Donald Barthelme | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 10 pages of analysis & critique of Donald Barthelme.
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Donald Barthelme | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 10 pages of analysis & critique of Donald Barthelme.
This section contains 2,757 words
(approx. 10 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Lois Gordon

Any discussion of Donald Barthelme's comedy necessitates the backdrop of contemporary thought, because Barthelme's characters, and their world, are among the most sophisticated in literary history. Freud, Fellini, Einstein, Roland Barthes—as well as Norman Lear, Pepsi Cola, John Wayne, and Cosmo magazine—such is the milieu of Barthelme's people. Their everyday vocabulary includes Heidegger's angst, Bachelard's poetic space, Sartre's "other," let alone the vast legacy of literary, anthropological, psychological, historical, and scientific thought—and the prodigious jargon of T.V., ads, current events, pop art, and culture. Barthelme's people are hypereducated, wild consumers of information, and devotees of every possible "how-to" formula.

If literature at one time presumably reflected life, Barthelme reverses the formula. His figures have in great part become the media, the art and slogans—the words—about them. They mouth technology, although they are utterly ignorant as to what it means; they explain everything...

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This section contains 2,757 words
(approx. 10 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Lois Gordon
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Critical Essay by Lois Gordon from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.