Books in Brief: Sixty Stories

Sixty Stories, by Donald Barthelme (Putnam, 457 pp., $15.95). Author of two novels and on his way to delivering a third one, Ghosts, Barthelme is mostly known for his “op-pop” stories, generous samples of which are given in this Putnam anthology. Ranging in tone from the drolly intellectual to the wittily ironic to the savagely sarcastic, they bring out the Beckett-like terseness and originality of Come Back, Dr. Caligari (1964), the social satire of Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts and City Life (1970), and the more vacuous virtuosity of Amateurs and Great Days (1979). On the whole though, City Life is to us the single collection that distinguishes itself not only for its zesty humor but for being a pensive parody of the fads of our time: the farcical acquiescence of young Americans to drugs and “Oriental” religion, our craze for technology, our visceral rootlessness. More moving intuitions stir here and there—a grievous meditation on our parental relations (“Views of My Father Weeping”), the twinge of a subterranean revelation (“The Emperor”), the dreamy wish for a new existence (“Grandma’s House”)—when Barthelme does not coat his clear-headed, cursory statements on life in layers of cerebral lingo and Joycian collages. But dryness, elusiveness, and technical brilliance remain the substantial features of these stories. The human factor is scant.

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Nereo E. Condini

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Sixty Stories, by Donald Barthelme (Putnam, 457 pp., $15.95). Author of two novels and on his way to delivering a third one, Ghosts, Barthelme is mostly known for his “op-pop” stories, generous samples of which are given in this Putnam anthology. Ranging in tone from the drolly intellectual to the wittily ironic to the savagely sarcastic, they bring out the Beckett-like terseness and originality of Come Back, Dr. Caligari (1964), the social satire of Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts and City Life (1970), and the more vacuous virtuosity of Amateurs and Great Days (1979). On the whole though, City Life is to us the single collection that distinguishes itself not only for its zesty humor but for being a pensive parody of the fads of our time: the farcical acquiescence of young Americans to drugs and “Oriental” religion, our craze for technology, our visceral rootlessness. More moving intuitions stir here and there—a grievous meditation on our parental relations (“Views of My Father Weeping”), the twinge of a subterranean revelation (“The Emperor”), the dreamy wish for a new existence (“Grandma’s House”)—when Barthelme does not coat his clear-headed, cursory statements on life in layers of cerebral lingo and Joycian collages. But dryness, elusiveness, and technical brilliance remain the substantial features of these stories. The human factor is scant.