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Donald Barthelme (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)

Biography

Donald Barthelme was born in Philadelphia, where his parents had been students at the University of Pennsylvania. His father was an architect; his mother had studied English. A few years later, the family moved to Houston, where his father became a professor of architecture at the University of Houston.

Texas may seem an unlikely place for one of the most-discussed writers of nonlinear, “experimental” fiction to have developed, but Barthelme credits his father's interest in what, for the time, were advanced architectural styles with fostering his...

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