Volume 25, Number 21 & 22 · January 25, 1979
Wanderers
By Robert Towers
Great Days
by Donald Barthelme
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 174 pp., $8.95 (to be published February 14, 1979.)
Ladies Man
by Richard Price
Houghton Mifflin, 264 pp., $8.95
Wrinkles
by Charles Simmons
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 182 pp., $8.95
I doubt that Donald Barthelme's new collection will alter significantly anyone's perception of this accomplished miniaturist. His admirers can again enjoy the delicacy with which he picks his way through the detritus of our civilization, marvel at the many voices he commands, and renew their appetites for the surreal morsels he serves up. Those who have been less impressed in the past will find yet another occasion to shrug. The one really innovative feature of Great Days is Barthelme's use, in seven of the pieces, of a staccato dialogue form in which two speakers bounce phrases off one another at high speed; sometimes the phrases answer each other, often they do not. Uninterrupted by narrative or description, the dialogues vibrate at high intensity, achieving a strobe-lit effect that can be pleasurably nerve-wracking. Fortunately, the pieces stop short of a sensory overload.
Review, 3355 words
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