays on Fiction (Northwestern University Press Paperbacks), Alain Robbe-Grillet
- Henderson the Rain King (Penguin Classics), Saul Bellow
- The Coup, John Updike
- Rabbit, Run, John Updike
- How We Live: Contemporary Life in Contemporary Fiction, ed. Rust Hills
- SUPERFICTION or The American Story Transformed., ed Joe David Bellamy
- Pushcart Prize Anthologies (The Pushcart Prize XXXIX: Best of the Small Presses 2015 Edition (The Pushcart Prize))
- The Writer on Her Work: New Essays in New Territory, Janet Sternburg
- Manifestoes of Surrealism (Ann Arbor Paperbacks), Andre Breton
- Against Interpretation: And Other Essays, Susan Sontag
- A Homemade World: American Modernist Writers, Hugh Kenner
- The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857, Gustave Flaubert
- Sexual Perversity in Chicago and the Duck Variations: Two Plays, David Mamet
- The Changeling, Joy Williams
- The New Fiction: Interviews with Innovative American Writers, ed. Joe David Bellamy
- Going After Cacciato, Tim O’Brien
- The Palm-Wine Drunkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Amos Tutola
- Searching for Caleb, Ann Tyler
- Thank You And Other Poems, Kenneth Koch
- The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara, Frank O’Hara
- Rivers and Mountains: Poems (The American poetry series ; v. 12), John Ashbery
- Black Tickets: Stories, Jayne Anne Phillips
- Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
- The Paris Review Interviews, Vols. 1-4
Key Takeaway
Donald Barthelme was not afraid to experiment, and he frequently combined writing techniques. He didn't view other writers as competitors, so a key takeaway is to support people in your field.
What to do Next – 3 Ways to Apply this Information
- Each month, read two books from the list. At the end of the year, you would have read 24 books that will enable you to get a literary education. Two books may seem like a lot, but think of Bill Gates who has many irons in the fires, and still is able to read a book a week.
- Make notes of information from each of the 24 the books that you can apply to your work. Although most of the books are works of fiction, they will offer great lessons.
- Apply the new information, and share with your colleagues.
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Author Bio: Avil Beckford, an expert interviewer, entrepreneur and published author is passionate about books and professional development, and that's why she founded The Invisible Mentor and the Virtual Literary World Tour to give you your ideal mentors virtually in the palm of your hands by offering book reviews and book summaries, biographies of wise people and interviews of successful people. Connect with me on Facebook and Twitter.
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