Volume 10, Number 8 · April 25, 1968
The Leading Edge of the Trash Phenomenon
By William H. Gass
Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts
by Donald Barthelme
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 170 pp., $4.95
Comanches are invading the city. The hedges along the Blvd Mark Clark have been barbed with wire. 'People are trying to understand.' This is 'The Indian Uprising,' the finest story in Donald Barthelme's new collection. There's fruit on the table, books, and long-playing records. Sylvia, do you think this is a good life? Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts is the third and best of Barthelme's books, and each of them has seemed unnatural; certainly none speaks. A captured Comanche is tortured. The work of Gabriel Fauré is discussed. The nameless narrator sands a hollow-core door he intends as a table. He has made such a table for each of the women he's lived with. There've been five. So far. Barricades are made of window dummies, job descriptions, wine in demijohns. They are also made of blankets, pillows, cups, plates, ashtrays, flutes. The hospitals have run out of wound dusting powder. Zouaves and cabdrivers are rushed to the river.
Review, 1735 words
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