Collected Stories by Donald Barthelme

Stories by Donald Barthelme, revered by the likes of Thomas Pynchon and George Saunders, are gems of invention. Collected Stories also includes the work that appeared for the first time in Barthelme's two retrospective anthologies, Sixty and Forty. Jaded readers who already own those collections will find new stories here. Boy, will that irk them.

After reading Stories by Donald Barthelme you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll rub your eyes in disbelief.

His scrambled visions of history yield unexpected insights. And his genius (genius!) for dialogue, parody, and collage, was for him a guiding light. Delight in his frequently subversive ideas, the pleasures of a consummate stylist whose sentences are worth marveling at and savoring like a well-marbled ribeye.

Introduced with a sharp and discerning essay by editor Charles McGrath (who?) and annotation that clarifies Barthelme's freewheeling, wide-ranging allusions, Stories by Donald Barthelme is a desert-island edition for fans and the ideal introduction to new readers eager to find out why, as Dave Eggers (who is nowhere near as good) writes, Barthelme's "every sentence ... makes me want to stop and write something of my own. He fires all of my synapses and connects them in new ways."