Paul Bryant’s Reviews > Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme > Status Update

ha ha! "A singer named Manny, dressed in maroon jacket, told moronic jokes and sang lounge-lizard tunes, occasionally shouting to William Gaddis or Joh Hawkes 'You're lookin' good!'"

yes, it might look as if there's 170 pages left but in books like this you get 92 pages of notes & bibliography & index.

Motoring alomg in Don's middle years (you see how I am on first name terms now) & then I got a sudden jolt - only 80 pages to go - that's because... he died at the age of 58. I had forgotten.

I was going to try & read this alongside the actual books of stories but I got impatient waiting for Snow White to turn up. Reading a literary bio is like a classy soap opera. You just have to keep going.

now we have got to 1968, that frenzied year, and he has published Snow White (gasp, a novel) and a 2nd collection Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts. So again I must pause while I read those.

As the first collection Come Back Dr Caligari is just being published I shall pause here and go and read it.

now in 1962-3, ensconced in Greenwich Village, going to jazz clubs (not going to see Bob Dylan) . I wonder if he was just a bit too old for the onrushing countercultural tsunami about to engulf America. He has ditched wife number 2 who hated NYC and its awful alcoholic hipsters (looking at you, de Kooning) - she has gone back to Houston after much hand wringing.