SOURCE: Bruss, Paul. “Barthelme's Short Stories: Ironic Suspensions of Text.” In Victims: Textual Strategies in Recent American Fiction, pp. 113-29. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1981.

In the following essay, Bruss explores the suspension of self and the roles of narrative style and irony in Barthelme's short fiction.

One of Barthelme's early short stories contains this quotation, which is Robert Kennedy's comment on Poulet's analysis of Marivaux:

The Marivaudian being is, according to Poulet, a pastless futureless man, born anew at every instant. The instants are points which organize themselves into a line, but what is important is the instant, not the line. The Marivaudian being has in a sense no history. Nothing follows from what has gone before. He is constantly surprised. He cannot predict his own reaction to events. He is constantly being overtaken by events. A condition of breathlessness and dazzlement surrounds him. In consequence he exists...