CITY LIFE

by Donald Barthelme ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 22, 1970

Already familiar to readers of The New Yorker, Donald Barthelme's present collection of short stories takes a step away from his surrealistic canvases and canvassing of fragmentary reality. The overview provided by these thirteen selections betrays a certain impatience with ""symbol"" and a strengthening allegiance to theme. The imagery, while no less inventive, is not so autonomous or arbitrary. Juxtaposing fairy tales with Kierkegaard, Schlegel, Augustine, Tolstoy and Goethe, the author seems to be researching a cure for the ""Brain Damage"" described in that story, a rampant disease caused by ""the sleeping revolution which no one can wake up"" and ""by art""--a sickness that takes for its victim the entire ""human consciousness."" Echoes of the same are heard in ""the horrors"" of ""The Policeman's Ball"" and the meaningless symbol found at the top of ""The Glass Mountain"" and cast down to the ground for its failure to do more than ""identify what we will not obtain."" In the title story, the spiritual problem is equated with the painlessness of the disease--""the lack of angst."" The struggle for a ""principle"" towards which the artist can work finds a satirical parallel in ""On Angels."" There the seraphim and cherubim, dislocated by the ""death of God"" (or the novel, beauty, truth), crusade for a new meaning to their existence. When it is decided that function determines self-definition, the angels try different works in progress: ""lamentation; affirmation of chaos; the state of not-being; adoring each other in the manner of men."" All are abandoned and the search continues. In much the same way, Mr. Barthelme explores numerous modes for his thematic overtures, but they remain flirtations, speaking bravely in one sentence and then blushing furiously behind fanning techniques and opaque prosody.

Pub Date: April 22, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1970

Categories: FICTION