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/lit/ - Literature

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1237855 No.1237855 [Reply] [Original]

Donald Barthelme. Is this guy awesome or what?
Pic related, it's that crazy motherfucker.

>> No.1237860

from “The School”

One day, we had a discussion in class. They asked me, where did they go? The trees, the salamander, the tropical fish, Edgar, the poppas and mommas, Matthew and Tony, where did they go? And I said, I don’t know, I don’t know. And they said, who knows? and I said, nobody knows. And they said, is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said no, life is that which gives meaning to life. Then they said, but isn’t death, considered as a fundamental datum, the means by which the taken-for-granted mundanity of the everyday may be transcended in the direction of—

I said, yes, maybe.

They said, we don’t like it.

I said, that’s sound.

They said, it’s a bloody shame!

I said, it is.

They said, will you make love now with Helen (our teaching assistant) so that we can see how it is done? We know you like Helen.

I do like Helen but I said that I would not.

We’ve heard so much about it, they said, but we’ve never seen it.

I said I would be fired and that it was never, or almost never, done as a demonstration. Helen looked out the window.

They said, please, please make love with Helen, we require an assertion of value, we are frightened.

>> No.1238205

this guy is FUCKING AWESOME

>> No.1238207

>>1237860

>They said, please, please make love with Helen, we require an assertion of value, we are frightened.

love this dude

>> No.1238208

thomas pynchon on donald barthelme:

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_barthelme.html

>> No.1238215
File: 12 KB, 190x240, Barthelme, Donald (2).jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1238215

Every time someone goes glassy-eyed and starts babbling about how alternately revelatory and hilarious Vonnegut is I try to turn them on to Barthelme.

Unitiated take note, this guy is working his way back into the canon. Here have an interview back from 1981:

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3228/the-art-of-fiction-no-66-donald-barthelme

>> No.1238225

I recently picked up the issue of Gulf Coast (the literary journal at UH that he started) that was published after his death. The whole thing is writers and professors writing about Barthelme and what he meant to them. Big names too, Updike, Ashberry, Koch, Hirsch...

>> No.1238309
File: 40 KB, 416x300, _41993240_agassi_longevity.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1238309

>>1238225
Do you go to UH yourself?

>> No.1238649

Does /lit/ really like Barthelme? I generally agree with you guys, but I read some of his stuff (everything I could find online), and I hated it. I thought he was pretentious, using "postmodernism" as an excuse to get away with bad stories, form over substance and whatnot.

>> No.1238709

Does anyone else feel like "The Dead Father" could be made into a crazy/trippy animated movie? Made in "Kaiba" like style or something?

>> No.1238863

>>1238309

Yes.