It's the Work, Stupid

Donald Barthelme carved out an almost inconceivable place for himself in American literature. He was a modernist who received popular acclaim by publishing regularly in the New Yorker, an avant garde provocateur who is easily the funniest writer I've ever read, and an alcoholic who married four times but seems to have inspired love and devotion in just about everyone who ever met him. The achievement of his life and work is matched by the miracle of his finding a biographer who painstakingly focuses his 500 pages on the man's writing, placing it in the context of Barthelme's era of greatness (the 60s through the 80s) and emphasizing the multitude of his influences- architecture, jazz, art, Beckett, Kafka and sadness. Most literary biographies are stuffed like turduckens with the gossipy minutiae of shit talk, post-dinner kitchen fucks and regularity. Mr. Daugherty chooses instead to focus on the man's work- its origins, its construction, its inspirations and its responses. Imagine that- a big fat doorstop filled with ideas about and explications of literature. And "post-modern" lit at that, whatever that non-signifier means these days. Daugherty makes his quiet but steady case for Barthelme's greatness without glossing over his personal failings. He simply chooses not to put the man's romantic trouble at the center of what is clearly a gargantuan effort of love and respect in the service of gaining the great man his rightful place at the center of all conversations about American literature. Or at least getting his fucking books back in print. Barthelme's stories ain't for everybody, but they're certainly for me, so I'm gonna go marvel at the wit and laugh my ass off while the tears puddle in the corner of the new davenport.