Flying to America: 45 More Stories

By Donald Barthelme

Book Overview

A volume of the National Book Award-winning author's uncollected--and three previously unpublished--short stories "arrives like a wondrous jewel unearthed" ( Literary Journal ). Donald Barthelme is widely recognized as one of the most influential and inventive writers of the 20th century. In this volume of unpublished or previously uncollected stories, he displays his keen eye for the absurd as well as his uniquely engaging, epiphanic, and richly textured style. The stories collected here delve into the themes that most fascinated Barthelme: the perils of the unfulfilled existence; the relationships between politics, art, sex, and life; and the importance of continuing to ask questions even though we are unable to learn the answers. Spanning Barthelme's career, this posthumous collection includes his first published story, "Pages from the Annual Report," which appeared in 1959 under a pseudonym, as well as his last, "Tickets," published in The New Yorker shortly before he died in 1989. From this broad scope, "it is possible . . . to trace the author's development from an early postmodern baroque . . . to the fragmentary, almost minimalist style of his late-'60s and early-'70s prime" ( Los Angeles Times ).

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1582434433
• ISBN13: 9781582434438
• Release Date: October 2008
• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 1.0" x 5.0"

Customer Reviews

A fine supplement for those who already own the original books

This volume of 45 stories completes the canonization of Donald B. If you already own each of his individual works, then this would be the only way to squeeze out a little more of his unique word magic. The rubric "previously uncollected" draws a surprising number of stories from *Come Back, Dr. Caligari* (1966), DB's first book of stories. If you haven't read that, go directly to Caligari, since his profound, twinkling, knowing humor is on perfect display, and the number of stories from Caligari excluded from either 60 Stories or 40 Stories may reveal Barthelme's own self-doubt regarding his freshman effort. If you already own the original books, some interesting items can be found: his first published story (many characters draw their names from typefaces, besides the beloved Baskerville); a couple of unpublished stories in various stages of polish; and several stories that are not in any of the collected volumes. Although the book description claims to include *Sam's Bar*, with illustrations by Seymour Chwast, the actual published version does NOT include that story.