by Donald Barthelme
The range in this collection of stories, Barthelme's seventh, is amazing. Cortés and Montezuma is a stately re-creation of a moment in history observed through a crazed prism. The King of Jazz is wild parody that describes the music of a master as "a sound like male walruses diving to the bottom of the sea...like the wild turkey walking through the deep, soft forest...like prairie dogs kissing." The Question Party, which Barthelme explains he found in an 1850 Godey's Lady's Book, has been altered into a Victorian nightmare. Belief says something profound about old age. Barthelme packs more plot, more ideas, wit and relevant observations about our times into a short story than most writers get into a novel. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $7.95)
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