Forty Stories

Last updated
Forty Stories
FortyStories.jpg
First edition cover
Author Donald Barthelme
Publisher G.P. Putnam's Sons
Publication date
September 1, 1987
ISBN 978-0-399-13299-5

Forty Stories collects forty of American writer and professor Donald Barthelme's short stories, [1] several of which originally appeared in The New Yorker . The book was first published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1987.

Contents

While Sixty Stories includes many longer narratives, the stories in Forty Stories are pithy. Many last for fewer than five pages, and display Barthelme's flash fictional tendencies. They also abound in historical references and surreal juxtapositions. One story involves a World War I Secret Police investigator, a trio of German warplanes, and the artist Paul Klee. Another is a parodic rewriting of the fairy-tale Bluebeard, perhaps inspired by Angela Carter's story "The Bloody Chamber." Yet another consists of a single seven-page-long sentence (without a concluding period).

Contents

  1. Chablis
  2. On the Deck
  3. The Genius
  4. Opening
  5. Sindbad
  6. The Explanation
  7. Concerning the Bodyguard
  8. RIF
  9. The Palace at Four A.M.
  10. Jaws
  11. Conversations with Goethe
  12. Affection
  13. The New Owner
  14. Paul Klee [full title: "Engineer-Private Paul Klee Misplaces an Aircraft Between Milbertshoffen and Cambrai, March 1916"]
  15. Terminus
  16. The Educational Experience
  17. Bluebeard
  18. Departures
  19. Visitors
  20. The Wound
  21. At the Tolstoy Museum
  22. The Flight of Pigeons from the Palace
  23. A Few Moments of Sleeping and Waking
  24. The Temptation of St. Anthony
  25. Sentence
  26. Pepperoni
  27. Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby
  28. Lightning
  29. The Catechist
  30. Porcupines at the University
  31. Sakrete
  32. Captain Blood
  33. 110 West Sixty-first Street
  34. The Film
  35. Overnight to Many Distant Cities
  36. Construction
  37. Letters to the Editore
  38. Great Days
  39. The Baby
  40. January

Sixty Stories

Sixty Stories , a companion volume to Forty Stories, was published six years earlier, in 1981. It contains stories from Barthelme's first six collections.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carl Barks</span> American cartoonist (1901–2000)

Carl Barks was an American cartoonist, author, and painter. He is best known for his work in Disney comic books, as the writer and artist of the first Donald Duck stories and as the creator of Scrooge McDuck. He worked anonymously until late in his career; fans dubbed him The Duck Man and The Good Duck Artist. In 1987, Barks was one of the three inaugural inductees of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Auster</span> American writer and film director (1947–2024)

Paul Benjamin Auster was an American writer, novelist, memoirist, poet, and filmmaker. His notable works include The New York Trilogy (1987), Moon Palace (1989), The Music of Chance (1990), The Book of Illusions (2002), The Brooklyn Follies (2005), Invisible (2009), Sunset Park (2010), Winter Journal (2012), and 4 3 2 1 (2017). His books have been translated into more than 40 languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Klee</span> Swiss-German painter (1879–1940)

Paul Klee was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually deeply explored color theory, writing about it extensively; his lectures Writings on Form and Design Theory, published in English as the Paul Klee Notebooks, are held to be as important for modern art as Leonardo da Vinci's A Treatise on Painting was for the Renaissance. He and his colleague, Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the Bauhaus school of art, design and architecture in Germany. His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality.

Disney comics are comic books and comic strips featuring characters created by the Walt Disney Company, including Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bluebeard</span> French folktale

"Bluebeard" is a French folktale, the most famous surviving version of which was written by Charles Perrault and first published by Barbin in Paris in 1697 in Histoires ou contes du temps passé. The tale tells the story of a wealthy man in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of the present one to avoid the fate of her predecessors. "The White Dove", "The Robber Bridegroom", and "Fitcher's Bird" are tales similar to "Bluebeard". The notoriety of the tale is such that Merriam-Webster gives the word Bluebeard the definition of "a man who marries and kills one wife after another". The verb bluebearding has even appeared as a way to describe the crime of either killing a series of women, or seducing and abandoning a series of women.

<i>Bluebeard</i> (Vonnegut novel) 1987 novel by Kurt Vonnegut

Bluebeard, the Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916–1988) is a 1987 novel by American author Kurt Vonnegut. It is told as a first-person narrative and describes the late years of fictional Abstract Expressionist painter Rabo Karabekian, who first appeared as a minor character in Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions (1973). Circumstances of the novel bear rough resemblance to the fairy tale of Bluebeard popularized by Charles Perrault. Karabekian mentions this relationship once in the novel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Donald Barthelme</span> American writer and professor (1931 – 1989)

Donald Barthelme Jr. was an American short story writer and novelist known for his playful, postmodernist style of short fiction. Barthelme also worked as a newspaper reporter for the Houston Post, was managing editor of Location magazine, director of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston (1961–1962), co-founder of Fiction, and a professor at various universities. He also was one of the original founders of the University of Houston Creative Writing Program.

