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, and...

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 senten...

Anyone who has passed by the monstrously large residential complexes known as Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village on First Avenue between 14th and 23rd streets knows they account for a prison-block-like swath of red brick. Lesser known is the fact that the magical forest...

It's called Paradise for a reason. Vibrant wildflower meadows and spectacular views of Mount Rainier have long made Paradise the most popular destination at this revered national park. Reached at 5,400 feet by following a...

One of the world's hottest music stars now wants a piece of the multibillion dollar video-game scene.Rapper 50 Cent's widely publicized troubled youth on the streets -- crime, jail, drugs and bullet wounds -- has served as a palette for his popular “gangsta” prose. Now,...

While vacationing tycoons and bikini-clad Hollywood superstars blissfully sipped drinks on the Maldives' secluded white beaches, an Islamic revolution fueled by preachers trained in Pakistan and the Middle East was brewing.On Sept. 29, the two faces of the Maldives collided when a homemade bomb exploded...