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Sadness
Masterpieces of wit, whimsy and satire…
A saint struggling with the greatest of all temptations: daily life.
A genius proposes a world inventory of genius to create a better life, but he cannot bear the company.
Family life trembles with enough animus to bring down an elephant.
A woman leaves her husband and enters the red velvet map of new life.
A saint struggling with the greatest of all temptations: daily life.
A genius proposes a world inventory of genius to create a better life, but he cannot bear the company.
Family life trembles with enough animus to bring down an elephant.
A woman leaves her husband and enters the red velvet map of new life.
159 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
About the author
Donald Barthelme
162 books794 followers
Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts
(1968) apparently collects sometimes surrealistic stories of modern life of American writer Donald Barthelme.
A student at the University of Pennsylvania bore Donald Barthelme. Two years later, in 1933, the family moved to Texas, where father of Barthelme served as a professor of architecture at the University of Houston, where Barthelme later majored in journalism.
In 1951, this still student composed his first articles for the Houston Post. The Army drafted Barthelme, who arrived in Korea on 27 July 1953, the very day, when parties signed the ceasefire, ending the war. He served briefly as the editor of a newspaper of Army before returning to the United States and his job at the Houston Post. Once back, he continued his studies of philosophy at the University of Houston. He continued to take classes until 1957 but never received a degree. He spent much of his free time in “black” jazz clubs of Houston and listened to musical innovators, such as Lionel Hampton and Peck Kelly; this experience influenced him later.
Barthelme, a rebellious son, struggled in his relationship with his demanding father. In later years, they tremendously argued about the kinds of literature that interested Barthelme. His avant-garde father in art and aesthetics in many ways approved not the postmodern and deconstruction schools. The Dead Father and The King , the novels, delineate attitude of Barthelme toward his father as King Arthur and Lancelot, the characters, picture him. From the Roman Catholicism of his especially devout mother, Barthelme independently moved away, but this separation as the distance with his father troubled Barthelme. He ably agreed to strictures of his seemingly much closer mother.
Barthelme went to teach for brief periods at Boston University and at University at Buffalo, and he at the college of the City of New York served as distinguished visiting professor from 1974-1975. He married four times. Helen Barthelme, his second wife, later entitled a biography Donald Barthelme: The Genesis of a Cool Sound , published in 2001. With Birgit Barthelme, his third wife and a Dane, he fathered Anne Barthelme, his first child, a daughter. He married Marion Barthelme near the end and fathered Kate Barthelme, his second daughter. Marion and Donald wed until his death from throat cancer. People respect fiction of Frederick Barthelme and Steven Barthelme, brothers of Donald Barthelme and also teachers at The University of Southern Mississippi.
A student at the University of Pennsylvania bore Donald Barthelme. Two years later, in 1933, the family moved to Texas, where father of Barthelme served as a professor of architecture at the University of Houston, where Barthelme later majored in journalism.
In 1951, this still student composed his first articles for the Houston Post. The Army drafted Barthelme, who arrived in Korea on 27 July 1953, the very day, when parties signed the ceasefire, ending the war. He served briefly as the editor of a newspaper of Army before returning to the United States and his job at the Houston Post. Once back, he continued his studies of philosophy at the University of Houston. He continued to take classes until 1957 but never received a degree. He spent much of his free time in “black” jazz clubs of Houston and listened to musical innovators, such as Lionel Hampton and Peck Kelly; this experience influenced him later.
Barthelme, a rebellious son, struggled in his relationship with his demanding father. In later years, they tremendously argued about the kinds of literature that interested Barthelme. His avant-garde father in art and aesthetics in many ways approved not the postmodern and deconstruction schools. The Dead Father and The King , the novels, delineate attitude of Barthelme toward his father as King Arthur and Lancelot, the characters, picture him. From the Roman Catholicism of his especially devout mother, Barthelme independently moved away, but this separation as the distance with his father troubled Barthelme. He ably agreed to strictures of his seemingly much closer mother.
Barthelme went to teach for brief periods at Boston University and at University at Buffalo, and he at the college of the City of New York served as distinguished visiting professor from 1974-1975. He married four times. Helen Barthelme, his second wife, later entitled a biography Donald Barthelme: The Genesis of a Cool Sound , published in 2001. With Birgit Barthelme, his third wife and a Dane, he fathered Anne Barthelme, his first child, a daughter. He married Marion Barthelme near the end and fathered Kate Barthelme, his second daughter. Marion and Donald wed until his death from throat cancer. People respect fiction of Frederick Barthelme and Steven Barthelme, brothers of Donald Barthelme and also teachers at The University of Southern Mississippi.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
July 14, 2015
Art and intellect, intellect and misery, misery and trash, trash and sadness, sadness and capitalism: one thing leads to another and quotidian life is full of sadness.
