Collected Stories — Frederick Barthelme

Frederick Barthelme is a minimalist writer whose stories are anything but minimal. Labeled as “Dirty” or “Kmart” Realism, his work illustrates the immense feeling contained within the minute and seemingly uneventful details of ordinary life. From parking lots to grocery stores, and swimming pools to morning traffic, whatever space Barthelme’s characters occupy there is an underlying tension that rises out from the mundane. In his post-ironic dialog and deadpan descriptions, meaning breaks down and is doubled, and becomes a representation of the small in-between spaces within our routine and daily lives. Starting out his career as a musician in a psychedelic noise band, and later as a conceptual artist, Barthelme’s tendency for the unconventional carried over in his writing. He became a trailblazer with his work regularly appearing in the New Yorker and went on to have an expansive career that includes eleven novels, several short story collections, screenplays, and a memoir. In The Great Pyramids, Barthelme is recognized from his early works such as “Cut Glass,” “Aluminum House,” and “Shopgirls,” through the tail end of the twentieth century with “Retreat,” and “Socorro,” and now, with new and previously unpublished stories. The cultural landscape is always changing, but the overall sense of angst and isolation that Barthelme’s work encompasses has only intensified. This collection shows that Barthelme’s eye for cultural estrangement, the funny yet bleak understanding of how we relate to one another, is now more relevant than ever.