SOURCE: "Donald Barthelme's Snow White: The Novel, the Critics, and the Culture," in Critique, Vol. 26, No. 1, Fall, 1984, pp. 1-10.

In the following essay, Morace analyzes Snow White as a work of experimental fiction.

Delight in formal experimentation is one characteristic of much of our contemporary American fiction. Another, either explicit in the choice of subject matter or implicit in the narrative treatment, is the scornful criticism of the popular culture and its audience. While the former has received considerable attention from critics, the latter has more often been cited as a given than discussed in any detail. Perhaps the reason for this reticence lies not so much with the critics as with the writers themselves, who prefer to deride the popular culture rather than to analyze it or their basic assumptions about it. In the peremptory words of William Gass, "This muck cripples consciousness" [Fiction and the Figures...