Two years after Donald Barthelme's death, his friend Robert Coover observed that his name had achieved a new currency as an adjective: the term "Barthelmesque," Coover wrote, refers not only to a style- "precise, urbane, ironic, rivetingly succinct,...

Donald Barthelme has achieved his present eminence as one of the leading popular innovators in American fiction through the pages of the New Yorker magazine, where he began publishing in 1963. But, although he is best known for his stiff-upper-lip...

Donald Barthelme's death seems to have brought with it the demise of the entire postmodern aesthetic with which he was associated. His experimentation on literary forms and his dismantling of the traditional short story has come to be regarded as passe. However, through his...

The criticism of Barthelme's fiction-making is a lot like the fiction itself--uncomfortable, dislocated, and contentious. Over the last decade, though critical response has been strongly positive, the number of evaluations of Barthelme's work has markedly decreased, especially in contrast to the previous decade....

Last month was Scott Moyers’ first as a literary agent, and by the end of it he had sold four books: a study of the American labor movement by the historian Philip Dray; a cultural history of middle age by New York Times writer Patricia...

In the following essay, Trachtenberg provides a thematic overview of Barthelme's short fiction.

In the following essay, Stengel discusses Barthelme's twelve art stories, which evaluate the role of art and of the artist in contemporary life.

In the following essay, Molesworth examines the defining characteristics of Barthelme's short stories.