Flying to America

"Barthleme may have been radical in his time, but he's perfectly suited to our own." -Houston Chronicle

One of the most influential and inventive writers of the twentieth century, Donald Barthelme wrote novels, short stories, parodies, plays, satires, fables, and essays that captured the good, the bad, but most of all the strange of America. With Barthelme, strange may come both in the tale and in the form, but however it appears, Barthelme has tooled the absurd so that is rings true. As observed by Thomas Pynchon (who coined the term Barthelmismo), Barthelme's work conveys something of "the clarity and sweep, the intensity of emotion, the transcendent weirdness of the primary experience."

Flying to America, first published in 2007, presents all of Barthelme's previously unpublished and uncollected short fiction. For both devotees and those new to Barthelme's playful irreverence, erudition, and unmatched imagination, this unprecedented survey offers up a rare and wonderful treat.