Capitalism hates sadness so Donald Barthelme fills his tales with absurdity and satire so all the sad things become ridiculous and ludicrous and one can laugh till one cries reading them…
Such are delights of divorced life…
Sadness is the price of sainthood…
The first thing I did was make a mistake. I thought I had understood capitalism, but what I had done was assume an attitude – melancholy sadness – toward it.
Capitalism hates sadness so Donald Barthelme fills his tales with absurdity and satire so all the sad things become ridiculous and ludicrous and one can laugh till one cries reading them…
I visited the child's nursery school, once. Fathers were invited seriatim, one father a day I sat there on a little chair while the children ran to and fro and made sport. I was served a little cake. A tiny child not my own attached herself to me. Her father was in England, she said. She had visited him there and his apartment was full of cockroaches. I wanted to take her home with me.
Such are delights of divorced life…
St. Anthony told me that, in his old age, he regarded temptations as entertainment.
Sadness is the price of sainthood…
April 13, 2016
A fine collection of postmodern short blasters from Space Cadet Donald Barthelme with such titles as: The Sandman, The Rise of Capitalism, A City of Churches, Departures and The Party.
To share the flavor of the author’s literary ingenuity, below are my comments coupled with a few quotes from a piece of Barthelme flash fiction as absurdist cartoon, a story with the bureaucratic-like title ENGINEER-PRIVATE PAUL KLEE MISPLACES AN AIRCRAFT BETWEEN MILBERTSHOFEN AND CAMBRAI, MARCH 1916, a story alternating between what artist Paul Klee says and what The Secret Police say.
But please don’t be put off by The Secret Police as this bunch will remind you less of Kafka’s gatekeepers then those wacky, goofy Toon Patrol weasels in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Matter of fact, if I had a plan to create a short film version of Barthelme’s tale, I’d alternate between using a real actor for Paul Klee and bits of animated cartoon for those oh so secret police, so secret the police don’t even know their own location or number. Now that’s secret!
Paul Klee Said, ONE: “We presented ourselves as not just painters but artist-painters. This caused some shaking of heads.” You bet the Air Corps personnel shake their heads. They want men who will quickly and willingly take on the role of soldiers not men who present themselves as artists, with all the associations of bohemian nonconformity and radical individualism.
Paul Klee Said, TWO: “When I reach a notable town I try to see the notable paintings there, if time allows. There are always unexpected delays, rerouting, backtracking.” Ever the true artist and lover of art, Paul Klee takes his role as Engineer-Private as a mere hiccup, a modest inconvenience to what truly matters in life: art. Also, he has time for that other important artistic undertaking: making love to his girlfriend.
The Secret Police Said, ONE: “Omnipresence is our goal. We do not even need real omnipresence. The theory of omnipresence is enough. With omnipresence, hand-in-hand as it were, goes omniscience. And with omniscience and omnipresence, hand-in-hand as it were, goes omnipotence.” Such is the mindset for those who join the secret police – they want all the power to know everybody else’s business in all places and in all times. With such as these, sounds like a psychiatrist might find more than a little obsessive-compulsive disorder not to mention anal-retentiveness. Have you ever been around people like this? From my own personal experience I can report not a pleasant experience.
Paul Klee Said, THREE: “These Chinese short stories are slight and lovely. . . . The fine chunk of bacon given me along with m expense money when we left the base has been eaten. This morning a Red Cross lady with a squint gave me some very good coffee, however.” Again, ever the artist and appreciator of everyday aesthetics, Paul Klee enjoys reading short stories (something we all here on Goodreads can relate to!) and he also appreciates that time in the day really worth recording: being given a good cup of coffee to drink!
Paul Klee Said, FOUR: After discovering one of the three aircraft he is responsible for is missing, Paul Klee records the details in his notebook. The Secret Police approve of Paul Klee’s competence in recording the details. Then, Paul Klee goes on: “The shape of the collapsed canvas under which the aircraft had rested, together with the loose ropes – the canvas forming hills and valleys, seductive folds, the ropes the very essence of looseness lapsing – it is irresistible. I sketch for ten or fifteen minutes.” I love it! Although an Air Corps aircraft is missing, one that he is personally responsible for, Paul Klee sees the canvas and ropes aesthetically, through his artist’s eyes and proceeds to do what is truly in his nature as an artist: take his sketch pad out and begin sketching.
The Secret Police Said, TWO: “We are debating with ourselves as to whether we ought to enter the station restaurant and begin drafting our preliminary report, for forwarding to higher headquarters.” Quite a switch from the artist’s eye and artist’s life, the secret want-to-know-it all police consider reporting to higher headquarters. Oh, so bureaucratic, so by the book, so regimented. Did I mention compulsive and anal?
