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The King (Magill Book Reviews)

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Donald Barthelme (1931-1989) was one of a handful of postwar American writers to create a genuinely original style, as distinctive as Franz Kafka’s, and like Kafka’s too in that, once invented, it seemed to have been called into being by a realm of experience which it alone could name. Barthelme’s short stories--his trademark pieces--are parodies with other elements mixed in, surreal collages. These effects generally do not work when extended over the length of a novel, a maxim confirmed by Barthelme’s own three novels prior to THE KING. That is why most parodies are quite...

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