Bell numbered Barthelme among "those celebrants of unreason, chaos, and inexorable decay ... a horde of mini-Jeremiahs crying havoc in the Western world," against whom she proposed the more moral model of Saul Bellow, particularly in his novel
Mr. Sammler's Planet. Nathan Scott complained that Barthelme's reinvention of the world "offers us an effective release from the bullying of all the vexations of history," but that such an aesthetic was too facile, the opting-out chosen "by the hordes of those young long-haired, jean-clad, pot-smoking bohemians who have entered the world of psychedelia." By 1970 the
New York Times Book Review began to give Barthelme longer and deeper reviews, probing the nature of his linguistic games and imaginative reinventions of social life, robbing negative critics of their strongest support.
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