Paul Klee Said, FIVE: After deciding to change his report from three aircraft to two aircraft (perfect solution, if you ask me), Paul Klee says “I will walk around town and see if I can find a chocolate shop. I crave chocolate.” Go for it, Paul! What is an artist without his yummy chocolate?
Paul Klee Said, SIX: Since the story began with that dreadful title, the author (thanks, Donald!) allows Paul Klee, as a world-class artist, to have the last highly aesthetic, artistic word to end the story: “I wait contentedly in the warm orderly room. The drawings I did of the collapsed canvas and ropes is really very good. I eat a piece of chocolate. I am sorry about the lost aircraft but not overmuch. The war is temporary. But drawing and chocolate go on forever.”
July 19, 2015
1) I found this interview with DB on youtube and I was dumbfounded – here was I thinking you said his name like this:
Donald Barthelme
Will overwhelm
You
But no. It’s pronounced Barthulmee. Ew, can’t find anything to rhyme with that.
2) I bought this from amazon & paid a very modest fee and blow me down, they sent me a first edition hardback – proving that DB is really not very sought after!
3) The photo on the back is the best one I’ve seen where you can clearly see the inverted-V incision on DB’s top lip which is where he had a cancerous growth removed. It’s described in one of the stories herein - naked autobiography. This was the reason he didn’t grow a moustache to complete his bearded fizzog, because he couldn’t, because of what the operation did. So that’s why he looked like Doc from the Snow White dwarves. In facial terms that is, he was actually quite tall.
4) This collection gets half a star for two nice music references, one being "Wah Wah" by George Harrison (from All Things Must Pass) and the other being "Let’s Burn Down the Cornfield" by Randy Newman from 12 Songs.
5) This is not a good collection – if Donald Barthelme was Talking Heads then Sadness would be True Stories, the duff one in between Little Creatures and Naked, because City Life, the one before, is great and Amateurs, the one after is really really great but this one is kind of sort of okayish but sometimes quite irritating and a little bit superior in that intellectual name-dropping way that people who aren’t Barthelme fans think he is all the time. And some of it gets too close to being Monty Python sketches for comfort. That may sound ridiculous but I can prove it. However, the first story in here is actually the most shocking DB story I ever read because it’s completely autobiographical, painfully self-revealing and only goes off the rails in the last 2 pages. However, its title is “Critique de la Vie Quotidienne” so there’s your la-di-da effect-wrecking for you. Shoulda called it “My Fucking Life”.
Donald Barthelme
Will overwhelm
You
But no. It’s pronounced Barthulmee. Ew, can’t find anything to rhyme with that.
2) I bought this from amazon & paid a very modest fee and blow me down, they sent me a first edition hardback – proving that DB is really not very sought after!
3) The photo on the back is the best one I’ve seen where you can clearly see the inverted-V incision on DB’s top lip which is where he had a cancerous growth removed. It’s described in one of the stories herein - naked autobiography. This was the reason he didn’t grow a moustache to complete his bearded fizzog, because he couldn’t, because of what the operation did. So that’s why he looked like Doc from the Snow White dwarves. In facial terms that is, he was actually quite tall.
4) This collection gets half a star for two nice music references, one being "Wah Wah" by George Harrison (from All Things Must Pass) and the other being "Let’s Burn Down the Cornfield" by Randy Newman from 12 Songs.
5) This is not a good collection – if Donald Barthelme was Talking Heads then Sadness would be True Stories, the duff one in between Little Creatures and Naked, because City Life, the one before, is great and Amateurs, the one after is really really great but this one is kind of sort of okayish but sometimes quite irritating and a little bit superior in that intellectual name-dropping way that people who aren’t Barthelme fans think he is all the time. And some of it gets too close to being Monty Python sketches for comfort. That may sound ridiculous but I can prove it. However, the first story in here is actually the most shocking DB story I ever read because it’s completely autobiographical, painfully self-revealing and only goes off the rails in the last 2 pages. However, its title is “Critique de la Vie Quotidienne” so there’s your la-di-da effect-wrecking for you. Shoulda called it “My Fucking Life”.
September 12, 2019
بارتلمی به سیاق پستمدرنها، ارجاع میدهد به کلاسیکها، هجوی است بر مدرنها؛ در اینجا اختصاصا بکت، با آن نثرِ «قطعه-قطعه» و پرشهای موضوعیاش.
«کار از معنا تهی شده است و در عوض اضافهکاری جایش را گرفته است. بیکاری جهان فرد بیکار را نابود میکند. در سرمایهداری متأخر، توسعهنیافتگی فرهنگی کارگران، در مقام تمهید استیلا، در همهجا مشهود است. افراد خودمختاری اصیل را به کناری نهادهاند. فرهنگ تودهای موجب و مولد آگاهی کاذب است و همین امر جهالت و بیقدرتی را استمرار میبخشد.»
