Donald Barthelme: Essential Books for a Literary Education

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

1. At Swim-Two-Birds (Irish Literature Series), Flann O’Brien
2. The Third Policeman, Flann O’Brien
3. Collected Stories of Issac Babel, Isaac Babel
4. Labyrinths (New Directions Paperbook), Jorge Luis Borges
5. Other Inquisitions, 1937-1952 (Texas Pan American Series), Jorge Luis Borges
6. One Hundred Years of Solitude (P.S.), Garcia Marquez
7. Correction: A Novel (Vintage International), Thomas Bernhard
8. Nog, Rudy Wurlitzer
9. Gimpel the Fool: And Other Stories, Isaac B. Singer
10. The Assistant: A Novel, Bernard Malamud
11. The Magic Barrel: Stories, Bernard Malamud
12. Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
13. 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)
14. Hunger, Knut Hamsun
15. I'm Not Stiller, Max Frisch
16. Man in the Holocene (Harvest Book), Max Frisch
17. Seven Gothic Tales, Isak Dinesen
18. Gogol's Wife and Other Stories, Tommaso Landolfi
19. V. (Perennial Classics), Thomas Pynchon
20. The Lime Twig: Novel (New Directions Paperbook), John Hawkes
21. The Blood Oranges: A Novel (New Directions Paperbook), John Hawkes
22. The Little Disturbances of Man (Contemporary American Fiction), Grace Paley
23. I, Etcetera: Stories, Susan Sontag
24. Tell Me a Riddle, Tillie Olsen
25. The Hero with a Thousand Faces (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell), Joseph Campbell
26. In the Heart of the Heart of the Country: And Other Stories (NYRB Classics), William Gass
27. Fiction and the Figures of Life, William Gass
28. The World Within the Word: Essays (Scholarly Series), William Gass
29. Advertisements for Myself, Norman Mailer
30. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
31. Journey to the End of the Night, Louis-Ferdinand Céline
32. The Box Man: A Novel, Kobo Abe
33. Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
34. A Sorrow Beyond Dreams: A Life Story, Peter Handke
35. Kaspar and Other Plays, Peter Handke
36. Nadja, Andre Breton
37. Chimera, John Barth
38. Lost in the Funhouse (The Anchor Literary Library), John Barth
39. The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
40. The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor, Peter Taylor
41. The Pure and the Impure, Colette
42. Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?: Stories, Raymond Carver
43. The Stories of John Cheever, John Cheever
44. I Would Have Saved Them If I Could 1ST Edition, Leonard Michaels
45. The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, Eudora Welty
46. The Oranging of America, Max Apple
47. Mumbo Jumbo, Ishmael Reed
48. The Complete Stories, Flannery O’Connor
49. Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
50. The Death of Artemio Cruz: A Novel (FSG Classics), Carlos Fuentes
51. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera
52. The Rhetoric of Fiction, Wayne C Booth
53. Tragic Magic: A Novel, Wesley Brown
54. Mythologies: The Complete Edition, in a New Translation, Roland Barthes
55. The Pleasure of the Text, Roland Barthes
56. Falling in Place, Ann Beattie
57. For a New Novel: Essays on Fiction (Northwestern University Press Paperbacks), Alain Robbe-Grillet
58. Henderson the Rain King (Penguin Classics), Saul Bellow
59. The Coup, John Updike
60. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
61. How We Live: Contemporary Life in Contemporary Fiction, ed. Rust Hills
62. SUPERFICTION or The American Story Transformed., ed Joe David Bellamy
63. Pushcart Prize Anthologies (The Pushcart Prize XXXIX: Best of the Small Presses 2015 Edition (The Pushcart Prize))
64. The Writer on Her Work: New Essays in New Territory, Janet Sternburg
65. Manifestoes of Surrealism (Ann Arbor Paperbacks), Andre Breton
66. Against Interpretation: And Other Essays, Susan Sontag
67. A Homemade World: American Modernist Writers, Hugh Kenner
68. The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857, Gustave Flaubert
69. Sexual Perversity in Chicago and the Duck Variations: Two Plays, David Mamet
70. The Changeling, Joy Williams
71. The New Fiction: Interviews with Innovative American Writers, ed. Joe David Bellamy
72. Going After Cacciato, Tim O’Brien
73. The Palm-Wine Drunkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Amos Tutola
74. Searching for Caleb, Ann Tyler
75. Thank You And Other Poems, Kenneth Koch
76. The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara, Frank O’Hara
77. Rivers and Mountains: Poems (The American poetry series ; v. 12), John Ashbery
78. Black Tickets: Stories, Jayne Anne Phillips
79. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
80. 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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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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