Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews

About this book

Donald Barthelmes premature death at the age of fifty-eight brought to an end one of the most provocative careers in the history of American literature. Groundbreaking works such as Come Back Dr. Caligari; The Dead Father; Snow White; Great Days; Overnight to Many Distant Cities; Guilty Pleasures; and his two short-fiction collections Forty Stories and Sixty Stories have earned him a place among the most influential and imitated authors of the last half-century. With his marvelously strange and darkly ironic vision of the world his wizard satire and deadpan humor Barthelme spoke of and for our time like no one else. He spoke of our national obsessions and weirdnesses our unspeakable practices and unnatural acts in what is for many the distinctive voice of postmodern America. Not-Knowing is the second posthumous collection of Donald Barthelmes work. Like The Teachings of Don B. (1992) it brings together shorter works now almost impossible to come by. While the first volume featured the authors tantalizing experiments in satire parable fable and playwriting this new volume focuses on his diverse nonfiction pieces collectively referred to here as essays although as always with Barthelmes work they are feistily resistant to any label. Categorizable or not Not-Knowing contains Barthelmes pungent comments on writing art literature film and city life which are as John Barth says in his Introduction among the permanent literary treasures of American postmodernist writing. Also here are several interviews with the author--invaluable for understanding this very private man--including two never before available. The interviews range over the last eighteen years of Barthelmes life and they give readers the opportunity to watch his ideas as they expand change and settle. Kim Herzinger has gathered here an eclectic selection of pieces for Barthelmes many admirers creating a work that will confirm his rightful standing as in the words of Robert Coover "one of the great citizens of contemporary world letters."