«کار از معنا تهی شده است و در عوض اضافهکاری جایش را گرفته است. بیکاری جهان فرد بیکار را نابود میکند. در سرمایهداری متأخر، توسعهنیافتگی فرهنگی کارگران، در مقام تمهید استیلا، در همهجا مشهود است. افراد خودمختاری اصیل را به کناری نهادهاند. فرهنگ تودهای موجب و مولد آگاهی کاذب است و همین امر جهالت و بیقدرتی را استمرار میبخشد.»
January 7, 2010
I'm reading Sadness and I'm not loving it. The stories move, but they are too clever, too experimental, too distracted by pop culture, fads, and crappy contemporaneous slang. And I'm wondering, why did I ever love Barthelme so? Is the romance over? Is he yet another love lost to age? But then I remember that I'm probably not old enough to ask those questions, and that there were things I loved when I was 10 that I no longer loved when I was 16. Maybe. But I recently re-read Barthelme's "The School" and "Me and Miss Mandible" and they're awesome, and I have no doubt that "Crotez and Montezuma" is as great as I remember, and hell, "The School" is one of the best short stories written in English. But so far most of these stories in Sadness have been a disappointment. So I plow on...
Ok, I'm still not loving these stories. They're ok, but not great. Mere cleverness and experimentation - encapsulation of the worst aspects of McSweeneys and post-modernism. I mean, "A City of Churches" has a nice ending, and - oh damn, wait - this story about Paul Klee and the secret police is damn good. Not perfect, but damn good.
Wow. Ok... "The Sandman" is amazing. So is "Departures." Earlier, I was wondering if I was sitting in the right chair, or if I was surrounding myself with the right reading environ. But nope, I think those earlier stories - most of the stories in the front of this book - are simply "eh." But "The Sandman," a study and critique by an erudite narrator that I bet $500 influenced the shit out of David Foster Wallace (footnotes and all) is simply awesome. It's a letter written to a psychologist, a full out throw down against singular interpretations and about the multiplicity thereof. It is supersmart, supergood, superinsightful, and in the end is a beautiful argument for loving someone flaws and all. "Departures" is just funny. And touching. Eight tiny vignettes that are fantastic, esp. the story about dryad-love which made me laugh out loud and kick my couch in joy (I'm laying down across my brown couch, book on stomach, back propped by many pillows, so my kickedfeet rapidly flipped from air to couch, all a parody of a teen girl).
And now I'm done. Barthelme is as good as I remember. He is an especially fantastic stylist - and I typically don't know what that means, "fantastic stylist," but Barthelme can style sentences, paragraphs, juxtapositions, and sometimes, stories, fantastically. He has a supple and outrageously inventive mind. Sometimes his inventiveness is too much for my taste, as with the almost-dazzling "The Rise of Capitalism," which takes so many liberties with what-makes-a-short-story, or story, or even writing, that it pushes me past the Dazed Cartoon (with birds, stars and question marks floating around my head) to the Confused Blob, sitting there left behind, not even sure if what it just did was read, or what.
Still, when he's on, he's on. And sometimes he'll do something like "The Flight of Pigeons" which isn't even a traditional story, but is a wood-cut collage-novel like Max Ernst's Hundred Headless Women or Une Semaine de Bont . (And actually, Barthelme wrote an entire collage novel, which is pretty much a graphic novel, called Sam's Bar , which is damn cool). All in all, he's brilliant. Each story is something new. But that is also the difficulty. When he's on, he's one of the best short story writers in English, but when he's off, his stories are incomprehensible. On a chart of 1 to 5, his stories are only 0: "What the fuck was that?" or 4: "That was... huh? Wow, wh-wh-what was that?" or 5: "Holy shit."
Ok, I'm still not loving these stories. They're ok, but not great. Mere cleverness and experimentation - encapsulation of the worst aspects of McSweeneys and post-modernism. I mean, "A City of Churches" has a nice ending, and - oh damn, wait - this story about Paul Klee and the secret police is damn good. Not perfect, but damn good.
Wow. Ok... "The Sandman" is amazing. So is "Departures." Earlier, I was wondering if I was sitting in the right chair, or if I was surrounding myself with the right reading environ. But nope, I think those earlier stories - most of the stories in the front of this book - are simply "eh." But "The Sandman," a study and critique by an erudite narrator that I bet $500 influenced the shit out of David Foster Wallace (footnotes and all) is simply awesome. It's a letter written to a psychologist, a full out throw down against singular interpretations and about the multiplicity thereof. It is supersmart, supergood, superinsightful, and in the end is a beautiful argument for loving someone flaws and all. "Departures" is just funny. And touching. Eight tiny vignettes that are fantastic, esp. the story about dryad-love which made me laugh out loud and kick my couch in joy (I'm laying down across my brown couch, book on stomach, back propped by many pillows, so my kickedfeet rapidly flipped from air to couch, all a parody of a teen girl).