Donald Duck, a cartoon character created by the Walt Disney Company, is today the star of dozens of comic-book and comic-strip stories published each month around the world. In many European countries, Donald is considered the lead character in Disney comics, more important and beloved than Mickey Mouse.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steven Barthelme</span> American writer

Steven Barthelme is the author of numerous short stories and essays.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ian Hamilton (critic)</span> English writer and editor (1938–2001)

Robert Ian Hamilton was a British literary critic, reviewer, biographer, poet, magazine editor and publisher.

Walt Disney Comics Digest is one of three digest size comics published by Gold Key Comics in the early 1970s. The other two were Mystery Comics Digest and Golden Comics Digest. It was the first digest-sized regular Disney comic published in the US, and was very successful, offering relief from the company's slipping comic book sales.

Fredrick Barthelme is an American novelist and short story writer of minimalist fiction. He is the director of the Center For Writers at The University of Southern Mississippi and editor of the literary journal Mississippi Review. He is currently the editor of New World Writing

<i>The Umbrella Academy</i> American comic book series

The Umbrella Academy is an American comic book series created and written by Gerard Way and illustrated by Gabriel Bá. It follows a dysfunctional family of adopted superhero siblings with bizarre powers attempting both to save the world and find their place within it. Published by Dark Horse Comics, the comic is released as limited series, typically lasting six issues. Since 2007, three volumes have been published, as have two spin-offs. The fourth volume of the main series is currently in development.

<i>Revolution in the Head: The Beatles Records and the Sixties</i> 1994 book by Ian MacDonald

Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties is a book by British music critic and author Ian MacDonald, discussing the music of the Beatles and the band's relationship to the social and cultural changes of the 1960s. The first edition was published in 1994, with revised editions appearing in 1997 and 2005, the latter following MacDonald's death in 2003.

<i>Kalle Anka & C:o</i> Swedish Disney comics magazine

Kalle Anka & C:o is a Swedish weekly Disney comics magazine, published by Egmont. The 52-page comic, launched in September 1948, is the overall best-selling Swedish comic magazine. In the early years, the comic printed translated stories from the United States, including Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, Four Color and other Dell Comics Disney titles. As Disney comics production waned in the United States in the 1960s, Kalle Anka began printing more European-produced content, from Scandinavia and Italy. Now, Kalle Anka & C:o and its Scandinavian sister editions Anders And & Co. (Denmark) and Donald Duck & Co (Norway) are identical, apart from the language.

Another Rainbow Publishing is a company dedicated to the re-publication and greater recognition of the work of Carl Barks that was created in 1981 by Bruce Hamilton and Russ Cochran.

<i>Crazy Heart</i> 2009 American film

Crazy Heart is a 2009 American drama film, written and directed by Scott Cooper in his feature directorial debut. Based on the 1987 novel of the same name by Thomas Cobb, the story was inspired by country singer Hank Thompson. Starring Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Colin Farrell, and Robert Duvall, the film follows an alcoholic country singer and songwriter who tries to turn his life around after beginning a relationship with a young journalist. Bridges, Farrell, and Duvall also sing in the film.

<i>The Dead Father</i> Book by Donald Barthelme

The Dead Father is a post-modernist novel by author Donald Barthelme published in 1975 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The book relates the journey of a vaguely defined entity that symbolizes fatherhood, hauled by a small group of people as the plot unravels through narratives, anecdotes, dialogues, reflexions and allegories presented to the reader through the tools and constructions of postmodern literature, in which the author excelled as a short story writer. Chapter 17 includes an adapted version of a previously published short story, "A Manual for Sons", that is much in the style and character of the novel.

<i>Sixty Stories</i> (book) 1981 short story collection by Donald Barthelme

Sixty Stories is a collection of sixty short stories written by Donald Barthelme, several of which originally appeared in The New Yorker. The book was first published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1981.

Silly Symphony is a weekly Disney comic strip that debuted on January 10, 1932, as a topper for the Mickey Mouse strip's Sunday page. The strip featured adaptations of Walt Disney's popular short film series, Silly Symphony, which released 75 cartoons from 1929 to 1939, as well as other cartoons and animated films. The comic strip outlived its parent series by six years, ending on October 7, 1945.

References

  1. "Forty Stories by Donald Barthelme". Publishers Weekly . January 1, 1987. Archived from the original on September 12, 2024. Retrieved September 12, 2024.