"Don's imagination had spent some time living alongside the arts of painting, architecture, philosophy, music. Then he added a journalistic interest in the day-I mean the immediate morning-to-night American day. His language, invented along a syntactical line between Texas and New York. The fact is, he could have been only clever, and he was clever, but his intelligence ran harder and deeper than his wit. He was in his life and work a citizen. That means he paid attention to and argued the life of his street, his city (New York or Houston), his country. He never played a game of literary personalities. If he organized an event, a reading-as he did, for instance, at the 1986 PEN Conference, he stood back, had others present their work. He wasn't the least bit modest, he was anxious, he was courteous. He was always worried in the very act of hilarious opposition. There was sadness in our lightest conversations, across that literature of his. We laugh, but the poem in the prose is dark."
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Novelists from the United StatesEssayists from the United StatesShort story writers from the United StatesLiterary criticsEducators from the United States
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Donald Barthelme
Donald Barthelme (April 7, 1931 – July 23, 1989) was an American author known for his postmodern short stories and novels.
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