And now I'm done. Barthelme is as good as I remember. He is an especially fantastic stylist - and I typically don't know what that means, "fantastic stylist," but Barthelme can style sentences, paragraphs, juxtapositions, and sometimes, stories, fantastically. He has a supple and outrageously inventive mind. Sometimes his inventiveness is too much for my taste, as with the almost-dazzling "The Rise of Capitalism," which takes so many liberties with what-makes-a-short-story, or story, or even writing, that it pushes me past the Dazed Cartoon (with birds, stars and question marks floating around my head) to the Confused Blob, sitting there left behind, not even sure if what it just did was read, or what.
Still, when he's on, he's on. And sometimes he'll do something like "The Flight of Pigeons" which isn't even a traditional story, but is a wood-cut collage-novel like Max Ernst's Hundred Headless Women or Une Semaine de Bont . (And actually, Barthelme wrote an entire collage novel, which is pretty much a graphic novel, called Sam's Bar , which is damn cool). All in all, he's brilliant. Each story is something new. But that is also the difficulty. When he's on, he's one of the best short story writers in English, but when he's off, his stories are incomprehensible. On a chart of 1 to 5, his stories are only 0: "What the fuck was that?" or 4: "That was... huh? Wow, wh-wh-what was that?" or 5: "Holy shit."
February 14, 2013
I enjoyed the stories early in this collection but the later ones left me feeling empty. The same way I feel if I masturbate more than once in a day. Maybe I will give it another try one day and just read one story each day.
June 26, 2025
I picked this up after reading Barthelme’s short story “The School” and laughing out loud multiple times (rare for me). I was expecting more of the same sort of silliness in this collection and it’s there in parts but I was taken with the variety of styles he uses from story to story. It reminded me of his post-modern contemporaries (Gaddis, Pynchon…) but I found the short story format to be more forgiving when things got a little heady.
December 4, 2024
بیشتر وقت ها مسئولیتهای مهم جامعه به افرادی سپرده میشود که عیوبی مخرب دارند !!!!
December 6, 2025
Barthelme begins his fourth short story collection with “Critique de la Vie Quotidienne”, one of the least fantastical and arguably the most devastating stories of his career. I haven’t dug into his biography enough to comment on the details, but this seems to be a fairly autobiographical piece about the breakdown of a marriage (a theme throughout plenty of the stories here), and it is brutal in its emotional honesty. There are bits of Barthelme’s usual humor and absurdity throughout, but what penetrates is a deep melancholy, a tangible sense of regret. It’s a true outlier in his catalogue, one of my favorite stories of all time, and it completely justifies the collection’s title: Sadness.
Unfortunately, this introductory masterpiece is followed by a handful of stories that feel less inspired, mostly business as usual, some that went completely over my head, and a few that feel like reheated leftovers from previous collections. There are some major standouts such as “The Sandman” (my second favorite story here), “The Party”, and “A Film”, but I don’t consider any of the rest to be essential; the final piece, “Daumiers”, was actually a bit of a slog, which is a shame considering how Barthelme typically knocks the last story out of the park in his other books.
Since I’ve been reading his work chronologically, I think my main disappointment is that, aside from “Critique de la Vie Quotidienne”, Barthelme doesn’t move his style or techniques forward in any sort of interesting way here. His first 3 collections are fine examples of a writer mastering his craft and becoming more ambitious with each release, whereas Sadness treads a lot of water. Don’t get me wrong, familiar Barthelme is still, on average, very good stuff, but this isn’t the one I’d recommend for newcomers or casual readers of his work.
Unfortunately, this introductory masterpiece is followed by a handful of stories that feel less inspired, mostly business as usual, some that went completely over my head, and a few that feel like reheated leftovers from previous collections. There are some major standouts such as “The Sandman” (my second favorite story here), “The Party”, and “A Film”, but I don’t consider any of the rest to be essential; the final piece, “Daumiers”, was actually a bit of a slog, which is a shame considering how Barthelme typically knocks the last story out of the park in his other books.
Since I’ve been reading his work chronologically, I think my main disappointment is that, aside from “Critique de la Vie Quotidienne”, Barthelme doesn’t move his style or techniques forward in any sort of interesting way here. His first 3 collections are fine examples of a writer mastering his craft and becoming more ambitious with each release, whereas Sadness treads a lot of water. Don’t get me wrong, familiar Barthelme is still, on average, very good stuff, but this isn’t the one I’d recommend for newcomers or casual readers of his work.
