Donald Barthelme: The Genesis of a Cool Sound

For those of us who in the 60s and 70s hungrily scanned each new issue of the New Yorker, hoping to find a story by Donald Barthelme, this book is a satisfying evocation of an exciting time in American letters. Faced with the question of whether to adapt himself to the universe or force it to adapt to him, Donald Barthelme chose the latter. Through the force of his personality (and while still in his very early twenties), Barthelme founded a literary and intellectual journal in Houston and attracted some of the world's finest writers and thinkers as contributors. He directed a museum of contemporary art and attracted some of the world's finest artists as exhibitors. Meanwhile, he pondered how to change the way we think about and tell stories about ourselves. In pursuit of this goal, he invented new narrative forms that caught the attention of readers and writers everywhere. Helen Moore Barthelme was married to Donald for a number of tumultuous years and remained involved with him up to his tragic early death in 1989. Her book captures the literary and artistic worlds of Houston and New York in the 60s and 70s and 80s and helps us understand how, with talent, conviction, and unwavering commitment, an individual can transcend circumstances and leave a mark upon his time.

This is not just a happy gloss on Barthelme's early adulthood, it is an intricate, detailed rendering of a time and place--Houston in the late 50s and early 60s. It's a story full of touching romance, heartbreak, anger, sadness, and loss. The characters here seem real and troubled, and their lives are messy, complex, derailed as often as not. Is there a clue to Barthelme's genius here? Well, sure. He was witty and ambitious and very damn clever. Funny, he was funny. His life seems to have been not quite so charmed as his work. This is a vivid portrait, complete with parts of Barthelme's life that may not have been so savory, and it humanizes this man whose work is always at pains to present only the carefully polished surface. An excellent introduction to the artist, his milieu, and his work. Ms. Moore-Barthelme writes with assurance and grace, and is always generous and forthright.

No, no no, no. Donald Barthelme's brilliant stories and novels are generous, funny, and wise, and this sparkling literary biography shows commensurate qualities. I would enthusiastically recommend it to anyone, scholar or general reader, as a report by a subtle and complex observer of a subtle and complex man in a crucial early period of his life as a writer. One hopes meanwhile that our daughters [and our sons, and our cocker spaniels] have the sense to ignore vitriolic reviews aglow with artistical alliteration and unfounded "facts," misrepresenting Ms. Barthelme's book and issuing out of some long-nourished hurt. This is a very good book.

This is perhaps the saddest book and commentary in feminist literature today. It is an important piece of work, not so much for its revelations into the angst of a dissipated, mediocre talent, but for what it reveals about the costs to the women who enable them to transcend mediocrity and accord homage, indeed, reverence, to simply being different.Clearly, Don Barthelme's greatest skill was his ability to attract, manipulate and hold emotionally captive women willing to condone, nurture, and, yes, enable his parasitism and self-aggrandizement. I do not see any "rightness" in it at all, only hypocrisy, self-absorption, and cruel compulsions. The cruelest and more ironic of all his delusions was when he severed his marriage to Helen by saying he was unable to "take care" of her anymore. He had never, of course, and it was always she who took care of him and she who even today continues to do so vis-à-vis his literary legacy and her illusions. This is not so much a book of a failed literary career but an examination of what women can be if they refuse to allow men to usurp their own energies and diminish and drain their own talents and potential; that while the female has a strong instinct to give birth and raise a child, she should not take on the responsibility of raising a dysfunctional, 160-pound, six-foot toddler. What Helen could have been herself, what she has become despite the financial, emotional, and professional encumbrances that Don placed upon her, is what makes this book a must read for all our daughters. Ironically, Don Barthelme failed repeatedly to capture the depth of feminine character in his work except perhaps when he used Helen, as Fitzgerald always used Zelda. Even so, Donald B's contemporaries -- McMurtry, Updike, Roth, and even the most dissipated of them all, Exley -- have done it far better and far more often. Don feared, flawed, failed, and finally fled each opportunity given him -- columns, publications, museums, teaching and certainly relationships -- and always had an excuse other than the very obvious "possibility" that his failings arose from his own character flaws. He failed at teaching, he says, because the commute to Buffalo was too great and, yet, did not move to Buffalo where one can write just as well as in Houston, and of open enrollment programs at CUNY. Then, with not money enough for the ticket home, Donald B returns to Houston to teach - as if Houston would attract more literati than New York! The sad fact was, despite his many opportunities -- the Guggenheim, the invitations to writers' conferences, the women who loved, coddled, represented, and edited him -- the bar in New York proved too high and Houston was his only way to make a buck any more. When he finally nears the truth and the end, Don muses that he has not received adequate recognition for his work, and the ever-faithful, dutiful Helen once again assumes maternal responsibility for this whiney little boy by bolstering

There's not much biographical writing on Donald Barthelme and this astonishing short literary memoir by his ex-wife is a great beginning--intelligent, insightful, not afraid to judge but rich with affection for its subject. I got it late yesterday and finished it this morning. It's intriguing from start to finish, but particularly good on his editing of magazines in Houston and New York, in the light thrown on some stories in COME BACK DR CALIGARI, and the way in his early career he seems to have made himself into an artist by force of will. Interesting literary detective work represented in letters between Barthelme and Alfred Kazin, Walker Percy and others, and a funny snotty note to one Stanley Walker who wanted a bigger fee for a proposed article. The personal stuff is interesting without being talk show. Helen Moore Barthelme comes off well herself. One finishes thinking he must have been quite a guy if this woman loved him, loves him still.