why is there never any love for the boy Donny B on this board?

>>9663331
Glad to see someone else posting about Barthelme.

I just got into him recently, I've read all of Come Back, Dr. Caligari as well as a few of his more famous stories like "The School" and "The Balloon." He may be on the road to becoming one of my favorite writers. I've made two threads about him but they get few replies.

Did you read The Dead Father, anon? Was it any good?

>>9663331
ive only read 60 and 40.

what else should i git?

>>9665300
Flying to America is his third and final compilation, but I haven't read it. Nor have I read all of 60 or 40

>>9663331
>thread almost dead
>only three replies
>two of them are mine

Bumping out of love for the boy Donny B

I read shower of gold and thought it was great. read the next story and thought it was... less than good. Any recommendations for your favorite stories?

>>9667532
Didn't like "Me and Miss Mandible"? Is that the one you're referring to?

I wish I could rec you more. I've barely read anything by him. Try "The School," or "The Balloon," if you haven't read either. So far, "A Shower of Gold" is my favorite too.

>>9667610

the school was fantastic and it was how i actually discovered barthelme. george saunders wrote a really nice essay analyzing it and it was in that collected essay volume of his.

>>9665294
i enjoyed the dead father, but i think his conceits work better in a short story form. i think he doesnt get much respect around here because its hard for people to imagine how staid literature was when he started pulling this shit and ive noticed things with surreal tones seem to get labelled reddit-tier by the young people around here. hi, im tom pynchon and i approved of this message.

So I read (all two pages of?) the School earlier. I'm not really a fan of that type of minimalist prose style and absurdist postmodern point-making, but am trying to go down the list of postmodern writers I ignored earlier on in my life.

Is there more, stylistically speaking wrt prose, to Barthelme or is it more of the same?

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>>9668883
>mfw this is actually pynchon

>>9668883
I think we can all appreciate what DB did for literature, opening it up and freeing it from its victorian clutches once and for all, but it still doesn't mean that his work can seem, I hate to say it, empty? I think he shows that writing only against the current can turn out sort of superficial, and also proves further that culture-fixed humor doesn't age well.

>>9669006
i think im going to do my senior thesis on don, and i know what you mean with the empty thing. there is definitely a lack of emotional impact in the vast majority of his writings (or at least a weird understanding of emotion like a robot learning to love). I think his legacy is frozen within the era of postmodernism, which can make his impact seem dated, but there really is no other postmodern writer quite like him. his sense of humor is unprecedented, and for me that makes it age well, but that's a matter of personal perspective. i also don't find it to be culture-fixed for the most part, or even that satirical. snow white clearly is a potshot at postwar culture among other things, but i don't think a story like the school is intended as a critique of the american education system.

>>9667532
chablis, game, and concerning the bodyguard are all great for getting more acquainted with him before you read a story collection cover to cover. a personal favorite and one of his funniest is some of us had been threatening our friend colby.

>>9668883
i would not be surprised at all if this was actually pynchon, with bleeding edge and all that.

>>9668994
>>9669214
C'mon, fellows, if it was really me i'd never try to run such a cheese-eating signoff past you.

>>9669443
Pffffft. That's it. Obviously Pynchon. It's an honor, sir.