September 23, 2026
Carries on some of the innovations from City Life, like inserted graphics, but there's a special tone to this one, i.e. the emotion indicated in the title. The scope of the adventures in some of his earlier stories feels wider and wilder (I'm thinking "The Indian Uprising" and "The Balloon") than what we get here. Which is basically a pure surreal linguistic contortion upon confrontation with either (1) the emptiness of default ideology or (2) one's own inability to commit to something, be it a belief in the inevitability of socialism or just the viability of a romantic relationship. In the last story ("Daumier", a little masterpiece that reminds me of Flann O'Brien) we're reminded:
And ain't that true
It is easy to be satisfied if you get out of things what inheres in them, but you must look closely, take nothing for granted, let nothing become routine. You must fight against the cocoon of habituation which covers everything if you let it. There are always openings, if you can find them. There is always something to do.
And ain't that true
April 27, 2021
Barthelme abandons plot to go dancing with words. He cares about the aesthetics of a sentence and nothing else. If only perky non-sequiturs could add up to a narrative, Barthelme would be all set...
These stories are empty. There's nothing here, except for a few fun sentences every now and again. If you're going to say fuck you to plot, maybe develop some ideas to toy with, an engaging voice to keep us hooked, some fascinating imagery? Instead, Barthelme subjects us to page-long lists of random items while wearing a smarmy grin on his stupid dead face.
Take a shot every time Barthelme says something stupid about women. Take a shot every time he throws in a French sentence to feel fancy. Take a shot every time a 'story' ends without any action occurring. Take a shot every time he writes an aphorism he thinks is wise. Take a shot every time he chooses an alcoholic 40-something divorcee protagonist. Fuck this book.
These stories are empty. There's nothing here, except for a few fun sentences every now and again. If you're going to say fuck you to plot, maybe develop some ideas to toy with, an engaging voice to keep us hooked, some fascinating imagery? Instead, Barthelme subjects us to page-long lists of random items while wearing a smarmy grin on his stupid dead face.
Take a shot every time Barthelme says something stupid about women. Take a shot every time he throws in a French sentence to feel fancy. Take a shot every time a 'story' ends without any action occurring. Take a shot every time he writes an aphorism he thinks is wise. Take a shot every time he chooses an alcoholic 40-something divorcee protagonist. Fuck this book.
August 4, 2010
If there's a better book to start Fall with don't tell me about it. I want to enjoy this moment. No story in the collection failed to make me laugh. The first story, about you and your wife Wanda, and the Daumier surrogate, and "The Party" are the stand-outs, in MY humble opinion. Maybe I'd say more but I'm in New York and Kiel fast approaches and I'm naked and need to get to showering so I'm fresh for the new day. Fresh for the Fall.
October 6, 2017
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در جایی از این کتاب میخوانیم: «مرد گفت: ما مثل بقیه شهرها هستیم، جز این که ما بینقص هستیم. نارضایتی ما را فقط کمال میتواند مهار کند». کتاب «غم» با ترجمه خوب شهریار وقفیپور به بازار کتاب آمده است و این مترجم تمام تلاش خود را به کار بسته است تا لحن نویسنده و ویژگیهای سبکی و نوشتاری دانلد بارتلمی را به مخاطب اثر انتقال دهد و در این کار موفق بوده است.
در جایی از این کتاب میخوانیم: «مرد گفت: ما مثل بقیه شهرها هستیم، جز این که ما بینقص هستیم. نارضایتی ما را فقط کمال میتواند مهار کند». کتاب «غم» با ترجمه خوب شهریار وقفیپور به بازار کتاب آمده است و این مترجم تمام تلاش خود را به کار بسته است تا لحن نویسنده و ویژگیهای سبکی و نوشتاری دانلد بارتلمی را به مخاطب اثر انتقال دهد و در این کار موفق بوده است.
January 31, 2022
مجموعه ۱۳ داستان کوتاه از نویسنده پست مدرن آمریکایی دونالد/دانلد بارتلمی
در این مجموعه با داستان کوتاه به شیوه کلاسیک یا حتی مدرن سر و کار نخواهید داشت
شیوه روایت داستان ها معمول و خطی و انواع دیگر رایج نیست
خیلی جاها یک داستان تخیلی است ، هجو ، گزارش روزنامه ای و.....
در این مجموعه با داستان کوتاه به شیوه کلاسیک یا حتی مدرن سر و کار نخواهید داشت
شیوه روایت داستان ها معمول و خطی و انواع دیگر رایج نیست
خیلی جاها یک داستان تخیلی است ، هجو ، گزارش روزنامه ای و.....
July 31, 2008
Some (Read: Most) of this content is pretty far out. Sometimes the obtuse offers the most direct portrait of something more abstract.
December 8, 2014
Barthelme has a way of making you think more deeply about your own self through his clever and beautifully written stories.
May 27, 2015
Sadness is hilarious. But also, more importantly, more than funny.
June 2, 2019
Barthelme’s writing is clever and often experimental, each story a trial run at novelty. There is in the experimentation a magpie quality, a gathering up of diverse, queer shiny bits (banalities and commonplaces of genre, conversation, contemporary life, and popular culture) that can produce a strange and intriguing congery. Or sometimes just a sad two-headed sideshow calf. In other words, Barthelme’s restlessness drives him to bold hit-or-miss ventures; but he’s clearly a craftsman, aware of his tools and the medium, playful in an earnest way about how he can make something new and distinctive in the space allotted a short story by, say, O’Henry.
The sense of play is what most appeals to me in Barthelme’s several stories in this collection. The whimsy in “Engineer-Private Paul Klee Misplaces an Aircraft Between Milbershofen and Cambrai, March 1916” makes it my favorite in this collection, because the subject and treatment are a fitting blend of post-modern gravitas and a kind of babe-in-the-woods levity that matches much of Klee’s own work. And there is the sense that it’s still a story, though a peculiar one. “The Genius”, while entertaining for the odd series of brilliant and sometimes disorienting dissonances each of its sections displays, is not properly a story of the O’Henry sort, with beginning, middle, end—though there is irony aplenty, much of it deriving simply from the fact that the so-called “genius” behaves/thinks less like any genius we might conceive.
Other pieces in this collection simply drifted by, not particularly substantial; one, “Traumerie”, put me in mind of poems John Ashbery might have written at the same time (circa 1960). Some others left me scratching my head, wondering what effect was intended; such was the case with “The Rise of Capitalism,” an irreconcilable mix of high and low concepts that tickled the funny bone and/or knitted my brow.
Despite themes that sometimes echoed the collection’s title, and despite stories that sometimes eluded my understanding, I always sensed in these stories their creator’s playfulness/artfulness. As with the Zen koan, which paradox is supposed to produce a disruptive cogitative dissonance and triumphant violation of either/or thinking (a la the Gordian knot), Barthelme’s stories are short enough to visit and revisit for similar piquant epiphanies.
The sense of play is what most appeals to me in Barthelme’s several stories in this collection. The whimsy in “Engineer-Private Paul Klee Misplaces an Aircraft Between Milbershofen and Cambrai, March 1916” makes it my favorite in this collection, because the subject and treatment are a fitting blend of post-modern gravitas and a kind of babe-in-the-woods levity that matches much of Klee’s own work. And there is the sense that it’s still a story, though a peculiar one. “The Genius”, while entertaining for the odd series of brilliant and sometimes disorienting dissonances each of its sections displays, is not properly a story of the O’Henry sort, with beginning, middle, end—though there is irony aplenty, much of it deriving simply from the fact that the so-called “genius” behaves/thinks less like any genius we might conceive.
Other pieces in this collection simply drifted by, not particularly substantial; one, “Traumerie”, put me in mind of poems John Ashbery might have written at the same time (circa 1960). Some others left me scratching my head, wondering what effect was intended; such was the case with “The Rise of Capitalism,” an irreconcilable mix of high and low concepts that tickled the funny bone and/or knitted my brow.
Despite themes that sometimes echoed the collection’s title, and despite stories that sometimes eluded my understanding, I always sensed in these stories their creator’s playfulness/artfulness. As with the Zen koan, which paradox is supposed to produce a disruptive cogitative dissonance and triumphant violation of either/or thinking (a la the Gordian knot), Barthelme’s stories are short enough to visit and revisit for similar piquant epiphanies.
January 17, 2022
Sadness is a selection of sixteen short stories by Donald Barthelme, including: "Critique de la Vie Quotidienne", "Träumerei", "The Genius", "Perpetua", "A City of Churches", "The Party", "Engineer-Private Paul Klee Misplaces an Aircraft between Milbertshofen and Cambrai, March 1916", "A Film", "The Sandman", "Departures", "Subpoena", "The Catechist", "The Flight of Pigeons from the Palace", "The Rise of Capitalism", "The Temptation of St. Anthony", and "Daumier".
February 6, 2026
I love when someone is writing on the sentence level. Incredible placement of words, ideas, and some great funky craft things going on in here. I found a few stories not very "readable" but some, including "The Rise of Capitalism" and "The Temptation of Saint Anthony" were incredible. Absolutely LOVED Saint Anthony, a story about a saint who lives in a modern day city and the various temptations the neighbors try to catch him in.
June 6, 2017
"The trouble with you is that you are an idiot," Gibbon said. "You lack a sense of personal worthlessness. A sense of personal worthlessness is the motor that drives the overachiever to his splendid overachievements that we all honor and revere."
"I have it!" I said. "A deep and abiding sense of personal worthlessness. One of the best."
"I have it!" I said. "A deep and abiding sense of personal worthlessness. One of the best."
October 12, 2017
I look forward to reading Barthelme. I know what he can do, I've seen his genius. But somehow this book passed through my head without hitting any of the pinball targets. Weird. And not in the good way that Barthelme has of being weird. Weird that it was pretty uneventful. It wont put me off of him however.
October 10, 2022
One of his better colletions. Most or all of the works in Sadness have been assimilated into larger collections (40 Stories/60 Stories) at this point, so there isn't much sense in buying it at this point.
April 15, 2020
An absolute masterpiece, tour de force
October 14, 2022
والا چی بگم. یا من خیلی پرتم یا بارتلمی خیلی روانشاد بوده. از نظر هنری و ارزش ادبی واقعا خاصن داستانها، ولی طوریان که من آماتور نمیتونم قضاوتی کنم یا حتی خیلی جاها پوینت رو متوجه بشم.
November 11, 2023
من احمق وقتی میتونم زبان اصلی بخونم همچین اثری رو چرا ترجمه میخونم گیرم مترجم هم خفنه.
شرم بر من بارتلمی.
شرم بر من بارتلمی.
July 10, 2025
On average, not quite as good as City Lights
July 22, 2025
I liked a majority of these stories, others I was nonplussed, overall enjoyable
December 30, 2008
Maybe this has already been mentioned by others, but just in case --
I believe that some (perhaps all?) of the stories from this beautiful work have been republished in later collections under a different name, so if you can't find this out of print tome, check out those later compilations.
Sadness struck mean as a hilarious and yet poignant collection of Barthelme's works. The stories are moving and touching, the language truly beautiful - Barthelme really knows how to take conventional English and bend it until it expresses something truly unique. I suppose it's very much like poetry, in a way - there is a musicality and a meaning to the way the sentences themselves are constructed - significance is not limited simply to content, but also to form and sound. You'll have to try it to really understand, I suppose. In a way, Barthelme sometimes reminds me of e.e. cummings - maybe I'm off on drawing that comparison, but they seem to have a similar desire to use words as they see fit, and both have a unique view of human nature (though, I think, quite different views.)
Anyway, if you haven't tried Barthelme yet and see this at a friend's house or at a used bookstore, do pick it up and give it a try - it's a wonderful book. Not for the hater of consciously postmodern literature.
I believe that some (perhaps all?) of the stories from this beautiful work have been republished in later collections under a different name, so if you can't find this out of print tome, check out those later compilations.
Sadness struck mean as a hilarious and yet poignant collection of Barthelme's works. The stories are moving and touching, the language truly beautiful - Barthelme really knows how to take conventional English and bend it until it expresses something truly unique. I suppose it's very much like poetry, in a way - there is a musicality and a meaning to the way the sentences themselves are constructed - significance is not limited simply to content, but also to form and sound. You'll have to try it to really understand, I suppose. In a way, Barthelme sometimes reminds me of e.e. cummings - maybe I'm off on drawing that comparison, but they seem to have a similar desire to use words as they see fit, and both have a unique view of human nature (though, I think, quite different views.)
Anyway, if you haven't tried Barthelme yet and see this at a friend's house or at a used bookstore, do pick it up and give it a try - it's a wonderful book. Not for the hater of consciously postmodern literature.
September 8, 2011
Another 5 star review to a Donald Barthelme book? Maybe you ask this question and that's fine. I know I did. My reasoning is that this is one of his funniest. Take, for instance, "The Sandman." The story is contained in a letter the narrator is writing to his girlfriend Susan's shrink. "She tells me what she said and what you said," the narrator writes. He defends Susan artistically, writing, "But the proposition, 'Susan becomes an artist and lives happily ever after' is ridiculous...Let me point out, if it has escaped your attention, that what an artist does, is fail...There is something 'out there' which cannot be brought 'here.' This is standard. I don't mean bad artists, I mean good artists. There is no such thing as a 'successful artist' (except, of course, in worldly term). The proposition should read, 'Susan becomes an artist and lives unhappily ever after.'" God I love that.
Another story I love (and one I immediately handed to my better half to read) is "Perpetua." It reads as a satirical response to feminism, but Barthleme isn't poking fun. Perpetua leaves her husband and finds her new life "spread out before her like a red velvet map." She meets many new suitors, none of whom truly please her. Her husband returns at the end. "Are you happier now than before?" "Sure," Perpetua says. Don B's Sadness is a funny kind, one that will have you laughing through tears.
Another story I love (and one I immediately handed to my better half to read) is "Perpetua." It reads as a satirical response to feminism, but Barthleme isn't poking fun. Perpetua leaves her husband and finds her new life "spread out before her like a red velvet map." She meets many new suitors, none of whom truly please her. Her husband returns at the end. "Are you happier now than before?" "Sure," Perpetua says. Don B's Sadness is a funny kind, one that will have you laughing through tears.
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